Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 303 posts

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#91

Post by paganel »

dsacco wrote: post #43
hellbanner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"satellite imagery for oil tankers" - Interesting. If hedge funds floating drones above oil tankers, I'd guess they'd be accussed of corporate espionage / spying / invasion of privacy? Ok, so oil tankers are big and "in the clear". What if $TANKERCORP floats big parachute balloons above its tankers to imply "looking past these is unauthorized viewing"? Then if a HedgeFund gets a clever angle on a satellite photo.. is…

Satellite imagery like this is legal to within a few feet of practical resolution, pretty much anywhere. The effective countermeasure is hiding things from a satellite, not attempting to sue satellite operators for flying overhead. I'm not aware of a specific law against using anything that is literally viewable from the sky, at least in the United States (someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Googl…

> someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Google Maps blurs out some locations or keeps them outdated because the government requests it, not because of a formal law forcing them to do so

In the Eastern European country from where I'm from (a NATO member) the Google StreetView car even got to photograph and publicly put on the Internet the outside of military and air bases with clear signs of "do not take photographs" visible on StreetView itself. It's funny, my company also used to work in this space (local business directory with business addresses, photos of said business etc) and one of my former colleagues got detained for a day because of taking photos of businesses in the downtown area of one of the biggest cities in my country. He hadn't seen that there was a military "objective" in his line of view (probably some military HQ or someth, not a proper military base with tanks and trucks). Talk about the advantages of being an internet giant like Google..

Later edit: I was talking for example about links like these: https://www.google.ro/maps/@44.4062748,26.0524843,3a,80.8y,2... . That is actually the HQ of NATO's "Multinational Division Southeast", whatever that is (http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/news_125356.htm?selectedLo...). Fact is that if I were to take photos of those buildings as a simple citizen I would be breaking the law, not sure how Google got away with it.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#92

Post by type0 »

freehunter wrote: post #51
dsacco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty literalist, one-size fits all approach to policy. I don't think it's a good framework to use for applying ethics considerations. If I can walk near a pool, should I also be able to run? Is running anything more than faster walking? If I'm allowed to be around the pool walking with my entry ID, should I also be allowed to place my ID on a little motorized car and make it dart around the pool really fas…

The pool has the right to kick you out, same as any website. The pool cannot call the police and charge you with a felony for misusing their resources.

Sure they can if they know who you are, that means authorization, when L-In will put their pages behind a login they would be able to kick hiQ out.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#93

Post by debacle »

I'm seeing a lot of bad analogies thrown around in this comment thread, mostly based on emotional response and/or a dislike for LinkedIn.

As someone who has done a lot of scraping in the past (sometimes for good, sometimes not), the number one thing you need to respect as a scraper is that email or phone call you get saying "Stop doing that."

In almost all instances, you're legally fine in the real world until you get some communication to stop and/or blacklisted. After that point, what you are doing becomes a crime.

- LinkedIn is not a public resource, it is a private company that pays for servers. - LinkedIn might scrape too, but that argument isn't going to hold up in court, and the scraping they do is probably in line with their EULA (protip: never install a social networking app on your phone, ever). - The analogy to the storefront, taking pictures in public, etc, all break down because scraping LinkedIn requires you to access their resources. - The analogy to browsing a store is great. If you are in a store, and they ask you to leave, and you don't, that's trespassing. Trespassing isn't legal.

The CFAA isn't a great law. There are a lot of gray areas. But LinkedIn seems within their rights here.

If anyone wants to know how this is going to wind up: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/padmapper-and-3taps-se...

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#94

Post by magnetic »

williamle8300 wrote: post #81
huhtenberg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no. It's more like complaining about others selling tickets to view said painting from the sidewalk. HiQ repackages and sells data it scrapes from LinkedIn.

Actually, no. It's like taking pictures of the paintings from the street, and reselling those pictures. If they don't like that... that the painting down. Simple.

Sounds like an Intellectual Property violation to me. You don't have to hide your IP in order to protect it: there are laws that deal with this.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#96

Post by cdevs »

I've always believed that if you are scrapable then be prepared to be scraped. The internet is still a digital Wild West and stoping these guys will not stop some underground source with a cloud flare or tor hidden service or outside your countries laws from doing what they want with what they can get. they can build a site or they can sell it, stoping these guys just stops a public and honest company, sure they can stop the public companies but the best thing to do is protect yourself. Don't leave the keys to the door out front and get mad when someone uses the keys.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#97

Post by whatnotests »

yourapostasy wrote: post #27

Even if successfully litigated, doesn't this just move the scraping activity to less-obvious means, and to better-funded scrapers less concerned with legalities, making LinkedIn's efforts to clamp down upon scraping even more difficult? Is there a business case for LinkedIn to monetize the scraping by selling access to an API instead? Between bot-nets, mechanical turks, deep learning, data brokering, lack of globally…

LinkedIn gutted their API a couple years ago and now the information they took out has been moved to a private API

If your business is in the recruiter space, expect to have your API keys revoked and to receive a cease and desist letter as well.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#98

Post by rootlocus »

aphexbr wrote: post #88
rootlocus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better analogy would be me taking a photo of the bike while walking past. Taking a photo of the bike is also a poor analogy. Scrapers don't take one photo, they take photos of all the bikes. And scrapers don't keep the photos for themselves, they sell them for a profit. Also, the original bike isn't parked, it's placed in a gallery (probably with an admission fee? I don't know the business model of linkedin).

The number of photos is irrelevant to the analogy, though, as is what people do with the photos afterwards. If the bikes are visible from the public street, people can take as many pictures of every bike they want, and then make money from them if they want. It doesn't affect the owners' usage of the bike (unlike the original analogy, where the owner loses access, which was what I was trying to correct) Physical anal…

> The number of photos is irrelevant to the analogy

Actually, the size of the data and the number of requests is very relevant. More data means more information, means more money. It also means more bandwidth and processing power required to process requests. You're not taking a photo of the bike, you're asking the bike to give you a photo of it.

> it's just dishonest/misleading to pretend that copying data is ever analogous to taking a physical object (the owner of the original is never deprived of the original when data is copied).

Leaving LinkedIn aside, possession of the original data is never the issue with digital piracy. It's a straw man. The hurt occurs when people benefit from the work the original author put into creating that data without proper compensation. Just because you can clone my gizmo (which I spent years working on) without taking the original one doesn't mean you're not hurting me. That gizmo could give me an advantage you wouldn't otherwise have. I place hours of working into something that doesn't put food on the table because you can clone my work, but I can't clone my food.

There's a reason an empty CD costs 50c but a music album costs $10. You're not paying for the physical medium. You're paying for the IP. And yes, digital distributions are cheaper because of this, but that doesn't make them free.

> Most of it is selling premium features to recruiters and other businesses.

I'd say it's pretty obviously interfering with their business model.

> LinkedIn should not be trying to have their cake and eat it by leaving things in public then complaining when the public accesses it in a way they don't like.

LinkedIn could ban IPs that make unreasonable number of requests in a short amount of time.

Re: LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

#100

Post by ksk »

williamle8300 wrote: post #81
huhtenberg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no. It's more like complaining about others selling tickets to view said painting from the sidewalk. HiQ repackages and sells data it scrapes from LinkedIn.

Actually, no. It's like taking pictures of the paintings from the street, and reselling those pictures. If they don't like that... that the painting down. Simple.

Hmm, then that becomes a copyright issue I suppose.
Post reply on HN