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

arstechnica.com

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

#101

Post by jdbernard »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #84
dsacco wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the pool have any recourse if you proceed to bypass the ban? Do you have to re-enter to pool to bypass it, or does sending in confederates with their own badges to continue your work also bypassing the ban? How about sending in new motorized cars? The analogy is starting to break down, but I think it's still instructive for the problem of applying a simple first principles approach.

Bypassing the ban after you have been clearly notified of it is trespass.

That's basically what LinkedIn is arguing here. They have explicitly send hiQ a cease-and-desist letter.

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

#102

Post by openmosix »

ksk wrote: post #100
williamle8300 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The type of data being discussed here (factual data about people) cannot be copyrighted - i.e. the fact John Doe is a Software Engineer for ACME Inc is not copyrightable.

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

#103

Post by yourapostasy »

whatnotests wrote: post #97
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.

This sounds like the setup to an up-spiraling arms race with "dark scrapers". I'm guessing behind-the-scenes, LinkedIn figures they can out-spend the extralegal scrapers, and likely considers their efforts will deliver halo effects to the rest of Microsoft. It would be educational to hear how LinkedIn plans to take down bot-net-based scraping that uses deep learning to identify patterns that successfully mimic human users and bypass their bot detection; could possibly help other white hats who want to battle bots and general malware.

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

#104

Post by mywittyname »

rootlocus wrote: post #90
jalfresi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? How does this impact the bike owner in anyway?

The owner makes money from the admission fee clients pay to see the bike. Taking photos and selling albums defeats that purpose.

But the owner is offering the images up for free to the public. hiQ is taking those publicly-available photos and annotating them with, "red bike", "pink bike", "broken bike", "professional bike", etc.

It's clearly a value-add and not theft.

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

#105

Post by mywittyname »

mbillie1 wrote: post #38
wccrawford wrote: post #5

>One plausible reading of the law—the one LinkedIn is advocating—is that once a website operator asks you to stop accessing its site, you commit a crime if you don't comply. I'm fine with that. But I'm also fine if they do the like the article suggests and require anything non-scrapable to be behind an account prompt, even if everyone with a account can access it. I don't think it's fair to make Linked In foot the bi…

> They shouldn't have to serve that content to people who aren't actually their users. So put it behind a password. It's not reasonable to expect to get only the benefits of publicly-searchable data without any of the drawbacks.

The policy is also harmful to innovation.

If a Google-like competitor started, all Google would have to do to crush them is demand big-name sites formally prohibit the competitor from accessing their content or risk being delisted. And magically, it becomes impossible/illegal to build a duck-duck-go.

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

#106

Post by mywittyname »

FedericoCapell0 wrote: post #31

""The CFAA makes it a crime to "access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access." Courts have been struggling to figure out what this means ever since Congress passed it more than 30 years ago."" The law by itself is ok, but I suspect lawmakers were referring to accessing a single personal workstation, probably not taking into account a cluster of servers containing public accessible data.

"Authorization" should be clarified to mean requiring credentials that formally grant access. In my eyes, public-facing content on a website is explicitly available to anyone. It clearly does not require authorization.

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

#107

Post by lightbyte »

openmosix wrote: post #102
ksk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, then that becomes a copyright issue I suppose.

The type of data being discussed here (factual data about people) cannot be copyrighted - i.e. the fact John Doe is a Software Engineer for ACME Inc is not copyrightable.

A better example I think is walking into a store and writing down what they price everything as, then selling aggregate pricing data to people. I can't see any reason that would be illegal.

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

#108

Post by tyingq »

type0 wrote: post #83
tyingq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have gone to jail for it. https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/

They were being sentenced to prison but not for scraping, their business were a fraudulent economic activity. They broke the terms of buying those tickets by impersonating legitimate customers. I don't see the connection with scraping.

There were two charges, one specifically CFAA for bypassing the captcha...scraping.

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

#109

Post by dylz »

TomSawyer wrote: post #75
mgkimsal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possibly just filtering based on your IP?

That crossed my mind, but it'd mean they'd be willing to lock out large networks behind a NAT. I was wondering if there's something more sophisticated available.

100% they are willing to lock out NAT networks, have been subject to this more than once browsing normally.

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

#110

Post by mywittyname »

debacle wrote: post #93

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 ge…

> But LinkedIn seems within their rights here.

Congress writes bad laws all the time. So LinkedIn might be within their rights, but that doesn't mean they should have those rights.

It's bad for innovation to allow for selective discrimination like this. LinkedIn is perfectly happy to allow Google, Yahoo, Bing, and many, many more companies to scrape their content and use it for personal profit. Giving them the option to sue an upstart for doing exactly the same thing as Google is unfair and oligopolistic.

Letting established tech giants get away with this will slowly erode American dominance in technology.

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