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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

#241

Post by ChuckMcM »

aleem wrote: post #236
ChuckMcM wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've characterized this accurately. When you make an HTTP request to LinkedIn you are accessing their service. There is a long history of this relationship, you plug your house into the sewer line and you connect to the sewer service. You connect to the power pole and connect to the electricity service. You connect to the telephone pole and connect to the telephone service. Every service has "terms of…

The scenario is a bit more nuanced though and creeps into Internet freedom. - Reminds me of CraigsList vs PadMapper[1]. In that scenario I side with CL -- it was right to block PM. PM or others should not be allowed to build a new UI on top of CL because CL was the one that put in years of effort of nurturing its listings, its network, building brand equity and taking associated risks and costs. - As others have high…

Now go read the 3Taps vs Craigslist cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc.) to start. To be clear here, I feel like I understand your argument that facts aren't copyrightable or protectable and that how you got them is not relevant.

I'm just saying the legal system doesn't see it that way, they have said so in many cases, and so far everyone who has used your argument or variations of it in court has failed to prevail.

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

#242

Post by int_handler »

debacle wrote: post #123
mywittyname wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are within their right to require authorization to their content, yes, but they don't do that. They make it public and allow some companies to scrape that content and resell it for profit (like Google), but while restricting other companies from doing the same. If they don't want their data to be public, then they shouldn't make it public. They could require authorization to view any content on the site and solv…

What leads you to believe that LinkedIn's data is public?

I believe mywittyname is specifically referring to the LinkedIn profile pages that are publicly visible without requiring a login and is not claiming that all LinkedIn's data is public. Thus, the question is why doesn't LinkedIn simply hide all profile data behind user authentication?

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

#243

Post by bookmarkacc »

jamez1 wrote: post #216
dsacco wrote: post #10

I'm following this story with a lot of interest. I've done (and still do!) a lot of data crawling/scraping. In the past I've worked on so-called "alternative data" collection and analysis for financial forecasting. Without going into too much detail, a lot of hedge funds have teams constantly searching for kernels of data that can contribute some kind of signal for market movements. This data can come in the form of…

Alternate data doesn't even need to be as sexy as satellite photos, hell you almost certainly want the data that isn't sexy, the stuff people haven't thought of because it's too boring. Alternative data vendors above all want sales, and even the funds themselves want things to show off to clients. This gives you great opportunities to look at the alternative data they aren't touching. Given this is a predominantly a…

The reason hedgefunds look at satellite images and oil tankers is because everyone looks at sequential ids and price changes so that doesn't give an edge.

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

#244

Post by ufmace »

sundvor wrote: post #214
brailsafe wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would replace the word "convinces" with "deceives". If you deceive a person into, for example, giving them access and permission to use your personal contact list however they please, then proceed to do just that, you don't have anything to complain about.

Agree. The number of times I've received LinkedIn emails from people I no longer speak to who I'm confident would have no actual inclination to connect with me is certainly in the double digits. They've all been conned into giving LinkedIn their email password, and LinkedIn is going crazy as result. This probably happened a lot more a few years ago. Is perhaps 2FA making this harder these days?

Are they still doing that? I haven't seen a request from LinkedIn for email access credentials in a while. Still a pretty sketchy thing to do IMO.

I wonder if Google, Yahoo, MS etc have done anything like watch for requests from LinkedIn with correct credentials, block them, and reset the user's password and give them a warning that they just gave their account password to a third party and this is a Very Bad Idea.

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

#245

Post by euske »

Back in the days I wrote my own crawler and layout analyzer to collect news articles for my research (cf. http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/webstemmer/ ). I thought in 2005 it was mostly acceptable as long as you don't hog their bandwidth, but today I feel it would be looked differently. It is kinda sad to see that the more and more part of the web is treated not public. It seems that everyone likes to build their wall.

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

#246

Post by mgalka »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #141

Unpopular opinion: when you make a HTTP request you're asking the server to give you information. The server has the right to say no. IMHO, LinkedIn doesn't have a right to stop scraping after the fact, but they have the right to take technical steps to stop scrapers from accessing their site.

Have no doubt this will be unpopular, but I think LinkedIn is right.

Most news sites publish to the world. But scraping a news site's content and monetizing it yourself is not ok. Legally, it violates intellectual property law. But laws aside, I assume most people would agree, if someone spent the time researching and writing an article, they should have the right to monetize it and nobody else.

In this case, IP law may not apply, but the concept is the same. I don't love LinkedIn myself. But they spent the time building a platform for collecting that info. I don't see why it should be OK for other people to scrape and monetize it.

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

#247

Post by mgalka »

sundvor wrote: post #214
brailsafe wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would replace the word "convinces" with "deceives". If you deceive a person into, for example, giving them access and permission to use your personal contact list however they please, then proceed to do just that, you don't have anything to complain about.

Agree. The number of times I've received LinkedIn emails from people I no longer speak to who I'm confident would have no actual inclination to connect with me is certainly in the double digits. They've all been conned into giving LinkedIn their email password, and LinkedIn is going crazy as result. This probably happened a lot more a few years ago. Is perhaps 2FA making this harder these days?

There was a class action suit about this a few years ago. Completely inappropriate. Though I don't think it should have any bearing on whether or not it's OK to scrape their site.

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

#248

Post by darioush »

ufmace wrote: post #244
sundvor wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The number of times I've received LinkedIn emails from people I no longer speak to who I'm confident would have no actual inclination to connect with me is certainly in the double digits. They've all been conned into giving LinkedIn their email password, and LinkedIn is going crazy as result. This probably happened a lot more a few years ago. Is perhaps 2FA making this harder these days?

Are they still doing that? I haven't seen a request from LinkedIn for email access credentials in a while. Still a pretty sketchy thing to do IMO. I wonder if Google, Yahoo, MS etc have done anything like watch for requests from LinkedIn with correct credentials, block them, and reset the user's password and give them a warning that they just gave their account password to a third party and this is a Very Bad Idea.

A whole bunch of other sites ask for your Google, etc credentials instead of using the SSO API. I've even seen some tax software ask for your Bank login. It's really a bad practice but LinkedIn isn't the worst offender.

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

#249

Post by KekDemaga »

derefr wrote: post #226
betenoire wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one has made that argument, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to rebut it. The title is "It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission". So that argument is implied in the headline, at least. As for Orin Kerr, I'm sure he'd agree that there are private parts of the internet (my payment information being an obvious example). Just because something is deployed to the internet doesn't mean it is "publis…

"Published to the world" is a bit off; I'd compare it more to recording telephone conversations with corporations' public service numbers. They always tell you that you are being recorded (for "training and quality purposes") so they give up their right to not be recorded in turn. If a company paid a million people to call into an information service hotline and each request one fact from it—and then the company reco…

>If a company paid a million people to call into an information service hotline and each request one fact from it—and then the company recorded and compiled the answers into their own database to start their own information service—is that illegal?

I sure hope not. From there it doesn't seem to far off to claim that "He was really only ever showing up for work to learn some skills and how he's using those skills to run his own business!" sort of lawsuits. If you compile difficult to find but freely available information into a more easy to digest format I see that as virtually always a net positive.

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