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U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#51

Post by iamleppert »

I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest.

LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can. This, coming from someone who used to work at LinkedIn.

These companies have built their fortunes on the public Internet and now that they are successful they seek to not pay homage to the platform that give them their success. It's very clearly anti-competitive, and bad for users. LinkedIn should be forced to compete based upon the veracity and differentiation of their service, not because they have their users' public data held hostage from competitors.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#52

Post by moojah »

djsumdog wrote: post #27
danschumann wrote: post #10

Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers. I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

It gets into the incredibly murky water of how the web works. You're just issuing a request and getting things back. Sometimes in a web browser, sometimes not. But the content itself may still be copyright. You can't just take it, even though for now, the publisher/server is allowing you to view it for free. But what if you only chose to view some of the content (e.g. block ads). What if you apply your own styles to…

The interesting part here is that linkedin doesn't hold any copyright on much of the data. You cannot copyright someones name and title.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#53

Post by PaulHoule »

On one hand, LinkedIn is like Twitter, Craigslist and Delicious in that it has sat on a treasure trove of data without helping users mobilize it. (All of the premium services they offer are outright lame; if there was a market for premium services we might seem some good ones.)

On the other hand, privacy is an issue too. LinkedIn lets you download a spreadsheet with the email addresses of all your connections, and if you have a lot of connections you will regularly get e-mail messages from life coaches, "managing directors", software development outsourcers, "SEO experts", and all kind of BS artists.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#54

Post by tyingq »

revelation wrote: post #34
djsumdog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets into the incredibly murky water of how the web works. You're just issuing a request and getting things back. Sometimes in a web browser, sometimes not. But the content itself may still be copyright. You can't just take it, even though for now, the publisher/server is allowing you to view it for free. But what if you only chose to view some of the content (e.g. block ads). What if you apply your own styles to…

There is no grey area. You can not copyright facts. If you download ("scrape") a webpage and then extract the facts, whatever you downloaded only exists in volatile memory. So there is no claim there. The only claim you can make is on the download itself, hence what LinkedIn chose.

It's possible that HiQ is downloading and processing things that aren't facts. Long passages of text in LinkedIn posts, recommendations, and comments aren't "facts".

Though that doesn't appear to be the path LinkedIn is using to fight it.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#55

Post by CaptSpify »

smegel wrote: post #28
danschumann wrote: post #10

Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers. I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

If a website puts something on the public internet, it should not even be aware if it is being accessed by a scraper or a human. Maybe we should just ban User Agent strings and be done with it.

I've kind of always thought that we shouldn't be using UA strings. Just give the requester the data that they requested according to the current open standards. If they choose not to render it correctly, then thats their problem.

Yes, I realize that it's not that simple, but I think browsers would have tried much harder to adhere to standards if we had done it that way.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#56

Post by cookiecaper »

bigtones wrote: post #6

This is just a preliminary injunction and the court has not even heard or ruled on this case. They just allowed HiQ to access the data while they wait for the scheduled court hearing to begin. The court may eventually rule very differently once they have heard all the evidence presented and weighed up existing applicable case law. The judge who issued this injunction - Edward Chen, is also the judge presiding over th…

I agree that we need to be careful not to read too much into this, but in most scraping cases I know about, preliminary injunctions are granted as a matter of routine.

The fact that this judge refrained from doing so may signal that the judiciary is finally willing to bring some nuance and rationality to their interpretation of extremely broad statutes like the CFAA. It's a positive signal, even if ultimate victory remains unlikely.

/me is not a lawyer

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#57

Post by revelation »

tyingq wrote: post #54
revelation wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no grey area. You can not copyright facts. If you download ("scrape") a webpage and then extract the facts, whatever you downloaded only exists in volatile memory. So there is no claim there. The only claim you can make is on the download itself, hence what LinkedIn chose.

It's possible that HiQ is downloading and processing things that aren't facts. Long passages of text in LinkedIn posts, recommendations, and comments aren't "facts". Though that doesn't appear to be the path LinkedIn is using to fight it.

Copyright isn't thoughtcrime, if they aren't redistributing it to anyone with standing to sue (very likely not LinkedIn, no matter their ToS) they can process things all day.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#58

Post by sliverstorm »

djsumdog wrote: post #27
danschumann wrote: post #10

Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers. I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

It gets into the incredibly murky water of how the web works. You're just issuing a request and getting things back. Sometimes in a web browser, sometimes not. But the content itself may still be copyright. You can't just take it, even though for now, the publisher/server is allowing you to view it for free. But what if you only chose to view some of the content (e.g. block ads). What if you apply your own styles to…

I think most of those "grey areas" already have plenty of precedent in the world of art & music. Have you heard of "fair use", and what it allows and does not?

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#59

Post by tyingq »

revelation wrote: post #57
tyingq wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that HiQ is downloading and processing things that aren't facts. Long passages of text in LinkedIn posts, recommendations, and comments aren't "facts". Though that doesn't appear to be the path LinkedIn is using to fight it.

Copyright isn't thoughtcrime, if they aren't redistributing it to anyone with standing to sue (very likely not LinkedIn, no matter their ToS) they can process things all day.

I did not say or imply "thoughtcrime". Just noting it can be more complex. Sentiment analysis of copyrighted text passages might be claimed as being a derivitive work for example. Fair use does have limits.

The standing to sue is an issue for user generated content, yes.

Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

#60

Post by dahart »

danschumann wrote: post #10

Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers. I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

> Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers.

What rights should scrapers have that they don't right now? Keep in mind that a lot of the scraping going on is just some other private company abusing access and hoping to gather and use the information for their own private profit. How many companies are scraping StackOverflow for example and doing nothing but attempting to copy it and draw traffic to their own site? I can't stand copycat sites, they fill my search results with junk. I would assume the majority of scraping that is currently happening is not doing the public any good.

> I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

This sounds like you're suggesting that LinkedIn or Facebook calling your profile a 'public profile' means that the law should treat it as a public service due to use of the word 'public', is that what you mean? The word public may be overloaded here. I can see why tax funded projects should be publicly accessible, but I have a hard time seeing why private companies should be compelled to provide access to anything at their own expense.

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