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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

#91

Post by avip »

iamleppert wrote: post #51

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 t…

Not sure how this view should be interpreted:

  - Websites should not have ToS
  - Websites may have ToS, users should be able to violate it without consequences if they don't like it ( = roughly current state of affairs)
  - Websites may only have ToS derived from some criminal act
  - something else?

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

#92

Post by qarioz »

ipnon wrote: post #77
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".

This case is much more significant than that. The ruling will determine whether or not breaching the terms and agreements of a website constitutes a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). LinkedIn is arguing that since scraping is not defined by the company itself to be a permitted use, a federal felony is being committed by anyone using a script to access its website. The language used in the CFAA is "…

So some company can sue me if I use `wget somecompany.com` if LinkedIn win?

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

#93

Post by dahart »

iamleppert wrote: post #51

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 t…

> If you're offering a service that is public

LinkedIn is not a public service, LinkedIn is a private, for-profit business. A public service is normally publicly funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service

> 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 licenses their service to both free and paid users, and they can legally and do attempt to police what users can access the information. Whether it's enforceable or not, LinkedIn has a EULA and use of their service, whether you have an account or not, is presumably governed by their license.

They are well within their right to restrict requests being made by spammers and DDOS attacks, for example. How do you tell between legitimate requests and abusive ones, and how could you compel public access without enabling abusive ones?

> LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can.

The internet isn't a public service yet either, at least in the US. I think it should be, but it currently is not. This is conflating the knowledge that everyone with a computer and net access can currently access a LinkedIn server with the idea that everyone must be able to.

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

#94

Post by brians »

Well, good, right?

This is the same outcome most of us wanted between Swartz and JSTOR, and perhaps with Malamud and PACER. No technical control can be in the right place, but we can hope for a common understanding (maybe eventually law?) that terms of service may demand or prohibit some things but not anything.

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

#95

Post by smilekzs »

dahart wrote: post #93
iamleppert wrote: post #51

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 t…

> If you're offering a service that is public LinkedIn is not a public service, LinkedIn is a private, for-profit business. A public service is normally publicly funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service > 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. Linked…

> > If you're offering a service that is public

> LinkedIn is not a public service

A service that is public(ly accessible through Internet) != Public Service.

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

#96

Post by redial »

EGreg wrote: post #89
redial wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. That is exactly what public means. Do not make it public if you don't want 'the public' to use it.

Let me replace the word "re-use" with "re-publish". Does your analysis change at all?

No.

Public means everybody can do whatever they want with it, no exceptions (except, as with all things, by law). If you want to restrict the information, then do it, but don't make it public and then when a competitor uses it claim it wasn't public 'for them'.

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

#97

Post by tomc1985 »

biocomputation wrote: post #84
tomc1985 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information wants to be free. People should stop fighting it! If one makes information "public" but don't really want to share it, then the public is fully justified in taking it.

That's why you routinely publish your bank account, social insurance, and credit card details online, right?

Not like I have a choice... and how are those things explicitly declared 'public'?

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

#98

Post by chongli »

EGreg wrote: post #89
redial wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. That is exactly what public means. Do not make it public if you don't want 'the public' to use it.

Let me replace the word "re-use" with "re-publish". Does your analysis change at all?

That only makes sense in the context of copyright. Users' personal information cannot be copyrighted by LinkedIn.

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

#99

Post by dahart »

smilekzs wrote: post #95
dahart wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're offering a service that is public LinkedIn is not a public service, LinkedIn is a private, for-profit business. A public service is normally publicly funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service > 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. Linked…

> > If you're offering a service that is public > LinkedIn is not a public service A service that is public(ly accessible through Internet) != Public Service.

That is correct. It's unfortunate, but such is the difficulty of language. "Public service" is a term that has precedence and legal meaning in the US, feel free to check out the article that I linked.

It's totally fine to call a service that is publicly accessible a public service, but it is going to lead to miscommunication if you are suggesting that this public service should have the same kind of legal requirements and regulations that the other kind of "Public Service" already has.

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

#100

Post by makecheck »

When these decisions are made, I hope they come with technical guarantees on ease of accessibility to data.

For instance, "buried in 6 layers of obfuscated XML" and "accessible in O(N^3) time" would both be implementations that are not "blocking" the data but they would still be extremely difficult to use.

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