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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

#111

Post by thinbeige »

Does the startup want to scrape the public profiles which you see when logged out of LinkedIn? If yes, this profile data is of little value because it's probably 5% of the real profile data (mainly just the summary) and often there are no public available at all, many times these profiles are turned off for public virw.

Or do they mean the 'public' profile which you see when logged in? If yes, this would be a real case because this is awesome data I would like to scrape and which you could build interesting business cases with.

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

#112

Post by smokeyj »

dahart wrote: post #110
smokeyj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LinkedIn is not a public service Boo. OP said it's a service offered to the public. Don't need to move the goal post. > 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. Turns out I also have a EULA. And when linkedin responds to my HTTP requests, they opt into my EULA agreement. It sounds like LinkedIn doesn't…

> Boo. OP said it's a service offered to the public. Don't need to move the goal post. Nothing moved. OP also said, in the same sentence, "you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be 'public' because it serves your business interest." Yes, they can. It is clear from context that OP was suggesting that LinkedIn should be held to the legal standards of a "Public Service" in the government entity s…

Just like you can't fart in public and charge bystanders for the scent - you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them. I mean, you can. But good luck with that!

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

#113

Post by dahart »

redial wrote: post #108
dahart wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linked in never made it "public". Use of their site is and always has been licensed. https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

The user agreement does not cover the "public" parts of Linked In, like for example, the user agreement . If I want to copy and republish the user agreement I can, despite of what it might say. If the startup were republishing private information from Linked In I would agree with you.

> The user agreement does not cover the "public" parts of Linked In,

I beg to differ. Their EULA covers "accessing or using" their site in any way shape or form, and defines the term "visitor" for what you're calling "public".

...

You agree that by clicking “Join Now”, “Join LinkedIn”, “Sign Up” or similar, registering, accessing or using our services (described below), you are agreeing to enter into a legally binding contract with LinkedIn (even if you are using our Services on behalf of a company). If you do not agree to this contract (“Contract” or “User Agreement”), do not click “Join Now” (or similar) and do not access or otherwise use any of our Services.

...

When you register and join the LinkedIn Service, you become a Member. If you have chosen not to register for our Services, you may access certain features as a visitor.

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

#114

Post by chii »

redial wrote: post #73
anandsuresh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties. In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces…

Then don't make your profile public. You can't expect someone to forget you once had a bad haircut just because you now got a really cool one.

actually, that happens a lot, at least before the advent of the internet. Physical photos are not always available, and people's memories fade. This is why a lot of people still think of information in the old way - as time goes by, it might fade.

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

#115

Post by rayiner »

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…

> 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.

Obviously LinkedIn can't control the information itself. But this case isn't about the information in the abstract. It's about an HTTP request to a piece of private property, and how LinkedIn programs that private property to respond to an HTTP request. It's well-accepted that owners of private property can make it available to the general public, with whatever restrictions they please. There is no good reason to treat web servers differently than store fronts. LinkedIn should be able to control who accesses their web servers and how.

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

#116

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

dahart wrote: post #82
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that should anything ever happen to the sites they scrape, suddenly they become super valuable to the rest of us. Decentralized information is not a bad thing. And arguably, if monetizing those scraped sites pay for them duplicating the data to additional places, I think that's probably fine. Arguably, if they do a better job getting that information in results to people who need it in search, they may be pe…

> Consider that should anything ever happen to the sites they scrape, suddenly they become super valuable to the rest of us. That may well be true, but that value doesn't mean anyone should just be able to take that value from the company that put up the effort and investment to collect the data, and turn around an use it for their own profit. Nor does it mean that a company shouldn't be able to serve the data to who…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by dahart »

smokeyj wrote: post #112
dahart wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boo. OP said it's a service offered to the public. Don't need to move the goal post. Nothing moved. OP also said, in the same sentence, "you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be 'public' because it serves your business interest." Yes, they can. It is clear from context that OP was suggesting that LinkedIn should be held to the legal standards of a "Public Service" in the government entity s…

Just like you can't fart in public and charge bystanders for the scent - you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them. I mean, you can. But good luck with that!

> you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them

That's a straw man, that is not the issue here. LinkedIn is not recalling the data, they asked to stop HiQ from scraping and collating their data and using it for their own business.

This is already in the EULA, so what HiQ is doing may already be breaking the law.

8.2 Don'ts You agree that you will not:

k. Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots, or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons, or any other technology or manual work) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services;

m. Copy, use, disclose or distribute any information obtained from the Services, whether directly or through third parties (such as search engines), without the consent of LinkedIn;

ae. Use bots or other automated methods to access the Services, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages;

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

anandsuresh wrote: post #65
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…

This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties. In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces…

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by avip »

dahart wrote: post #118
smokeyj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like you can't fart in public and charge bystanders for the scent - you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them. I mean, you can. But good luck with that!

> you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them That's a straw man, that is not the issue here. LinkedIn is not recalling the data, they asked to stop HiQ from scraping and collating their data and using it for their own business. This is already in the EULA, so what HiQ is doing may already be breaking the law. 8.2 Don'ts You agree that you will not: k. Develop, support or use softwa…

(fun fact, not strictly important here) - 8.2.k was added quite recently [1], likely triggered by the HiQ case.

[1] https://blog.linkedin.com/2017/april/10/updates-to-our-terms...

[2] Here https://github.com/tosdr/tosback2/blob/master/crawl/linkedin... is an older version of the ToS, which one can read while enjoying the irony of a crawler focused on scrapping ToS

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