Microsoft/LinkedIn has so much more juicy and actually private data that nobody can scrape, I don't understand why they would even make a scene and tarnish their image over scraping. They know who declines connection requests from whom, when a CEO starts looking for a new job, and so on.
U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
161–170 of 301 posts
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#162Interesting. Does anyone know how this compares to the legal cases around startups that would scrape Craigslist public data?
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. These two statements do not agree with each other. An owner of a brick-and-mortar shop can't (legally) stand out the front and bar black people from entering, for example.
No but they can define terms of entry that apply equally to everyone.
E.g. you may enter and look around. You may not take notes, pictures, or otherwise record what is here.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#164I 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…
Whenever there is a free market, market participants do what they can to restrict the market. This is the nature of the free market.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to their view, you do agree to the contract by using their services, which includes visiting their web pages. If you don't agree, then don't use the services and don't visit their site. Or do, and argue it in court, but it's pointless to tell me you don't agree, the contract exists. They're not restricting access to the information. HiQ is scraping their site using bots, and LinkedIn doesn't like it. This i…
Well then, since what you are saying is that a contract only one part agreed to is a valid contract, By reading (or not) this comment, you (“the reader") concede all the points of this discussion. The reader also agrees that the arguments presented by HackerNews user “redial” ("me", "we", "us") are correct even in case of conflict with his or her own previously stated positions, and that he/she will amend all of his/…
+1 for the lols. You seem to be arguing against me for the existence of EULAs. Maybe you're not aware that these have been around and their validity has been debated for decades? Lots of people are super bugged by them, just like you are. I think's it's fairly lame too. I didn't write the EULA, and I don't care if it's a valid contract. But no matter what you say to me, no matter how much sarcasm you use, the fact is that LinkedIn's EULA says that by visiting their site, you are agreeing to their contract.
The real point I was making is that LinkedIn is establishing that they are not offering a public service. It doesn't matter whether you can be bound by their contract, the EULA is more about covering their own asses when they do things like refuse service to HiQ. The wrote the rules so that it's clear what things you can do to get banned. Regardless, they have the right to ban IPs or specific bots or whoever they want, because even though they let anyone access the site, that doesn't mean they have to let everyone access the site always. Like it or not, them's the facts.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#166So does this ruling essentially outlaw robots.txt? If I only give access to certain users, that's... illegal now? We're calling that a monopoly? How is this reasonable to anyone else?
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GP did not call it a "Public service", but a service that was public, and the further context around the comment made it abundantly clear they were talking about access, not government provision. The very first thing you did in quoting the GP was rearrange those words to suit your hobby-horse; a classic straw-man.
I don't understand what you mean. The GP said "you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be 'public' because it serves your business interest." Yes, they can. That sentence is explicitly describing the public expectations of a public service in the government sense. LinkedIn can police whatever they want because of their business interest, precisely because they are a private entity and not a pub…
> Yes, they can
The judge just said .. no they can't. Until the judge's ruling is overturned. Your statement is incorrect.
And you keep using the phrase "public service" which is not the issue at hand.
A store owner can not dictate who is allowed to read or take pictures of their store window. Effectively the judge was saying that if LinkedIn offers information that does not require a login - LinkedIn can not then tell someone that they can't use the info that is publicly visible.
No mention of "public service" - please stop conflating the two concepts.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#168Being 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 "…
We can hope that this case will set a legal precedent, but it may, like the Craigslist case, end in a settlement (or some other disposition) before that point is reached.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#169From reading the ruling, the injunction was based on a finding that HiQ raised serious questions about whether LinkedIn blocking HiQ's scrapers constituted a violation of California's unfair competition law by violating the spirit of federal antitrust law. HiQ argued that LinkedIn has a monopoly on "the professional networking market" and is unfairly exploiting that monopoly to gain an advantage in the data analytics…
Great. So in a business that makes money primarily by collecting and selling user data, they're now required to give it away for free.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#170I 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…
But isn't the data stored on LinkedIn's servers technically owned by LinkedIn? I support this decision in the interest of innovation but hiQ is using data that is physically on LinkedIn's systems and which has been legally acquired by LinkedIn from its users. The term "public data" is a very broad definition and needs to be well defined.