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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

#191

Post by studentrob »

rayiner wrote: post #154
solomatov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're limitations to this. For example, you can take a look of other people's property from publicly accessible place.

Sure, you can do things that don't constitute trespass. But unlike what's inside a store front, you can't observe the contents of a web server without interacting with it (trespassing).

> unlike what's inside a store front, you can't observe the contents of a web server without interacting with it (trespassing).

Then what do you consider the storefront, or public facing data of a website? Just the whois info on the domain?

The general public can't observe the locked contents of a server without hacking it. Hacking is trespassing.

I would modify your analogy to say the store front is public facing, just like some of the LI data is public facing. There is other LI data that is not public facing.

In my opinion, websites have a larger storefront, as well as multiple levels of access to internal data.

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

#192

Post by dvdhnt »

swiley wrote: post #33
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…

Maybe the whole idea of copyright is flawed and harmful?

I'd love to see more debate about just this.

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

#193

Post by solomatov »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #152
solomatov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're limitations to this. For example, you can take a look of other people's property from publicly accessible place.

Yes, but they are free to build walls, gates, and windows.

Building a wall is akin to limiting the site only to registered users. They don't do this because they want google to index them, but it indexes only publicly available sites.

I.e. that's ok to build a wall, but it's not ok not to build the wall but sue some people among the ones who take a look at the house.

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

#194

Post by rsj_hn »

rickpmg wrote: post #66
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 have no love for linkedin, but not sure of your position. They collected the data, host it, etc, and incur costs for doing so. Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. People argue that the data is public. I say that's not the issue. While the data itself might be available elsewhere, it is raiding the _collection_ of it that is being argued, not tha…

The implication is that the company that serves public data could impose conditions on the use of that data, for example they could:

  1. ban the use of ad blockers when accessing the data
  2. ban users making an offline copy to view later
  3. ban users from disabling auto play or other features
  4. otherwise control what you do with data once you get it, which is *huge*. 
     E.g. what if they want a 1% share of any revenue you get by using the data, etc.
I think this really restricts freedom and has some scary implications for the future of the web.

Of course now, they have a technological option to try to force each of the above, but users also have a technological option to try to outsmart them. But I wouldn't want to give them a legal right to force the above.

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

#195

Post by tyingq »

cvsh wrote: post #183
tyingq wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Sentiment analysis of copyrighted text passages might be claimed as being a derivitive work for example. So if a company releases a product that predicts likelihood of an employee quitting, you think you're going to have standing to sue because an analysis of a copyrighted passage you wrote comprised 0.000001% of the source material the algorithm was trained on?

You left out my last sentence, on purpose I suppose.

The context was that scraping doesn't always get a free pass because "facts". This specific case may skirt it because of the user generated content. Doesn't mean it's not worth mentioning for the larger context that copyright isn't black and white.

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

#196

Post by studentrob »

ubernostrum wrote: post #136
redial wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. If you think you can do that, by all means try. But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot.

> The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to.

When did we ever teach people that you can control where your data ends up on the internet?

Aren't we trending towards teaching people to not even share data on "closed" services like Facebook and Gmail precisely because they are a single source for a lot of data to be misused by the company, or hacked by a malicious actor?

Regarding data that is accessible without "friending" someone or logging in as the user themselves (e.g. Gmail), I hope people already realize that this data can easily be re-used.

> But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot.

If the majority of people think that they can share nude photos of themselves on their own blog or twitter and that this won't be re-used elsewhere, well... I must be living in a different reality, or I misunderstand your point.

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

#197

Post by iamleppert »

rickpmg wrote: post #66
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 have no love for linkedin, but not sure of your position. They collected the data, host it, etc, and incur costs for doing so. Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. People argue that the data is public. I say that's not the issue. While the data itself might be available elsewhere, it is raiding the _collection_ of it that is being argued, not tha…

As a user, it's in my benefit if a competitor comes along, takes LinkedIn's data that they are freely publishing on the public Internet, and does something useful with it.

The correct analogy would be if someone took a copy of my personal resume that I put online, freely accessible on the Internet and did something useful with it.

Heck, Google does this already by indexing and providing a directory of public content. The fact that LinkedIn 'allows' them to do this is by virtue that it makes business-sense to do so and drives traffic to their site.

The rule should be plain and simple here: if you put user content online and do not make any efforts to restrict it (i.e. no passwords, no logins), call it "public information", you do not have any rights to say who can and cannot access that content, at the minimum. Unless I'm mistaken, you also cannot claim copyright infringement, as the user technically owns that content as well -- you just have a license to publish it (either to a private or public audience).

It should be up to the user --- and in fact their right --- to police their own content online. Personally, I find it offensive that LinkedIn seeks to restrict the distribution of such content that I have published through their service, where the expectation it is public. They are not acting in my interest here, they are very clearly acting in their own selfish interest, which I find odd considering LinkedIn's supposed mission has always been to empower their users to achieve professional success. How exactly are they empowering me by restricting who I have told them can access my public content? And the fact such restrictions are solely decided by LinkedIn with no input of their users -- the ultimate owners here -- is a disgrace and violation of their own mission statement.

This kind of concept is exactly what the Internet was founded on, folks. To say or think otherwise strikes at the heart of the open web and representing yourself as such is an affront against the great platform that has given rise to so many companies and provided so much opportunity in the world for the individual.

This concept is bigger and more powerful than any one company, and deserves to be defended.

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

#199

Post by mrkgnao »

rayiner wrote: post #154
solomatov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're limitations to this. For example, you can take a look of other people's property from publicly accessible place.

Sure, you can do things that don't constitute trespass. But unlike what's inside a store front, you can't observe the contents of a web server without interacting with it (trespassing).

Making HTTP requests is the same thing as having rays of light reflect off the storefront, I'd say.

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

#200

Post by wyldfire »

This medium post [1] "The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images" gives an interesting and unintuitive context about [personal] privacy, which is relevant in this debate about how to balance personal privacy w/society's value in openness [and honesty].

[1] https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-o...

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