9th Circuit holds that scraping a public website does not violate the CFAA [pdf]

Post by akersten » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #7

Kalium wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the salient issue is whether or not there were effective access controls, not whether or not a page could be reasonably interpreted as intended to be non-public.

The real issue here is somewhere between both you and GP. What is required to trigger the CFAA? Does accessing a page the site owner doesn't want you to violate the CFAA or do you need to hack through access controls?

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #11

foota wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about the tone, it seems to suggest to me that the judge believes there is a strong case here for hiQ.

I agree, but there's a difference between "hiQ has a strong case" and "Here is the final ruling on the hiQ case". I was trying to point out that the case is not over or ruled on at all. Just the preliminary injunction.

Post by Miner49er » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #6

hiQ asked the court for a preliminary injunction to stop Linkedin from denying them access, won it, and this is the result of Linkedin's appeal of that injunction. This is not the end of the case. The title is wrong. The 9th Circuit just ruled that hiQ has a decent enough argument to move forward. The question of whether them scraping a public site can violate the CFAA is not settled. > We therefore conclude that hiQ…

Post by blackflame7000 » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #3

mullingitover wrote: post #2

> LinkedIn has taken steps to protect the data on its website from what it perceives as misuse or misappropriation. The instructions in LinkedIn’s “robots.txt” file—a text file used by website owners to communicate with search engine crawlers and other web robots—prohibit access to LinkedIn servers via automated bots, except that certain entities, like the Google search engine, have express permission from LinkedIn f…

Not saying the court made the right call but for that case the big issue for the court was the pages were clearly not intended for the public and the defendant knew it.

Post by btown » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

akersten wrote: post #13

payne92 wrote: post #9

Flagged for misleading title.

Would you mind suggesting a more accurate title?