How does the tinder debacle fit into this?
U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
141–150 of 301 posts
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#142Earlier 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…
It seems like a really dangerous precedent to interpret "unauthorized access" in CFAA to mean accessing a computer that is made available publicly without any form of access control when the owner doesn't want you to access it instead of meaning that you subverted some form of access control to access the computer.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#143Linked IN could nuke this problem with a decent EULA.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#144Can someone explain to me why didn't the robots.txt apply to HiQ's crawler? Is crawling still legal while the robots.txt disallows your crawler?
Yeah, it is. Robots.txt is just a way of politely asking people not to crawl your site. It doesn't have anything to do with the law.
Thank you. I'm not sure if this analogy is correct but isn't that like a host of a museum telling people do not take pictures yet someone did it anyway and sold the pictures he took?
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 bindin…
Is there any precedent for an EULA like that being enforced? Typically for a contract to be valid, acceptance has to be actively communicated. You can't be bound by a contract simply by someone saying that you have accepted it if you do something that you might have done normally.
> Is there any precedent for an EULA like that being enforced?
I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but Wikipedia says "sometimes".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#E...
> Typically for a contract to be valid, acceptance has to be actively communicated. You can't be bound by a contract simply by someone saying that you have accepted
Again, not a lawyer, but I imagine that use of a service could legally constitute your active end of the communication. You're right, you can't be bound just because someone says, but when you use a service you've gone one step past.
Honestly, I think the EULA is more of a CYA for them than a contract, in practice. But it does establish the potential legality for two things: 1- that this is a licensed service, and 2- that they can refuse service to anyone they want for reasons of business interest.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#146From 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 market. HiQ showed that LinkedIn might be developing an analytics product that competes directly with their Skill Mapper product.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2017_0814_h...
After skimming the document for a bit, hiQ's argument looks really flaky. Especially grasping at straws like "Free Speech". They argue that LinkedIn is like a public mall and denying them access to the mall is denying them "Free Speech"? I don't see how this can be the case if they had no intent to "speak" at all in this place. Their data collection via scraping seems more like people-watching in the mall, if you go…
Indeed, and the court rejected that part of HiQ's argument.
"In light of the potentially sweeping implications discussed above and the lack of any more direct authority, the Court cannot conclude that hiQ has at this juncture raised 'serious questions' that LinkedIn's conduct violates its constitutional rights under the California Constitution."
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 bindin…
I do not agree with the EULA. I definitely do not agree with the EULA just by reading it. I most definitely do not agree with the EULA just by virtue of it existing and being linked to on some corner of their site. I do not agree to any terms just by visiting a webpage. I am not bound by anything other than the actual law and the contracts I have willingly entered into in writing or the digital equivalent. If the inf…
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 isn't a debate about anything being publicly available or not, this is a business fight between two private companies.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#149Earlier 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 stand outside and bar pretty much everyone else from entering. Race or national origin discrimination is a very narrow exception to that.
Re: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 bindin…
you dont need.to sign.on to view public profiles so you dOnt enter any agreement with linkedin as a visitor.
You can choose to see it that way if you want. LinkedIn's EULA says otherwise. I have no opinion on whether LinkedIn's EULA is enforceable or legal, I'm only sharing the facts, and the facts are that according to LinkedIn's EULA, visitors do fall under the agreement.