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LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

reuters.com

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Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#161

Post by gist »

scarface74 wrote: post #18
gist wrote: post #13

I think also what most people don't realize is that linkedin's current model makes it difficult to access someone's profile without them knowing (if they pay for it and have the option on their account) to see who is looking at their profile. As such the user wanting to look at a person's profile has no privacy that they have done so. There could be many reasons someone looks at someone else's profile (even just some…

There is a setting that lets you see other people’s profile without them being notified. You can do it with free accounts. But you also can’t see who viewed your profile. If you pay, you can keep your viewing private while seeing other people’s profile.

But if they pay can't they override that or are you saying that even a paid account on linkedin can't see if you looked at their profile if you (on a free account) have said 'don't allow anyone to see'?

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#162

Post by jakeogh »

perl4ever wrote: post #158
jakeogh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we agree that's a bad thing. To your first sentence, no, they propose laws. They dont get to revise their ToS and have it be a violation of the law when you ignore it. That would be like the EPA making a rule, because they were granted that power by congress.

My impression is that effectively, they do. Officially, the laws have to be approved, just like you have to click "ok" when you see a user agreement, but it doesn't mean you have any effective control. Control on paper doesn't mean control in reality, just like accounting is different from economics. It's possible the current system is "the worst, except for all the others". I don't think you can do without expertise…

If it was really that easy then we would have SOPA, ACTA, CISPA, PIPA, TPP and about 20 other bad ideas put on paper.

All of those failed, if they had not, MegaCorp would have significantly more power. Heck TPP had ways for a foreign corporation to sue a local government if they didnt like them banning fracking (for example).

Same thing with NN, if it was named honestly it would be called "The More Government Regulation of The Internet Act of 2019". Next up will be some sad attempt at a US GDPR, but fortunatly our beautiful 1st Amendment throws a wrench in that, it's effictively the gov telling people (corps are made of people:) what they can and can not remember.

But in general, I agree with your sentiment, and if it's more than half a page long (written in crayon) it shouldnt even be considered.

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#163

Post by jakeogh »

nitrogen wrote: post #64
jakeogh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By letting ToS have the force of law...

What is a contract if not something backed by the force of law? There's a big difference between "I want a public profile so colleagues and employers can contact me about opportunities" vs "I want a public profile so some third party I have no knowledge of can enable others to discriminate against me".

hiQ didnt sign a contract. It's public info. They broke the ToS, but unless the ToS get inserted into a contract, and signed by both parties we arent even in Civil Law terratory, which is what this excellent court decision confirmed.

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#164

Post by sneak »

polygot wrote: post #19
echelon wrote: post #2

This is fantastic. I would like to see wider legislation allowing scraping of IMDB, Genius, Reddit, Facebook, and Google made legal. These services receive free input from users. The data should remain free. Edit (sort of off topic): There's still value in the building and providing services at scale, but this lowers the barrier to cross the moat for small players. The first step is data liberation. Then we can work…

If you add .json to the end of a Reddit URL, it will return JSON data. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntu.json . It also works with comment threads and posts.

I have adopted this in other projects and added the functionality there as well; it is a brilliant idea.

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#165

Post by scarface74 »

gist wrote: post #161
scarface74 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a setting that lets you see other people’s profile without them being notified. You can do it with free accounts. But you also can’t see who viewed your profile. If you pay, you can keep your viewing private while seeing other people’s profile.

But if they pay can't they override that or are you saying that even a paid account on linkedin can't see if you looked at their profile if you (on a free account) have said 'don't allow anyone to see'?

That’s what LinkedIn says. So I hope that’s the case.

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#166

Post by JustSomeNobody »

nitrogen wrote: post #55
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they have to make it available to startups in an easily accessible manner?

IMDB was originally crowdsourced, wasn't it?

So, have the data available. But I see no reason why they should have to go out of their way to change their site to make it easy for someone to get it.

Re: LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

#168

Post by CosmicShadow »

phs318u wrote: post #135
CosmicShadow wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What HiQ did was scrape public data, so if you have your LI profile set to public, then anyone can access it and do what they will with it, just like if you posted a print out of it on a bulletin board in a mall. It's in the open and is free game for whtever. You can make your entire profile or just aspects of it private, meaning people need to login to LI to see your stuff, which then protects you under the TOS. I t…

I understand what HiQ have done. I'm saying I believe there's a material difference between public data for consumption by individual human beings, and systematic commercial harvesting. I appreciate that in the US, there may be no legal distinction between types of consumption of public data. Public data is public. However, I'm arguing that any commercial use or of my data beyond fair-use, should require my permissio…

I can't say I know much about licensing and/or GDPR stuff, all I know is that if it's public, I don't have to agree to anything and I can do whatever I want, which is great for me and my business. From the other side, yes it sucks that people can take my stuff and profit from me and there is nothing I can do about it and no way to enforce it and I probably don't even know it's happening. (sounds like ad tracking!)

The way things work in North America at least to my understanding is that it doesn't matter what license you use, I don't have to agree to it to scrape it and use it if there is no click wrapper. I guess if you caught me explicitly using it in a certain way, I could get in trouble, but that is not easy. What you propose sounds reasonable, but I don't know how it would be enforced or if it would still stop people. I'm owed 30k in consulting wages and I can't even make it worth my while to pursue that from a legal standpoint, let alone try and sue some unknown and/or potentially massive company or scattered random ghosts across the interwebs.

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