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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

#261

Post by rayiner »

dawidloubser wrote: post #240
mrkgnao wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually, it's not. In your analogy, the storefront is completely passive and unaffected. What is actually happening, is that somebody is walking into the store, asks a question about the stock or the price of the products on sale, which the store employee willingly answers. Then, all of the sudden, the store wishes to control what you do with the answer that was willingly given to you. This is clearly absurd - and s…

No that's not what's happening. What was happening is that the store clerk was noticing that an employee from a competitor was coming in and asking questions about the price, and then refused to answer the questions. The judge ordered LinkedIn to respond to the competitors HTTP requests.

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

#262

Post by icebraining »

solomatov wrote: post #193
pdabbadabba wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LinkedIn is the one being sued, not the one suing.

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

#263

Post by rayiner »

ams6110 wrote: post #163
vacri wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They don't have to apply equally. They just can't discriminate against a protected class. I can put up a "no hispters" sign on my restaurant and enforce it.

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

#264

Post by icebraining »

wolco wrote: post #213
KGIII wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that store can stop you from coming inside and photographing all the displays. I don't think they can stop you from photographing through the window. It's an interesting case.

In this case you go in and request the price and they tell you. They can't stop you from sharing the price its public now.

No, they didn't tell HiQ. In fact, HiQ is suing LinkedIn because LinkedIn refuse to tell them.

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

#265

Post by icebraining »

wolco wrote: post #220
dahart wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The judge just said .. no they can't. Until the judge's ruling is overturned. This was an injunction, no ruling has been made. > Effectively the judge was saying that ... This is an injunction in LinkedIn vs HiQ, the judge did not share an opinion about site visitors who aren't logged in, nor make any ruling about whether publicly visible data can be restricted or not. > A store owner can not dictate who is allowed…

If the store owner tells you information you can write it down and share it. They can refuse to answer questions but they cannot take back any public data they made available. They have a right to ignore your question and put rules around who they will respond to and when. When they respond with data that cannot be copywritten (a name, address, title of past position,etc) of course someone can reuse those pieces.

They can refuse to answer questions

Which is what LinkedIn did, and what HiQ is suing them over.

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

#266

Post by icebraining »

DannyBee wrote: post #190
smokeyj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like you can't fart in public and charge bystanders for the scent - you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them. I mean, you can. But good luck with that!

"Just like you can't fart in public and charge bystanders for the scent - you can't broadcast facts into the public and expect people not to recall them. I mean, you can. But good luck with that! " Do you also believe you can take the satellite tv signals beamed at your house and decrypt them? After all, they broadcasted them as widely as they possibly could! If they didn't want you to watch them, they shouldn't have…

Personally, I do think it should be legal to decrypt them.

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

#268

Post by icebraining »

dawidloubser wrote: post #254
4684499 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't quite think so. There are specific laws governing the use of of, say, photographic equipment within a private property. If a web server, on other other hand, willingly serves content to both a browser being operated by a human, as well as screen-scraping software, then it shouldn't try to prescribe how the screen-scraper uses that information. It would be the equivalent to, every time, asking somebody that wo…

If a web server, on other other hand, willingly serves content to both a browser being operated by a human, as well as screen-scraping software, then it shouldn't try to prescribe how the screen-scraper uses that information.

That's not what was happening here. LinkedIn's server was blocking HiQ, and HiQ sued LinkedIn to prevent them from doing that.

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

#270

Post by p49k »

redial wrote: post #73
anandsuresh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties. In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces…

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.

This argument would hold more water if these services didn't constantly rely on dark patterns to trick people into making things public that they otherwise would have preferred to be private.
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