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"HiQ only takes information from public LinkedIn profiles. By definition, any member of the public has the right to access this information. Most importantly, t

"HiQ only takes information from public LinkedIn profiles. By definition, any member of the public has the right to access this information. Most importantly, the appeals court also upheld a lower court ruling that prohibits LinkedIn from interfering with hiQ’s web scraping of its site." Surely I'm not reading this correctly. This would seem to suggest that websites are not legally allowed to prevent bots from crawling their sites. Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? "In this case, hiQ argued that LinkedIn’s technical measures to block web scraping interfere with hiQ’s contracts with its own customers who rely on this data. In legal jargon, this is called” malicious interference with a contract”, which is prohibited by American law." This is almost weirder. If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info, would they be not allowed to do that because some company had signed a contract that implicitly assumed access to that data? If someone writes a web scraper for my site, and I unknowingly change my site in a way that breaks that scraper, can a court force me to revert the change? Seems to imply that every business is somehow beholden to every contract signed by anyone.

giarc 7y ago
Your second point is interesting. I suspect the contract between hiQ and some company is that hiQ provides info on public profiles, and if LinkedIn removes all public profiles by requiring a login the contract would become moot. Just the same if I was to change my profile settings from public to private, hiQ wouldn't be in breach of their contract (nor would I).
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Scrapping should either be legal or not. The fact that you have a contract to sell the content you assumed it's legal to scrape, should not matter. Too bad if you lose money
candiodari 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference This would mostly mean that you cannot start interfering with webscraping you previously allowed merely because you learned that they're making money with the scraped data.
- thfuran 7y ago
  It seems absurd if the 'interference' only directly affects their own property. Like, if my neighbors start monetizing livestreaming my backyard, suddenly I can't put up a fence? Except worse because in actuality, this third-party contract is costing them money through server load and bandwidth.
  - KptMarchewa 7y ago
    User data is not theirs property.
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    Your analogy doesn't hold. Your backyard is private property. The data that LinkedIn publishes is intended for the public. That's why Google can index the pages and give you results from LinkedIn.
    - Supermancho 7y ago
      > Your analogy doesn't hold. It does, in the US. You're likely making an inconsistent comparison. Property ownership has nothing to do with visual access. You cannot legally be barred from casually (involuntarily) perceiving something. It's reasonable to put up physical barriers to reduce what is casually perceived. It's a very good analogy.
      - munk-a 7y ago
        However it doesn't hold - as your neighbor I can't bar you from putting up a fence because it'll intrude on my view of your property... granted people try to do that _all the time_ but I think it's commonly understood that putting up a fence for privacy is allowed. It's also not a great analogy for this case because another party is given continued easy access to view my backyard while the first party is denied - and the analogy breaks down here because, as a neighbor, I have no inherent right to view your private life at least as much as any of your other neighbors.
scotty79 7y ago
> Seems to imply that every business is somehow beholden to every contract signed by anyone. Implied contract is that if you publish something, it's public and you have no right to dictate what software people use to consume it.
- phkahler 7y ago
  You also have no obligation to them.
wtetzner 7y ago
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the data is actually owned by LinkedIn users, and they expressed that they want their data to be publicly available?
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Unlikely. The license to LinkedIn retains ownership, but the user's retention of information ownership doesn't compel LinkedIn to affirmatively do things with that data (i.e. LinkedIn isn't forced to vend the data to a given consumer if the user says so). The license further goes on to clarify that LinkedIn will vend public data to search engines, but the definition of "search engine" is almost certainly assumed (by LinkedIn, at least) to be up to them.
sjg007 7y ago
It's because previously public information became private. They can't do that apparently.
nathanlied 7y ago
> Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? ToS are subservient to the law; you can (probably) terminate a service account from a user that breaks your ToS, but if the user does not have a service account (as is the case for HiQ, it doesn't seem they were using accounts for it), then your ToS does not apply, since you've technically not entered a binding legal contract with them. > This is almost weirder. If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info, would they be not allowed to do that because some company had signed a contract that implicitly assumed access to that data? If someone writes a web scraper for my site, and I unknowingly change my site in a way that breaks that scraper, can a court force me to revert the change? IANAL, but I believe that'd fall on intent, and intent is often difficult to prove at a personal level, but not necessarily at a company level. If your intent for putting up barriers that happen to impact scraping, whatever they may be, was indeed to knowingly prevent scraping from a particular company, then you may be liable under this decision. This is the only part of the decision I'm torn on, since it's a bit messy to really prove such things. I'd be much more comfortable with allowing companies to take whatever measures they feel necessary to prevent scraping, and also allowing scrapers to legally circumvent those measures without threat of prosecution, assuming they didn't actually hack into anything.
- michaelbuckbee 7y ago
  I'm trying to puzzle out how this works in practice. So if LinkedIn has truly public data (no login required to view) then it can be scraped no problem. But if it's only accessible with a login, then it falls under TOS and they can be blocked?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- andrewmutz 7y ago
  > but if the user does not have a service account (as is the case for HiQ, it doesn't seem they were using accounts for it), then your ToS does not apply, since you've technically not entered a binding legal contract with them. Are you sure about this? I am not a lawyer, but I believe that the Terms of Service applies to all users, not just those that explicitly set up a user account. I have interpreted the LinkedIn ruling to mean that scraping public data is no longer criminal activity but it still leaves you open to civil lawsuits for violating the ToS of the website you are scraping.
lopmotr 7y ago
The court document says "... refrain from putting in place any legal or technical measures with the effect of blocking hiQ's access to public profiles." on page 11. I wonder if they mean targeted measures specifically blocking hiQ but allowing others such as Google.
matttb 7y ago
> Surely I'm not reading this correctly. This would seem to suggest that websites are not legally allowed to prevent bots from crawling their sites. Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? This is just a preliminary injunction. This wasn't an actual ruling on the case. This just says that until there is a ruling they can't stop the scraping to make sure the company isn't put under while waiting for an actual ruling.
- remote_phone 7y ago
  You don’t understand what a preliminary injunction is then. It’s a very, very strong indication that they will win. Courts don’t issue preliminary injunctions unless it’s extremely likely the side who won the preliminary injunction will win.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Huh, I thought in USA they also did them to avoid an injunction having the effect of making the judgement irrelevant. So, where the case is not clear cut the injunction could prevent one party acting to 'kill' the other (and so avoid judgement) in the meantime? Could you cite something on this that indicates this (my understanding here) is wrong?
  - wrs 7y ago
    It only requires a “substantial” likelihood that side will win (not an “extreme” one), which basically means there’s a substantive dispute. The more difficult criterion is a substantial likelihood that irreparable harm will occur if the injunction isn’t granted (irreparable harm is supposed to be a pretty extreme thing — it means you can’t fix it with any amount of money).
  - coding123 7y ago
    The issuance of an injunction is in no way related to how the future court battle will result.
  - papln 7y ago
username90 7y ago
Linkedin want their data to be scraped by bots so they have to keep it public, otherwise you wouldn't find peoples profile from Google. They just don't want bots from from their competitors like hiQ to scrape it.
- danenania 7y ago
  To me, this is crucial. If it's public and available for google, it's public and available for everyone. If you want content to be private, then make it private and accept that you won't get search engine traffic. Otherwise, don't be surprised when your publicly accessible content is accessed by gasp the public.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vectorEQ 7y ago
i'm wondering if that robots.txt might then get you sued due to blocking scrapers / bots?
- herval 7y ago
  A robots.txt file doesn’t block scrapers, it’s the equivalent of a no trespassing sign. I don’t think putting up signs will suddenly become illegal?
- setr 7y ago
  Robots.txt doesn't interfere with anything. It's a suggestion.
etxm 7y ago
It will be interesting to see how this will impact the bot detection market like perimeterX, etc.
JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
https://www.eff.org/cases/hiq-v-linkedin https://www.eff.org/cases/hiq-v-linkedin LinkedIn aint the victim here...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  This is the part I disagree with: > hiQ also asked the court to prohibit LinkedIn from blocking its access to public profiles while the court considered the merits of its request. hiQ won a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn in district court, and LinkedIn appealed. Whether LinkedIn is the good guy or bad guy here doesn't matter when the decision creates precedence for the rest of us. Surely a healthier precedent is that we can respond arbitrarily to requests and have no obligation to the requester. So what if I want to randomize the html structure on every request or block requests from Tor because 100% of them are abuse? Can someone take me to court on the grounds that either is effectively "blocking" their scraping syndicate? Why not? I feel like once CFAA is off the table (which I do agree with), the cat and mouse game is a fair middle ground. Keep web scraping a sport!
dalore 7y ago
So if I (like many others) have cloudflare web scraping protection turned on, that is now against American law?
- papln 7y ago
  There's no reason to believe that.
zipzipzip101 7y ago
I have to scrape linkedin sometimes for work and it's hard. Normal Python scrapy setups won't work. Linkedin has all sorts of blockers in place. They'll give you 500 errors, log you out if you view too many pages, etc. Headless chrome + only hitting 50 pages max per session is the key.
joering2 7y ago
Here is my attempt to draw an analogy. There is a large banner next to the highway that shows some weather information that if properly organized (lets say monthly almanac) you would find people to pay money for it. The banner owner does not make money this way - he ask you to go to his website and signup for an account. But you drive the highway (internet) every day, look at the banner, write down the weather updates, and then offer them on your website as a sale. The owner gets angry and sue you. The court decides you are free to drive by the highway and you free to put your eyeballs on their weather banner, especially given the banner is available to everyone (LinkedIn profiles are avail to view without needing an account) and you are free to use the information you obtained for free without interference with said banner in a form of a monthly almanac that you sell. At the end of the day, the banner owner does not own the weather information that someone else put in there (for example a weather meteorologist). I think personally its a healthy decision. Otherwise it would be similar to prejudice of who should be allowed to enter and browse a street store that by law is available to everyone.
papln 7y ago
> hiQ argued That does not mean that hte court agreed. The judges said that CFAA doesn't apply. In other words, the judges said that LinkedIn couldn't use the US legal system to force HiQ to stop. Judges didn't say that LinkedIn was barred from using technical measures. The court did allow a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn, due to the possibility of "monopolies" (to be determined in Court later), pending resolution of that latter question. LinkedIn might still win their claim to their right to block scrapers via technical means.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Something about malicious interfering with a contract? That might prevent technical measures?
byuu 7y ago
> "Most importantly, the appeals court also upheld a lower court ruling that prohibits LinkedIn from interfering with hiQ’s web scraping of its site." How would this affect Cloudflare's "checking your browser" anti-DDoS protection screen, meant to block bot requests from accessing sites?
bena 7y ago
They want to imply that, but they are wrong. LinkedIn can't prevent HiQ from attempting to scrape their site through force of law. LinkedIn can rate limit requests, make their site hard to scrape, change their format, whatever. LinkedIn is in no way responsible for how HiQ fulfills its contract to its customers. HiQ is attempting to say that if I sign a contract to provide you with a Tesla, then it would be illegal for Tesla to stop me from just taking one from them to give to you. If that sounds stupid, that's because it is.
protanopia 7y ago
> If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info Do they not already do this? Every link I've ever seen for LinkedIn has redirected me to sign up page rather than showing me the content.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
  They want search engines to index their profiles and provide organic search results links to their site, but then those same sites will require you to sign in when clicking a link to another public profile. You can search for that 2nd profile in Google and then view it without signing in, but not by clicking internal links. I've experienced this with Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, FB and others. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
- MarioMan 7y ago
  They block you out after the first few profiles you view. Try a private browser and you can still see them.
- alok-g 7y ago
  As a user of LinkedIn, I can pick which portions of my profile information I would like to be publicly available. This is not by default, so most people do not have it public. You can try seeing my profile without logging in. :-)
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
>Are those [ToS] legally void now? They were pretty much legally void even before this precedent was established. They are only valid when they don't violate any existing U.S. law. Any authority assumed beyond that is completely false. >can the court force me to revert that change? No.
munk-a 7y ago
> This is almost weirder. If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info, would they be not allowed to do that because some company had signed a contract that implicitly assumed access to that data? If someone writes a web scraper for my site, and I unknowingly change my site in a way that breaks that scraper, can a court force me to revert the change? LinkedIn has long wanted to have their cake and eat it too - they advertised that data as being publicly accessible and allow google to index specific user pages but then attempt to restrict other bots from crawling it. If you have private data behind a login there isn't an issue here - if you have public data but want some people to login before viewing it (or not be able to view it) then that's where this ruling comes up. So, this mostly hits sneaky SEO folks and dark UX patterns that rely on tempting someone with accessible data and then pulling the rug out from them at the last minute. If your website places data outside of authentication then everyone should be able to see that data... I'm curious to see the specifics around > Surely I'm not reading this correctly. This would seem to suggest that websites are not legally allowed to prevent bots from crawling their sites. Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? though - DoS attacks are clearly illegal, but with this precedent there's going to be a lot of back and forth to see where the line between DoS and scraping falls... and I think that makes this precedent a lot weaker than the headline would have you believe. A company can still threaten to drag you through a lot of litigation by accusing you of malicious page requests, it'll take a few cases to define where that line needs to fall.
- hiccuphippo 7y ago
  This reminds me about Twitter, when I click to see a thread for a tweet it asks me to login, but if I open the link in a new tab it loads the thread just fine.

giarc 7y ago

Your second point is interesting. I suspect the contract between hiQ and some company is that hiQ provides info on public profiles, and if LinkedIn removes all public profiles by requiring a login the contract would become moot. Just the same if I was to change my profile settings from public to private, hiQ wouldn't be in breach of their contract (nor would I).

onetimemanytime 7y ago
Scrapping should either be legal or not. The fact that you have a contract to sell the content you assumed it's legal to scrape, should not matter. Too bad if you lose money

candiodari 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference This would mostly mean that you cannot start interfering with webscraping you previously allowed merely because you learned that they're making money with the scraped data.

thfuran 7y ago
It seems absurd if the 'interference' only directly affects their own property. Like, if my neighbors start monetizing livestreaming my backyard, suddenly I can't put up a fence? Except worse because in actuality, this third-party contract is costing them money through server load and bandwidth.
- KptMarchewa 7y ago
  User data is not theirs property.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  Your analogy doesn't hold. Your backyard is private property. The data that LinkedIn publishes is intended for the public. That's why Google can index the pages and give you results from LinkedIn.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    > Your analogy doesn't hold. It does, in the US. You're likely making an inconsistent comparison. Property ownership has nothing to do with visual access. You cannot legally be barred from casually (involuntarily) perceiving something. It's reasonable to put up physical barriers to reduce what is casually perceived. It's a very good analogy.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      However it doesn't hold - as your neighbor I can't bar you from putting up a fence because it'll intrude on my view of your property... granted people try to do that _all the time_ but I think it's commonly understood that putting up a fence for privacy is allowed. It's also not a great analogy for this case because another party is given continued easy access to view my backyard while the first party is denied - and the analogy breaks down here because, as a neighbor, I have no inherent right to view your private life at least as much as any of your other neighbors.

scotty79 7y ago

> Seems to imply that every business is somehow beholden to every contract signed by anyone. Implied contract is that if you publish something, it's public and you have no right to dictate what software people use to consume it.

phkahler 7y ago
You also have no obligation to them.

wtetzner 7y ago

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the data is actually owned by LinkedIn users, and they expressed that they want their data to be publicly available?

shadowgovt 7y ago
Unlikely. The license to LinkedIn retains ownership, but the user's retention of information ownership doesn't compel LinkedIn to affirmatively do things with that data (i.e. LinkedIn isn't forced to vend the data to a given consumer if the user says so). The license further goes on to clarify that LinkedIn will vend public data to search engines, but the definition of "search engine" is almost certainly assumed (by LinkedIn, at least) to be up to them.

sjg007 7y ago

It's because previously public information became private. They can't do that apparently.

nathanlied 7y ago

> Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? ToS are subservient to the law; you can (probably) terminate a service account from a user that breaks your ToS, but if the user does not have a service account (as is the case for HiQ, it doesn't seem they were using accounts for it), then your ToS does not apply, since you've technically not entered a binding legal contract with them. > This is almost weirder. If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info, would they be not allowed to do that because some company had signed a contract that implicitly assumed access to that data? If someone writes a web scraper for my site, and I unknowingly change my site in a way that breaks that scraper, can a court force me to revert the change? IANAL, but I believe that'd fall on intent, and intent is often difficult to prove at a personal level, but not necessarily at a company level. If your intent for putting up barriers that happen to impact scraping, whatever they may be, was indeed to knowingly prevent scraping from a particular company, then you may be liable under this decision. This is the only part of the decision I'm torn on, since it's a bit messy to really prove such things. I'd be much more comfortable with allowing companies to take whatever measures they feel necessary to prevent scraping, and also allowing scrapers to legally circumvent those measures without threat of prosecution, assuming they didn't actually hack into anything.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago
I'm trying to puzzle out how this works in practice. So if LinkedIn has truly public data (no login required to view) then it can be scraped no problem. But if it's only accessible with a login, then it falls under TOS and they can be blocked?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
andrewmutz 7y ago
> but if the user does not have a service account (as is the case for HiQ, it doesn't seem they were using accounts for it), then your ToS does not apply, since you've technically not entered a binding legal contract with them. Are you sure about this? I am not a lawyer, but I believe that the Terms of Service applies to all users, not just those that explicitly set up a user account. I have interpreted the LinkedIn ruling to mean that scraping public data is no longer criminal activity but it still leaves you open to civil lawsuits for violating the ToS of the website you are scraping.

lopmotr 7y ago

The court document says "... refrain from putting in place any legal or technical measures with the effect of blocking hiQ's access to public profiles." on page 11. I wonder if they mean targeted measures specifically blocking hiQ but allowing others such as Google.

matttb 7y ago

> Surely I'm not reading this correctly. This would seem to suggest that websites are not legally allowed to prevent bots from crawling their sites. Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? This is just a preliminary injunction. This wasn't an actual ruling on the case. This just says that until there is a ruling they can't stop the scraping to make sure the company isn't put under while waiting for an actual ruling.

remote_phone 7y ago
You don’t understand what a preliminary injunction is then. It’s a very, very strong indication that they will win. Courts don’t issue preliminary injunctions unless it’s extremely likely the side who won the preliminary injunction will win.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Huh, I thought in USA they also did them to avoid an injunction having the effect of making the judgement irrelevant. So, where the case is not clear cut the injunction could prevent one party acting to 'kill' the other (and so avoid judgement) in the meantime? Could you cite something on this that indicates this (my understanding here) is wrong?
- wrs 7y ago
  It only requires a “substantial” likelihood that side will win (not an “extreme” one), which basically means there’s a substantive dispute. The more difficult criterion is a substantial likelihood that irreparable harm will occur if the injunction isn’t granted (irreparable harm is supposed to be a pretty extreme thing — it means you can’t fix it with any amount of money).
- coding123 7y ago
  The issuance of an injunction is in no way related to how the future court battle will result.
- papln 7y ago

username90 7y ago

Linkedin want their data to be scraped by bots so they have to keep it public, otherwise you wouldn't find peoples profile from Google. They just don't want bots from from their competitors like hiQ to scrape it.

danenania 7y ago
To me, this is crucial. If it's public and available for google, it's public and available for everyone. If you want content to be private, then make it private and accept that you won't get search engine traffic. Otherwise, don't be surprised when your publicly accessible content is accessed by gasp the public.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

vectorEQ 7y ago

i'm wondering if that robots.txt might then get you sued due to blocking scrapers / bots?

herval 7y ago
A robots.txt file doesn’t block scrapers, it’s the equivalent of a no trespassing sign. I don’t think putting up signs will suddenly become illegal?
setr 7y ago
Robots.txt doesn't interfere with anything. It's a suggestion.

etxm 7y ago

It will be interesting to see how this will impact the bot detection market like perimeterX, etc.

JackRabbitSlim 7y ago

https://www.eff.org/cases/hiq-v-linkedin https://www.eff.org/cases/hiq-v-linkedin LinkedIn aint the victim here...

hombre_fatal 7y ago
This is the part I disagree with: > hiQ also asked the court to prohibit LinkedIn from blocking its access to public profiles while the court considered the merits of its request. hiQ won a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn in district court, and LinkedIn appealed. Whether LinkedIn is the good guy or bad guy here doesn't matter when the decision creates precedence for the rest of us. Surely a healthier precedent is that we can respond arbitrarily to requests and have no obligation to the requester. So what if I want to randomize the html structure on every request or block requests from Tor because 100% of them are abuse? Can someone take me to court on the grounds that either is effectively "blocking" their scraping syndicate? Why not? I feel like once CFAA is off the table (which I do agree with), the cat and mouse game is a fair middle ground. Keep web scraping a sport!

dalore 7y ago

So if I (like many others) have cloudflare web scraping protection turned on, that is now against American law?

papln 7y ago
There's no reason to believe that.

zipzipzip101 7y ago

I have to scrape linkedin sometimes for work and it's hard. Normal Python scrapy setups won't work. Linkedin has all sorts of blockers in place. They'll give you 500 errors, log you out if you view too many pages, etc. Headless chrome + only hitting 50 pages max per session is the key.

joering2 7y ago

Here is my attempt to draw an analogy. There is a large banner next to the highway that shows some weather information that if properly organized (lets say monthly almanac) you would find people to pay money for it. The banner owner does not make money this way - he ask you to go to his website and signup for an account. But you drive the highway (internet) every day, look at the banner, write down the weather updates, and then offer them on your website as a sale. The owner gets angry and sue you. The court decides you are free to drive by the highway and you free to put your eyeballs on their weather banner, especially given the banner is available to everyone (LinkedIn profiles are avail to view without needing an account) and you are free to use the information you obtained for free without interference with said banner in a form of a monthly almanac that you sell. At the end of the day, the banner owner does not own the weather information that someone else put in there (for example a weather meteorologist). I think personally its a healthy decision. Otherwise it would be similar to prejudice of who should be allowed to enter and browse a street store that by law is available to everyone.

papln 7y ago

> hiQ argued That does not mean that hte court agreed. The judges said that CFAA doesn't apply. In other words, the judges said that LinkedIn couldn't use the US legal system to force HiQ to stop. Judges didn't say that LinkedIn was barred from using technical measures. The court did allow a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn, due to the possibility of "monopolies" (to be determined in Court later), pending resolution of that latter question. LinkedIn might still win their claim to their right to block scrapers via technical means.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Something about malicious interfering with a contract? That might prevent technical measures?

byuu 7y ago

> "Most importantly, the appeals court also upheld a lower court ruling that prohibits LinkedIn from interfering with hiQ’s web scraping of its site." How would this affect Cloudflare's "checking your browser" anti-DDoS protection screen, meant to block bot requests from accessing sites?

bena 7y ago

They want to imply that, but they are wrong. LinkedIn can't prevent HiQ from attempting to scrape their site through force of law. LinkedIn can rate limit requests, make their site hard to scrape, change their format, whatever. LinkedIn is in no way responsible for how HiQ fulfills its contract to its customers. HiQ is attempting to say that if I sign a contract to provide you with a Tesla, then it would be illegal for Tesla to stop me from just taking one from them to give to you. If that sounds stupid, that's because it is.

protanopia 7y ago

> If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info Do they not already do this? Every link I've ever seen for LinkedIn has redirected me to sign up page rather than showing me the content.

thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
They want search engines to index their profiles and provide organic search results links to their site, but then those same sites will require you to sign in when clicking a link to another public profile. You can search for that 2nd profile in Google and then view it without signing in, but not by clicking internal links. I've experienced this with Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, FB and others. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
MarioMan 7y ago
They block you out after the first few profiles you view. Try a private browser and you can still see them.
alok-g 7y ago
As a user of LinkedIn, I can pick which portions of my profile information I would like to be publicly available. This is not by default, so most people do not have it public. You can try seeing my profile without logging in. :-)

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

>Are those [ToS] legally void now? They were pretty much legally void even before this precedent was established. They are only valid when they don't violate any existing U.S. law. Any authority assumed beyond that is completely false. >can the court force me to revert that change? No.

munk-a 7y ago

> This is almost weirder. If LinkedIn wanted to force users to sign in to view profile info, would they be not allowed to do that because some company had signed a contract that implicitly assumed access to that data? If someone writes a web scraper for my site, and I unknowingly change my site in a way that breaks that scraper, can a court force me to revert the change? LinkedIn has long wanted to have their cake and eat it too - they advertised that data as being publicly accessible and allow google to index specific user pages but then attempt to restrict other bots from crawling it. If you have private data behind a login there isn't an issue here - if you have public data but want some people to login before viewing it (or not be able to view it) then that's where this ruling comes up. So, this mostly hits sneaky SEO folks and dark UX patterns that rely on tempting someone with accessible data and then pulling the rug out from them at the last minute. If your website places data outside of authentication then everyone should be able to see that data... I'm curious to see the specifics around > Surely I'm not reading this correctly. This would seem to suggest that websites are not legally allowed to prevent bots from crawling their sites. Lots of sites have ToS preventing such things, are those legally void now? Are captchas on public pages illegal, even if you request the page 8000 times in a second? though - DoS attacks are clearly illegal, but with this precedent there's going to be a lot of back and forth to see where the line between DoS and scraping falls... and I think that makes this precedent a lot weaker than the headline would have you believe. A company can still threaten to drag you through a lot of litigation by accusing you of malicious page requests, it'll take a few cases to define where that line needs to fall.

hiccuphippo 7y ago
This reminds me about Twitter, when I click to see a thread for a tweet it asks me to login, but if I open the link in a new tab it loads the thread just fine.