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Comment by DanBlake | Hacker News Reader

This seems very at-odds with previous rulings (specifically, relating to craigslists many past dealings). Strikes me as being very unlikely to stand up to appeal. Also, linkedin will likely modify their websites behavior (make you click to agree before you view a profile) which would create a binding 'click wrap' stopping companies from scraping them.

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The biggest reason why they have not done this so far is SEO. If you introduce the 'click wrap' - other crawlers like Google won't be able to crawl it, so their traffic will decrease overnight.

They'd most certainly whitelist the google ips.

that's against TOS for Google SERPs

Showing different results to google than you do to users is called cloaking and it's not allowed

Definitely, but someone at LinkedIn could get in touch with their google contact and make it all work and follow the rules.

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en

Apparently, we had something similar at Demand Media before the panda update.

How does one build such google contacts if you are a seed stage startup? I understand it wouldn't be the same league as LinkedIn Reid Hoffman level contacts, but even some kind of contact at Google search?

I wish I knew. Easiest way is to make a ton of money off google ads like we did. Even then it was hard to actually talk to someone - especially at YouTube. And they had an office a few floors up...

That click wrap contract is kind of an interesting thing on it's own, for those of us who only enable JS when absolutely necessary. If I never see the agreement, and I am not specifically avoiding it, does it still apply to me?

There was a big ruling in Canada about this specifically around MLS, the big real estate monopoly we have, so that if you go to their sites to search for homes, like you'd see at Realtor.ca, you have to click through a clickwrapper to access any data, and even if you automate past that, the fact that a human would have to click it means that it's illegal to scrape since you are forced as a human to agree to a TOS before you view.

Ah yes, that. MLS compliance was a source of many tickets for me, in a previous job, in Canada. The employer didn't even want me to waste time trying to learn it all, just follow the compliance officer.

IIRC, this stuff varies quite a bit from region to region, even within a single metropolitan area. Attempting to simultaneously comply with multiple independently developed rulebooks was ... fun.

I can't wait for shipyard startups to disrupt the housing market. /s

Make the profile loadable via XHR and problem solved. For example.(Which I bet is already the case)

Did you click a button saying you agreed to it?

Neither of the Craigslist cases reached an appellate level. They were only district court decisions, so as I understand it, they only have persuasive value when applied to other cases. The judge in this case mentioned Craigslist v. 3Taps, and apparently was not persuaded by it.

It's just a preliminary injunction used to maintain the status quo (ie, allowing scrapers) while the case is heard. A preliminary injunction is basically "ok everyone stop what you're doing, maintain business as usual until the court rules."

Without having downloaded the order from pacer, if i had to guess, i don't think a click wrap would change anything.

The free speech argument is certainly a dud here. The argument that has likely had any weight at all would be the antitrust/unfair competition one.

A click wrap will not change that.

It's almost certainly about linkedin's repeated claims about how they don't own these, they are public info, and they want to make them public, and now is turning around and saying "just kidding!", and trying to put someone out of business who depended on that, all so they can start their own analytics product.

Appeal? The case hasn't even been heard yet. This was a preliminary injunction; it's far from over!

A preliminary injunction can be the subject of an interlocutory appeal.

In this instance, however, it is not (as can be gleaned by reading the article).

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