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Comment by tomhschmidt | Hacker News Reader

This article is a bit dated. AFIK the latest in web scraping legality is LinkedIn vs. HiQ, where HiQ was scraping public LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn issued a C&D under CFAA, but HiQ received an injunction that allowed it to continue scraping. This was supposed to be tried in the Ninth Circuit court over a year ago, but not sure what happened

https://www.eff.org/cases/hiq-v-linkedin

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Pretty sure the ninth published what's now the controlling opinion in the circuit. YMMV in other circuits.

EDIT: Yep. hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., 273 F. Supp. 3d 1099 (N.D. Cal. 2017)

"In summary, the balance of hardships tips sharply in hiQ’s favor. hiQ has demonstrated there are serious questions on the merits. In particular, the Court is doubtful that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act may be invoked by LinkedIn to punish hiQ for accessing publicly available data; the broad interpretation of the CFAA advocated by LinkedIn, if adopted, could profoundly impact open access to the Internet, a result that Congress could not have intended when it enacted the CFAA over three decades ago. Furthermore, hiQ has raised serious questions as to whether LinkedIn, in blocking hiQ’s access to public data, possibly as a means of limiting competition, violates state law."

That’s an extremely well-thought-out court finding, especially since they thought about how the CFAA was intended to be applied. Far too often we see a more liberal interpretation of the CFAA used to the detriment of a small player.

>In particular, the Court is doubtful that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act may be invoked by LinkedIn to punish hiQ for accessing publicly available data; the broad interpretation of the CFAA advocated by LinkedIn, if adopted, could profoundly impact open access to the Internet, a result that Congress could not have intended when it enacted the CFAA over three decades ago.

I didn't realize original intent could be used in courts. How the heck did "original intent" lead to federal abortion and federal gay marriage when all law in letter and in practice had delegated these questions to the states?

Courts have a variety of legal theories available. They can pick and choose from textualism, original meaning, original intent, evolving meanings/living constitution, stare decisis, or common law jurisprudence (i.e. law made up by judges) to get the result they want or believe should be the law.

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