Hacker News Reader

Comment by eagsalazar2 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure "isn't LinkedIn property" is accurate here. They still retain ownership and control of redistribution just like any other IP. This is more of a philosophical question about whether "viewing" itself is a violation of their ownership rights and really about the definitions of "viewing" and "public" in the context of the internet.

Seems like they've simply determined that viewing any freely accessible URL is "public" and that "viewing" does include scraping. This seems like a very reasonable determination as it maps pretty neatly to how we think about viewing public content IRL where I am free to drive down the road (for profit or pleasure) and record publicly viewable signage and activities and use that data any way I see fit.

View on HN

> Not sure "isn't LinkedIn property" is accurate here.

It is very accurate. Users retain the copyright on their works in so far as their works are able to be copyrighted. Anything that is a "mere fact", and can't be copyrighted, is also not LinkedIn's property.

From LinkedIn's terms of service[1]:

> you are only granting LinkedIn and our affiliates the following non-exclusive license:

> A worldwide, transferable and sublicensable right to use, copy, modify, distribute, publish, and process, information and content that you provide through our Services and the services of others, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or others.

___

1. https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement#rights

If I enter my employment record and my profile pic, birthdate, etc, I don't think that is the ip of linkedin. Maybe the way they display it or if they are transforming it in some way it could be considered ip. But if someone scrapes all that user entered data and then displays it somewhere else in a different format, I can't imagine LinkedIn being able to claim their ip has been infringed.

I think this all of this should be the user's choice since every company should put the user at the center of these decisions. If I want my data to be shared in any way I can simply tick a box and allow that. If I don't then keep it just for me and the people I chose to share it on that platform.

It should also be made clear to the users if that data is being used as payment for the services provided by mentioning explicitly and in a detailed way where that data goes.

I think (hope?) that's what this decision did. LinkedIn must allow scraping publicly available data, but not private data that a third party wouldn't have access to normally.

Maybe it's more accurate to say "any publicly linked URL"? IIRC, charges have been successfully brought against people for e.g. iterating through user identifiers in URLs to gain access to other users' data. (Do correct me if I'm wrong on that count!)

Some kid was charged for that but in my opinion it was stupid. URL to me means part of the UX. If you search on Google using a query parameter directly instead of entering the query in their search box, should that count as wrongful use?

Stupid or not, that's a matter for the lawmakers. What I'm saying is that, as far as I know, a ruling that any publicly accessible URL is fair game would contradict previous rulings.

Now, this is based on my very patchy memory of sensationalist reporting of legal matters in a jurisdiction I don't reside in, so there's probably some wiggle room there ;)

If I guess your password in the password form input, should that count as wrongful use?

If I rifle through your personal papers because your door was open, should that count as wrongful use?

No, it should not. But what if you try some SQL injection to do something nasty?

The modern law system distinguishes between result and intent.

Andrew Auernheimer, more commonly known as weev, got all of AT&T's ipad users' email addresses at that time, by enumerating all the possible sim-card IDs, against a public facing ATT website. He was charged and convicted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison that. His sentence was vacated after 13 months due to a technicality of the venue; that judge did not address the substantive question on the legality of the site access.

Weev may be an odious person, but everyone has rights in a court of law, even white supremacists.

> His sentence was vacated after 13 months due to a technicality of the venue; that judge did not address the substantive question on the legality of the site access

So the way the American legal system works is:

  if(venue == correct && facts == bad) {
    guilty();
  } else {
    not_guilty();
  }

If the venue is not correct, the facts of the case are not evaluated. If you go read some lawsuits, you'll see that the first page or two is an argument about why the judge reading it is the correct judge to read it.

Generally, that is the way it works, but it is foolish to try and understand the legal system like it's software. If the venue is incorrect, the judge may more or less tell them to get lost. That's not the same as "not guilty". A lot of rules are adhered to to make sure that courts don't get gummed up with meaningless cases and to make sure that judges with the appropriate authority handle the appropriate cases.

You are right; I wanted to give a general idea. And if you've ever written software for Itanium, you'd know that relying on evaluation rules in an if statement is a dangerous thing to do!

> If the venue is not correct, the facts of the case are not evaluated.

More precisely, the facts of the case are not evaluated by that court. Usually the case will be transferred to a different venue (i.e., federal court in a different district) or dismissed and refiled in a different forum (e.g., state court instead of federal court).

In Mr. Auernheimer's case, had he been successful in his improper venue motion, he probably would have faced prosecution in either his home district or the district where the AT&T servers were located. The result of that trial might have been the same, but there wouldn't have been a vacatur.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com