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Comment by ketzu | Hacker News Reader

I am not versed in law, especially not in US law, but this case seems to be very specific that scraping is no violation of the CFAA. I do support this interpretation.

However, the case of scraping I personally find more problematic is the use of personal data I provide to one side, then used by scrapers without my knowledge or permission. I truly wonder which way we are better off on that issue as a society. Independent of the current law, should anything that is accessible be essentially free-for-all or should there be limitations on what you are allowed to do. Cases highlighted in the article: Facial recognition by third parties on social media profiles, facebook scraping for personal data, search engines, journalists or archives. (Not all need to have the same answer to the question "do we want this") Besides that, the point I care slightly less about is the idea that allowing scaping with very leisure limits leads to even more closed up systems.

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"I gave my data to Linkedin and now scrapers are reading it from the public web". Be mad at Linkedin before you are mad at the scraper.

This seems to have various angles to it.

First, one question is if the intent of the original owner of the data important? When I put data on linkedin (or facebook, my private website, hackenews or my employers website) I might have an opinion on who gets to do what with my data (see also GDPR discussions). Should I blame linkedin (or meta/myself/my employer) to do what I expected them to do, or should I blame those that do what I don't want them to do? Should I just be blamed directly because I even want to make a distinction between those? If I didn't want my data I could just not provide it (or participate in/surf the web at all if we extend the idea to more general data collection).

Secondly, it touches on the idea that linkedin should not make the data publicly available (i.e., without authentication), and we end up with a less open system. Is that better? Is it what we want? Maybe there are also other ways that I am not aware just now. (Competing purely on value added is probably futile for data aggregators.)

Your intent as the original owner of the data is important! You have to explicitly give Linkedin the right to display your data. It's in their Terms of Service. If Linkedin does something with your data that is outside the ToS, then that is on them, but if they do something within the ToS that you don't like then maybe you should not have provided them with your data.

As for whether the data should be public, that's a decision we each have to make.

I may edit and delete my information from LinkedIn, but I have no idea who has persisted that data beyond there.

There is such a thing as scraping responsibility and irresponsibly. Both kinds happen.

serious question (ianal): If I write down some information, at what point does that information have copyright protection? Do I have to claim it with Ⓒ?

Never. "Mere listings" of data (like the phone book) are not copyrightable.

But also anything you write which is copyrightable is copyright immediately. You can register the work w/ the copyright office for some extra perks but it's not strictly necessary.

You might want to check out Feist v. Rural Telephone Company (1991), and also look up the Berne Convention (on copyright), which the U.S. joined in the 1970s.

If by "information" you mean mere facts without creativity in selection or arrangement, those are generally not protectable by copyright in the United States, although possibly in some other countries. Copyright generally protects works of authorship, and nothing else. No creativity no copyright.

So for this case involving LI, I get my name and employer name isn't protected but there is a section where you describe your role. That is extremely creative, right? There are infinite ways similar work could be described. It isn't just a "fact". So they can't use that information it would seem.

Not the creative part, no. Someone could presumably use the non-creative stuff as far as copyright is concerned, although other means (notably shrink wrap licensing) are often attempted to restrict that.

I used to regularly see books at the university book store that were wrapped in literal shrink wrap licenses for that reason, which of course makes browsing difficult. And then there was a major case on the subject ProCD v. Zeidenberg (7th Cir 1996), where such a license was found valid and enforceable.

In Europe, the GDPR would protect that type of data, in principle. That is, even if you provided your profile picture to Linked In and made it public, this does not entitle a third party to copy that picture and use it for other purposes (though a Linked-In 3rd party client would still be ok). It's still your data, even if you agreed to share it with Linked-In.

Consider that scrapers may be far less interested in you as the individual than they are regarding your input into the aggregated data points of you and those like you.

That's the same argument for all major internet tracking cookies. I don't think that's going to convince this site's userbase.

The scraper example in this case HiQ had a product that tracked employee profile changes to predict employee churn.

So they were specifically interested in you, personally not the aggregate

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