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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

To be fair to LinkedIn they do list a specific and limited set of problems in their letter. They're not asking you to stop building BrowserFlow, but to stop advertising it as a LinkedIn scraping tool, and using their logo to do that. It sounds to me (not a lawyer) that removing all the LinkedIn examples from your website and stopping using their logo would be enough to satisfy their request...

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IANAL, but I think this is right.

My understanding of the LinkedIn v HiQ case is that it's legal to scrape public pages no matter what is in the website terms.

Scraping "privet" pages can be illegal as you have had to explicitly agree to the terms.

Your users would be breaking those terms, not you, as they do it on their own machine. As the parent said, just remove all reference to LinkedIn and you can move on.

> Your users would be breaking those terms, not you, as they do it on their own machine. As the parent said, just remove all reference to LinkedIn and you can move on.

There is some kind of cloud stuff here though.

I am an attorney whose primary focus is in this area of law. And this interpretation of the LinkedIn v. hiQ case is categorically wrong.

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/12/as-everyone-ex...

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/12/hello-youve-be...

To summarize, hiQ was not found criminally liable under CFAA.

However, they were civilly liable for breaking LinkedIn’s terms of service.

Furthermore, do not assume that a ruling pertaining to hiQ is relevant to you without doing further research.

(This comment is targeted at people browsing HN for entertainment. I am not a lawyer and I don’t know what I’m talking about.)

A better summary:

Summary judgment was granted on behalf of LinkedIn against hiQ Labs for breach of contract. Summary Judgment was denied against hiQ Labs on its CFAA claims. So the court ruled that hiQ breached LinkedIn's contract.

The parties settled their dispute with hiQ Labs agreeing to court-imposed injunction to never again scrape LinkedIn and by paying LinkedIn $500k.

Despite the headlines, the final resolution of these disputes was a win for LinkedIn, not hiQ.

For the longer version, read the posts above.

We definitely need scrapping neutrality. If you allow any third party(including Google) to scrape your public data, you cannot prohibit anyone else doing the same.

Outside of protected classes, I see that argument flying as well as "house party neutrality" for individuals.

Do you take new clients? I'm interested in consultation in a related area. How can I contact you?

Shoot me an email at Kieran(at)McCarthyLG.com.

The hiQ case is kinda weird because the part people here care about is scrapping public pages, but the claims still being litigated are all concerning activities done while logged-in or at least under the ToS. hiQ can win on the public scrapping claims but lose on the rest, there's no "win/lose" in law except on individual claims. The articles kinda bury that distinction and then claim "you don't want to go out of business like hiQ, get a lawyer".

Hi (disclaimer: I was the CTO at hiQ)

I think your analysis is pretty much spot-on, but I would ask you as a lawyer to answer this hypothetical:

If hiQ had scrupulously and categorically avoided ever using logged-in accounts (as opposed to the facts claimed re 'Turkers') would LinkedIn still have had the leverage to shut us down?

Also note that LinkedIn, as part of its strategy to force us to settle, threatened to permanently delete the _personal_ LI accounts of everyone who worked at hiQ. How does that sit with you ethically, knowing that a LinkedIn account is precisely what you must have in this business, especially when your company shuts down and you need to seek employment?

That's a really good question. The judge's original rulings were very hiQ-favorable, with those opinions becoming progressively less favorable over time. Whether it was facts learned in discovery or push-back from somewhere else, I wish I knew. Something happened along with the way that made the judge more favorable to LinkedIn and less sympathetic to hiQ. I find it hard to reconcile the early TRO proceedings with what came later. And as I say in the articles, the judge never bothered to explain why he made the 180.

That's pretty shady re: the threat to permanently delete the personal accounts. But it's also not surprising. At this point LinkedIn and their fellow social media cohorts are emboldened by these recent decisions and they're on the warpath. People need to be careful out there.

If you want to have a private discussion on this subject please email me: danbmil99 at gmail dot com

It's not trade mark infringement to use a logo to refer to a business entity, fwiw.

There was a recent piece of caselaw relating to scraping, in USA, IIRC. I seem to remember it was allowed for user accessible areas.

I'm not sure LinkedIn have a legal basis for their complaint, but of course that won't stop them.

This is not legal advice and does not relate to my employment.

This reminds me of a time where I was in SF taking pics of "the pigeon whisperer" lady (A lady who would feed the pigeons, and thus had a ton of them around her): She was in an alley near Financial District, and I was taking pics of her and all the pigeons.

Some thug came out of some building telling me I was not allowed to take any pictures.

I told him to get lost. and he said "Policy is that you cannot take pictures"

I said "I am standing on public property. If I can see it with my eyes from where I am standing in public, then I can take pics of it. Get lost."

Same goes for scraping a site: If I can see it in open public from any browser anywhere on the globe: that is open data. I dont give a shit what lawyers or companies think in this regard.

The term "walled garden" exists - if you want your shit hidden... then dont make it available to the open web.

The about certainly sounds right, but do yourself a favor and check with an IP lawyer. A quick consult won't be too expensive and will probably save you down the line.

It's up to the user to use to use it on public pages vs private pages. I believe the most OP should do is be explicit: "This tool is only meant to scrape public pages". Just like a knife can be used to kill, does not mean Walmart should cease selling knives.

>Just like a knife can be used to kill, does not mean Walmart should cease selling knives.

They could put warnings on them, though - much as they do with plastic bags. I'd sure feel safer.

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