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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

> Affirm in writing that you will not engage in any violations of the LinkedIn User Agreement in the future.

This seems like the weirdest one to me. I mean if they don’t have a LinkedIn user account, why should they abide by the User Agreement?

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IANAL, but there is a big chance that this is just a boilerplate cease and desist used for every project that comes up when you google "scraping linkedin". I would not over think it.

Lawyer/legal time is costly, they probably didn't look into it too deep, they just saw the LinkedIn logo with "Scrape LinkedIn" written next to it on OP's main page.

Welcome to the Law! They can ask, and explaining that you are not party to their EULA is a perfectly valid counterargument. They will argue that by accessing their website with the service you are agreeing to the terms, and then you wind up in expensive litigation.

The demands seem pretty reasonable in this case, I'd probably accede.

I clearly don’t know anything about the law but I’d definitely want to talk to a lawyer before agreeing to that point, assuming I didn’t have a LinkedIn account. If I didn’t already have an agreement with LinkedIn, right when they’ve noticed me and are getting litigious sounding seems at least to this layman like the wrong time to start signing agreements they’ve sent.

Why would you assume someone who develops a browser extension marketed in part as a LinkedIn scraping tool does not have a LinkedIn account?

I think the matter of whether they have an account or not is irrelevant. The violations listed are not directed to a LinkedIn account.

The cited EULA terms don't depend for applicability on creating an account, only on accessing LinkedIn. Whether or not that's enforceable and in what jurisdiction is a different question, and not one that's relevant here; unless OP is extremely foolish, we are not about to see that question tested again in court.

In any case, LinkedIn accounts are clickwrapped in the EULA, and you can't build a scraper for stuff behind their auth wall - which, I believe as a direct response to LinkedIn vs. HiQ, is more or less everything they serve - without being able to get past it yourself. So the question of whether or not OP has agreed to the EULA, which LinkedIn complains Browserflow is marketed in part to violate, isn't remotely germane to a meaningful discussion of the issue.

I disagree that it is irrelevant. A contract applies to the person who signed it, not the (inanimate) account.

I mean if they have a contract with LinkedIn and they are violating it, they should stop lol. Since they make money from the tool apparently, and LinkedIn accounts are worthless, I’d probably stop violating the contract by terminating my LinkedIn account.

You don't think a team of Microsoft lawyers could find a way to sue you for marketing to LinkedIn users a tool expressly designed and marketed for the purpose of violating the EULA those users agreed to as a condition of creating their accounts? Thank you for exemplifying the value of the old advice against litigating pro se, I suppose.

LinkedIn is being a lot more generous here than they really need to be. Getting an Ask HN to the front page about it wasn't terribly smart, but then this is why the only good advice for OP in this thread is "talk to a lawyer", which anyone who's already incorporated an LLC really should not need telling, but whatever.

It is a general purpose tool. I mean autohotkey or any open source web browser could be hypothetically used/modified to scrape websites. What do you think about just removing that example?

I think if I received the same C&D, I'd email it to my retained lawyer and ask for advice. I think I would expect to be advised I should comply fully and without undue delay. And I think that's exactly what I would then proceed to do.

(I also think we're talking past one another, which tends to happen when I participate in discussions like this. I'm not a lawyer, but when you spend long enough sleeping with someone who is, it's amazing what you pick up - and how many silly notions originating in the assumption that 'law is really just a kind of code, right?' you find yourself perhaps ungently disabused of.)

It is possible that they have an account, but it is a general purpose tool for scraping, so I assumed it isn’t necessarily the case. If they have an account and are blatantly violating the TOS, that’s just looking for trouble, they should stop.

A user agreement isn't just a "person with account" agreement, in fact, if you read the first sentence of the introduction [1] to their current one, you'll see it says

> You agree that by clicking “Join Now”, “Join LinkedIn”, “Sign Up” or similar, registering, accessing or using our services (described below), you are agreeing to enter into a legally binding contract with LinkedIn

in other words, anyone that "access[es] or us[es]" their services are agreeing to the contract. This definitely includes what OP is doing.

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement#introduction

So if I write on a piece of paper "If bob breathes, he owes me $100" that would also be valid contract?

Not a lawyer, but that is ridiculous. You'd have to accept the terms to even be permitted to read the terms, as they are hosted on linkedin.com.

No of course not, but there's a huge difference between someones bodily autonomy and using a service that you provide. Are you saying that companies should only be able to apply their terms of service to people who make accounts on their website? Or that they should host those terms somewhere besides their own domain so that you can access them without having to abide by them?

To me it’s like building a storefront and asking everyone to not look at it and/or to not speak about it elsewhere, unless you abide. Turn your head and get legally bound.

I know law doesn’t work that way, but it doesn’t make it non-absurd either.

Edit: I remember from my childhood public transport “artists” who could enter a train, perform their “art” and then demand money “because I’ve seen that you watched it”. Not exactly the same, but strong vibes.

The terms of service should only apply to people who use the services. For example if you use Firefox to connect to a website, and violate the TOS of that website, Mozilla would obviously not be involved.

For a couple of reasons, no.

Bob would have to agree. And Bob would have to be getting _something_ out of it.

(I'm not a lawyer)

I'd disagree. The users of OPs tool certainly are, but it doesn't seem like that's the responsibility of the developer.

If they're advertising it as a LinkedIn scraper then it is, and that seems to be what's cited as the actual problem.

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