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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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

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.

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".

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.

> 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.

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