The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just officially ruled that LinkedIn "can't stop its competitor" in the hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. case. The ruling states that hiQ Labs will still be allowed to scrape publicly available data from LinkedIn users.
Five-Year LinkedIn v. hiQ Case: Scrapping Publicly Available Data Legal?
According to the story by ZDNet, it is usually thought as self-evident that a website's public data remains public. This issue, however, was never able to stop people from copying public data available on websites.
As seen on NatLawReview, the case lasted for almost five years, starting in 2017 when LinkedIn demanded that hiQ be given a cease and desist order. The reason behind LinkedIn's targetting of hiQ was that the website was scraping data from publicly available LinkedIn profiles.
LinkedIn Argues hiQ Violated Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
As per LinkedIn, its competitor violated several laws citing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) along with the company's terms of use. The company was initially answered by the court ruling that hiQ cannot be blocked by LinkedIn.
Despite the first rule, the Ninth Circuit in 2019 repeated the decision saying the company can't stop hiQ from copying publicly available data. Marcha Berzon, the Circuit Judge during that period, ruled that there is little evidence showing that users who made the decision to set their profiles to the public "maintain an expectation of privacy."
LinkedIn Didn't Stop and Took the Case to the U.S. Supreme Court
The decisions, however, did not stop LinkedIn as the company decided to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite its efforts, as detailed by EFF, the case concluded that there is no criminalization when it comes to scrapping data publicly available on the internet.
The Supreme Court's decision in 2021 on the Van Buren v. the U.S. case used the gates-up-or-gates-down analogy, stating either data is made publicly available or not. HiQ made the argument that since the data was publicly available on the website, the situation was gated down.
Company Says They Will Continue to Fight
The Ninth Circuit agreed and ruled that "the concept of without authorization" won't apply to public websites. ZDNet noted that the decision was a win for journalists, archivists, researchers, academics, and even hiQ and other companies that use publicly available data.
Greg Snapper, a LinkedIn spokesperson, noted that the company will not let go of the case, saying they are disappointed in the decision made by the court, saying the preliminary ruling, as well as the case, is still far from the end.
The spokesperson said that LinkedIn would continue to fight to "protect our member's ability to control the information" they place on LinkedIn.
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Written by Urian B.
