
LinkedIn sues anonymous data scrapers - vivekpreddy
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/linkedin-sues-scrapers/
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atemerev
If it is visible, it is recordable. Scraping should fall under fair use
policy: recording a TV program is OK, repackaging it and reselling to
competing channel is not.

Scraping for research and/or personal use should always be legal.

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lazyjones
> _Scraping should fall under fair use policy_

Even if the burden put on the scraped website is far from "fair"? At my last
job we had half the server capacity used by scraping bots most of the time,
despite blocking Tor (since it was used exclusively for scraping most of the
time). Such use translates into real operating costs just for being scraped,
depending on your way of monetizing with 0 (no ad views) or negative income
from those "users" on top (sometimes it's the competition or agencies selling
your data so people don't have to use your website).

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aj7
Maybe your business model has an intrinsic flaw.

For instance on LinkedIn, how many of the 400M strivers do I really want to
network with? Yet I (or my bot) can see them all.

~~~
wodenokoto
Those are both stupid arguments.

> Maybe your business model has an intrinsic flaw.

Maybe business are free to decide on their business model and not forced to
comply with anybody else hobby project.

> how many of the 400M strivers do I really want to network with?

Are you suggesting that linked should block your access to everything except
what their ml algorithm decides will interest you?

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Chris2048
> not forced to comply with anybody else hobby project

How is LI being forced to comply? It's the opposite, hobby project is legally
forced to desist.

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wodenokoto
They are not, and they shouldn't be.

The argument I was against was that LinkedIn should bear the cost of scrapers,
and if they can't they _must_ change their monetisation strategy to something
that can.

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deedubaya
LinkedIn is holding your resume data for random, selling access to the
recruiters you don't want to hear from because they have deep pockets.

Imagine a world where you don't have to re-enter your education and work
history for every job you apply to! Imagine not having to create a new resume
every time you decide to switch jobs! Imagine just sharing a semi-private URL
instead.

This sounds like a market prime for disruption.

~~~
abelarden
We're doing exactly that in the UK. No recruiters, direct jobseekers-employer
network using chosen location, structured data and faceted search.

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osullivj
URL please? I've tried untapt, and been unimpressed. I'm going to need a new
contract at some point, so I'm open to a new route to market.

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vivekd
I remember reading that facebook had done something similar to a social media
aggregation for scraping content from its website. This whole opening up of
law suits for getting information that companies put out publicly for all to
see seems like a dangerous new precedent.

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ChuckMcM
This should be interesting. In my opinion, this is the 21st century equivalent
of people going into libraries and making photocopies of books and articles.
But it has interesting precedents with Craigslist suits. I wonder if there
will be a suit that tries to pierce the protections of user contributed
content liability by using the fact that the company considers that content
their proprietary property. Thus it is no longer UCC and they should be liable
for any infringing or malicious use of that data.

~~~
rcorin
Your analogy is better if the books or articles are written by the same users,
like eg research papers and the editors (like Springer) dont allow the writers
to even share their articles on the web.

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us0r
The company who built their business on scraping people's data is suing people
for scraping data. I hope they fight this.

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chatmasta
Funny how the headline is "LinkedIn sues" when it's obviously Microsoft behind
it.

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staticautomatic
LinkedIn itself is almost certainly behind it and have done it before. See
their suit against SimplyHired.

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ommunist
So, what if I will just scrape Google caches of LinkedIN profiles? I will
never touch precious resumes at LinkedIN servers that way, and LinkedIN will
never sue Google, since how else people will get to LinkedIN if not through
Google? If only LinkedIN will not invest into some behavioural science to
alter human habit of navigational search.

Scrapebox does exactly that [http://www.scrapebox.com/google-cache-
extractor](http://www.scrapebox.com/google-cache-extractor)

