Supreme Court Revives LinkedIn Data Scraping Case

LinkedIn's Data Scraping Battle Continues

The Supreme Court has decided to revisit LinkedIn’s legal dispute concerning the scraping of publicly available user data. This development offers LinkedIn another opportunity to prevent Hiq Labs from collecting information from user profiles.

LinkedIn maintains that such data scraping constitutes an illegal activity. However, a ruling against Hiq Labs could significantly impact the work of internet researchers and digital archivists.

Previous Court Ruling

In 2019, LinkedIn initially lost its case against Hiq Labs. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) does not restrict a company from gathering data that is freely accessible online.

LinkedIn contended that Hiq Labs’ extensive scraping of user profiles violated the CFAA, which prohibits unauthorized computer access.

Hiq Labs' Argument

Hiq Labs, a company specializing in employee attrition analysis using public data, asserted that a decision favoring LinkedIn would severely restrict open internet access.

They argued that such an outcome was not the intention of Congress when the CFAA was originally enacted over thirty years ago.

Supreme Court's Action

While the Supreme Court declined to directly hear the case, it has instructed the appeals court to reconsider the matter.

This directive follows the Court’s recent ruling clarifying that accessing data on a computer with existing permission does not violate the CFAA.

Criticism of the CFAA

The CFAA has been frequently criticized as being outdated and poorly defined. Some have even labeled it the “worst law” in technology law.

Critics argue that its language has not kept pace with the rapid evolution of the internet.

Web Scraping: A Double-Edged Sword

Web scraping is a common practice for journalists and archivists seeking to preserve online content from websites that may become defunct.

However, other instances of scraping have raised concerns regarding privacy and civil liberties.

For example, a researcher scraped millions of Venmo transactions, which were publicly visible by default.

Similarly, Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, reportedly scraped over 3 billion profile pictures from social networks without obtaining consent.