Cyberside Chats: Everyone wants to be Batman. Hacking Back & Cybersecurity Law
Looking back at 2021 and ahead to 2022
Monthly Minute | Protecting Against Data Scrapers
Death of Activist Aaron Swartz Could Spur Changes to Computer Fraud & Abuse Act
Employer’s Takeover of Former CEO’s LinkedIn Account Lawful Under CFAA
We have previously reported on the Jobiak case which raises the interesting issue of whether an AI-scraped job database is subject to copyright protection and is infringed. We were hoping that the court would make substantive...more
On July 18, 2024, a federal jury in Delaware found that an online travel booking company violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by accessing portions of a European airline’s website without permission and “with...more
Late last year, Chegg Inc. (“Chegg”), an online learning platform, obtained a preliminary injunction based on allegations that the various operators of the Homeworkify website (“Defendants”) – which allows users to view...more
On January 23, 2024, the court in Meta Platforms Inc. v. Bright Data Ltd., Case No. 3:23-cv-00077-EMC (N.D. Cal.), issued a summary judgment ruling with potentially wide-ranging ramifications for the law of scraping and...more
In a recent post, we recounted the myriad of issues raised by recently-filed data scraping suits involving job listings, company reviews and employment data. Soon after, another interesting scraping suit was filed, this time...more
In recent years there has been a great demand for information about job listings, company reviews and employment data. Recruiters, consultants, analysts and employment-related service providers, amongst others, are...more
X Corp (formerly Twitter) has cracked down on data scrapers in a series of lawsuits filed within the last several weeks. One lawsuit targets an Israel-based research firm that provides commercial data scraping, called Bright...more
In a putative class action filed on June 28, 2023, in the Northern District of California, and in other similar cases, plaintiffs allege that OpenAI, Microsoft, and their respective affiliates violated the privacy rights of...more
Summary - A class action lawsuit filed against OpenAI and its primary investor, Microsoft, seeks damages and injunctive relief for the alleged theft and commercial misappropriation of consumer personal data processed by and...more
2022 provided companies with further clarity and insight regarding legal claims that might be viable to stop data (or web) scraping and those that likely won’t work. Data scraping continues to become an increasingly popular...more
Following up on our April 27, 2022 post, Data Scraping Deemed Legal in Certain Circumstances, the most significant data scraping lawsuit has finally come to an end. After six years of litigation, LinkedIn Corp. and hiQ Labs,...more
Pandora’s Virtual Try-On Tool Leads to BIPA Class Complaint - On November 15, 2022, a group of plaintiffs brought a purported class action against Pandora Jewelry LLC, claiming that its virtual try-on tool violates...more
UPDATE: On December 8, 2022, the court issued an order granting the Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction. On December 6, 2022, the parties in the long-running litigation between now-defunct data analytics company hiQ...more
On November 15, 2022, a California district court declined to dismiss a declaratory judgment action brought by a data scraper, 3taps, Inc. (“3taps”), against LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”). (3taps, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No....more
On October 24, 2022, a Delaware district court held that certain claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) relating to the controversial practice of web scraping were sufficient to survive the defendant’s motion to...more
On November 4, 2022, a California district court took up the parties cross-motions for summary judgment in the long-running scraping litigation involving social media site LinkedIn Corp.’s (“LinkedIn”) challenge to data...more
In an effort to “promote privacy and cybersecurity by upholding the legal right of individuals, network owners, operators, and other persons to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information stored in...more
On May 19, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had revised its policy regarding prosecution under the federal anti-hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Since the DOJ last made changes...more
Join Stephanie Skaff and Erik Olson in the discussion on "Platform Ecosystems: Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Other Scraping Law Developments." Web scraping has existed as long as the World Wide Web has, and as data has...more
On remand from the Supreme Court of the United States, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its own 2019 opinion that preliminarily enjoined a professional networking platform from denying a data analytics...more
On April 18, the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation in which the court clarified its position on an important topic: whether the common practice of data “web scraping” can create...more
In September 2019, the Ninth Circuit held that hiQ Labs, Inc.’s (“hiQ”) collection and use of information that LinkedIn users shared on their public profiles did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) because...more
On April 18, 2022, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its narrow interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s (CFAA) “without authorization” prong in a data scraping dispute between hiQ and LinkedIn. The opinion upheld a...more
Over two and a half years ago, this column analyzed a Ninth Circuit case titled HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation, in which the Court agreed with a lower court that had issued a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn...more
After two decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, data scraping is deemed legal if the information is publicly accessible on the internet. ...more