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
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
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
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
In a significant development in anti-hacking criminal enforcement, the Department of Justice last week released new guidance for charging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), the nation’s premier computer...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 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
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn that automated web scraping of publicly accessible websites does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), even if the website owner...more
On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit earlier this week again affirmed the lower court’s order preliminarily enjoining LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”) from blocking data analytics company hiQ Labs, Inc.’s...more
For years, website owners have leveraged the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA) as a tool to combat unauthorized scraping of data and other content from their websites. Due to a circuit court split on the...more
Once a month, we cover an interesting topic in 60 seconds. This month, Richard Goldstucker and Jeff Fisher discuss protecting your organization's data against data scrapers....more
In Compulife Software Inc. v. Newman, No. 18-12004, 2020 WL 2549505 (11th Cir. May 20, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit vacated a trial court ruling that competitors who used a website operator’s server and database did not...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a first-of-its-kind ruling in Sandvig v. Barr, No. 16-1368, 2020 WL 1494065 (D.D.C. Mar. 27, 2020), the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that private citizens investigating whether...more
Data scraping is a technique by which automated tools are used to extract data from a website and format the data for analysis. Many companies mine website users’ publicly accessible data in order to tailor products and...more
Companies use a variety of causes of actions to protect their websites from competitors or others wanting to “scrape” data from their site using automated tools. ...more
Data scraping is a technique where information on one platform is exported onto another. The practice is widespread and is used for all sort of reasons, like market analysis or advertising. The kind of information located and...more
Due diligence considerations with respect to licensing data and acquiring data-dependent businesses. In the relentless pursuit of the competitive advantages that arise from efficiency and speed, companies are increasingly...more
In early July, Ticketmaster reached a favorable settlement in its action against a ticket broker that was alleged to have used automated bots to purchase tickets in bulk, thus ending a dispute that produced notable court...more
Two recent web scraping disputes highlight some important issues regarding whether a website owner may successfully allege a breach of contract action against a commercial party that has scraped website content contrary to...more
*Trigger Warning*: This article includes mentions of suicide. It could be the start of a Law & Order episode. In August, a pedestrian in Manhattan’s East Village noted a driver sitting inside a parked car. The driver was...more
The public's increasing reliance on anonymous product and company reviews posted online often gives rise to complaints by the subjects of those reviews, especially when the reviews are negative or critical, and threaten to...more
Let’s say that your next idea—which could be the next big idea—involves a web-based collection, compilation, or some presentation of a sliver of “big data” so pioneering, maybe even disruptive, that customers and investors...more
This past week, a Texas district court denied a bid from a web service for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to enjoin a competitor that allegedly scraped a large amount of proprietary data from its closed site via several...more
This post is about Hamilton. Well, sort of. It’s actually about copyright law. But keep reading!...more
On March 30, 2018, in Sandvig v. Sessions, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia allowed one of several constitutional challenges to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to survive a motion to dismiss. ...more