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I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you

I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can. This, coming from someone who used to work at LinkedIn. These companies have built their fortunes on the public Internet and now that they are successful they seek to not pay homage to the platform that give them their success. It's very clearly anti-competitive, and bad for users. LinkedIn should be forced to compete based upon the veracity and differentiation of their service, not because they have their users' public data held hostage from competitors.

anandsuresh 9y ago
This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties. In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces as they see fit. With a 3rd-party in the picture, updates to user-data may or may not be respected by the 3rd party, leading to poor user-experience. Quoting the article, "HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviors, such as when they might quit." Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. And while I have no control over the sharing of data, should something like this happen to me, I'd be more inclined to stop using LinkedIn, which in-turn affects LinkedIn's ability to do business.
- redial 9y ago
  Then don't make your profile public. You can't expect someone to forget you once had a bad haircut just because you now got a really cool one.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - chii 9y ago
    actually, that happens a lot, at least before the advent of the internet. Physical photos are not always available, and people's memories fade. This is why a lot of people still think of information in the old way - as time goes by, it might fade.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. If you think you can do that, by all means try. But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot.
    - deleted 9y ago
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    - deleted 9y ago
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    - studentrob 9y ago
      > The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. When did we ever teach people that you can control where your data ends up on the internet? Aren't we trending towards teaching people to not even share data on "closed" services like Facebook and Gmail precisely because they are a single source for a lot of data to be misused by the company, or hacked by a malicious actor? Regarding data that is accessible without "friending" someone or logging in as the user themselves (e.g. Gmail), I hope people already realize that this data can easily be re-used. > But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot. If the majority of people think that they can share nude photos of themselves on their own blog or twitter and that this won't be re-used elsewhere, well... I must be living in a different reality, or I misunderstand your point.
- syshum 9y ago
  One solution to both HIq labs and linked in is to give users, not these companies, some kind of ownership over their data. Instead of having information about you be owned by which ever corporation collects it, have it at all times be owned by you. While there are some clear problems with this approach, something needs to be done about companies building databases of ruin where every moment everyone lives from the day they are born until the day they die are cataloged into database for review either by society in general or by algorithms looking to make predictions that impact an individuals future. I should have some level of control over my Personal information, today even if you actively suppress the 1st party info you put out in the world the number of 3rd parties adding to your profile dwarfs any data you personally put out there, from credit reports, to government databases to credit card companies to soon your web browsing history sold by the ISP's It is ,IMO, out of control
  - nine_k 9y ago
    Data you own is not public, by definition. This needs to be made abundantly clear. Something like "all rights reserved" on images.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      As usual this is the "copyright" debate. So is your public profile copyrighted by you? The actual server is controlled by you or gives you a way to take the data down. But by then it could have been republished elsewhere!
  - avip 9y ago
    You do "own" the data. It just so happens that by registering to LI, you've granted A worldwide, transferable and sublicensable right to use, copy, modify, distribute, publish, and process, information and content that you provide through our Services, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or others
    - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      To whom have you granted the license to? I could see a legal argument that you've granted LinkedIn such a license, along with the right for LinkedIn to sublicense and transfer it, but still retain the right to press claims against third parties that scrape LinkedIn and use the information. I don't think you've granted LinkedIn the right to sue to enforce your claims against third parties, so you'd have to sue directly.
- deleted 9y ago
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- cvsh 9y ago
  >Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. What choice? The only choice you have is whether to post public info or not. You have no choice over what others do with it. You can't police what others do with information that you freely publicize.
  - anandsuresh 9y ago
    The issue isn't that the data is public. The issue is the extraction of underlying behavior based on the spatial and temporal characteristics of the data being posted. E.g. the fact that I updated my profile on LinkedIn is not in question. But the underlying behavior is that the average user normally updates their profile around the time that they start a job-search. While this isn't true for every user, the use of an algorithm may turn up false positives, which may have unintended results, especially when this data is presented to your manager. Secondly, while the updated profile is public knowledge, the temporal characteristics of the update isn't a feature that is directly published by LinkedIn. Call it a product feature; it is tailored to present the qualifications of a user, not to advertise the fact that they may be looking for a job. While one can argue that update is public knowledge, and must therefore be available for data-mining purposes, there is a subtle, but potentially dangerous leak of information here that is open to interpretation. LinkedIn's position, that this leak may be potentially harmful to its users, and by extension, its core business, is therefore a fair point.
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  Though I disagree, I think basically understand your argument regarding why people should have to respect the wishes of a party when dealing with information that the party made public. What I cannot understand is how such a system could reasonably be enforced. Let's say John Doe posts his resume on a job board. If I print out his resume, but he later updates it, am I now somehow in the wrong for retaining the old copy? I am also a little puzzled by the notion that "persistence" is a new phenomenon. Of course there have been paper records and such for quite some time, but I'll put that aside for a moment. When I was younger, I was often cautioned to think carefully before acting, as a reputation decades in the making could be permanently ruined in just minutes. It seems to me that when it comes to mistakes and "bad" deeds, society's collective memory has always been rock solid. Rather the persistence, I think the new factor is that things are less regional than before. You can't just pick up and move to a new town, because they basically have the same Internet everywhere.
  - anandsuresh 9y ago
    >What I cannot understand is how such a system could reasonably be enforced. That would be a 26 billion dollar question, and one I would very much love to solve one day! :) I believe that your example is fairly simplistic to capture the crux of the issue here. The metadata associated with posts often contain features that are quite revealing, but not necessarily the kind of data that the source would wish to be revealed. E.g. I have noticed multiple times that the number of cold emails I have received from recruiters is higher immediately after I update my LinkedIn profile, leading me to believe that the last-update timestamp is a feature that the LinkedIn search engine may be relying on to rank results. While my evidence is purely empirical, it isn't a stretch to imagine that it would be a reasonable thing to do, given that most users normally update their profiles when they are about to start searching for new opportunities. On the one hand, this is a an excellent product that allows recruiters to reach targets that exhibit behavior associated with active job-seekers, resulting in better connections. It results in a win-win situation where the recruiter gets a pretty good return on his/her investment, and the target receives the attention/information they were looking for with their update. False positives in this situation result in a few unsolicited emails/unwanted attention. On the flip side, this information can be repackaged to present a manager with a graph plotting the probability of an employee quitting. While this is a perfectly good product, no employee would every use a service that might reveal their future plans ahead of a time of their own choosing. Furthermore, false positives here can have a significant impact and LinkedIn may not remain in business for long if word of this product gets out.
rickpmg 9y ago
I have no love for linkedin, but not sure of your position. They collected the data, host it, etc, and incur costs for doing so. Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. People argue that the data is public. I say that's not the issue. While the data itself might be available elsewhere, it is raiding the _collection_ of it that is being argued, not that 'public' data is 'private'. The _value_ that LinkedIn adds is that they've built the structure to collect and maintain the data. They are _not_ asking the court to prohibit anyone from collecting the same data on their own, at their own expense. If someone wants to start a rival LinkedIn, they are free to do so.
- redial 9y ago
  > Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. That is exactly what public means. Do not make it public if you don't want 'the public' to use it.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Let me replace the word "re-use" with "re-publish". Does your analysis change at all?
    - redial 9y ago
      No. Public means everybody can do whatever they want with it, no exceptions (except, as with all things, by law). If you want to restrict the information, then do it, but don't make it public and then when a competitor uses it claim it wasn't public 'for them'.
      - dahart 9y ago
        Linked in never made it "public". Use of their site is and always has been licensed. https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement
cabalamat 9y ago
> If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. I wonder if the same ruling would apply to companies using Twitter's data feed? If so, it would be important in breaking open data silos.
avip 9y ago
Not sure how this view should be interpreted: - Websites should not have ToS - Websites may have ToS, users should be able to violate it without consequences if they don't like it ( = roughly current state of affairs) - Websites may only have ToS derived from some criminal act - something else?
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  How about "Website ToS should only be legally enforceable if users have actively indicated acceptance of them, not simply by saying that you agree to the ToS if you read the website".
  - ikeboy 9y ago
    The current injunction says LinkidIn can't even refuse to serve pages if they detect a ToS violation.
dahart 9y ago
> If you're offering a service that is public LinkedIn is not a public service, LinkedIn is a private, for-profit business. A public service is normally publicly funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service > with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. LinkedIn licenses their service to both free and paid users, and they can legally and do attempt to police what users can access the information. Whether it's enforceable or not, LinkedIn has a EULA and use of their service, whether you have an account or not, is presumably governed by their license. They are well within their right to restrict requests being made by spammers and DDOS attacks, for example. How do you tell between legitimate requests and abusive ones, and how could you compel public access without enabling abusive ones? > LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can. The internet isn't a public service yet either, at least in the US. I think it should be, but it currently is not. This is conflating the knowledge that everyone with a computer and net access can currently access a LinkedIn server with the idea that everyone must be able to.
- smilekzs 9y ago
  > > If you're offering a service that is public > LinkedIn is not a public service A service that is public(ly accessible through Internet) != Public Service.
  - dahart 9y ago
    That is correct. It's unfortunate, but such is the difficulty of language. "Public service" is a term that has precedence and legal meaning in the US, feel free to check out the article that I linked. It's totally fine to call a service that is publicly accessible a public service, but it is going to lead to miscommunication if you are suggesting that this public service should have the same kind of legal requirements and regulations that the other kind of "Public Service" already has.
    - vacri 9y ago
rayiner 9y ago
> I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. Obviously LinkedIn can't control the information itself. But this case isn't about the information in the abstract. It's about an HTTP request to a piece of private property, and how LinkedIn programs that private property to respond to an HTTP request. It's well-accepted that owners of private property can make it available to the general public, with whatever restrictions they please. There is no good reason to treat web servers differently than store fronts. LinkedIn should be able to control who accesses their web servers and how.
- vacri 9y ago
  > There is no good reason to treat web servers differently than store fronts. LinkedIn should be able to control who accesses their web servers and how. These two statements do not agree with each other. An owner of a brick-and-mortar shop can't (legally) stand out the front and bar black people from entering, for example.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    I believe that store can stop you from coming inside and photographing all the displays. I don't think they can stop you from photographing through the window. It's an interesting case.
    - wolco 9y ago
      In this case you go in and request the price and they tell you. They can't stop you from sharing the price its public now.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        We are just gonna beat this analogy to death, aren't we?
      - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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ebbv 9y ago
I get your point but there's a really scary implication here that if I run a website I can't just ban any IPs I want that I deem to be abusing my service. If I spot a bot scraping my data, I should have the right to block it.
cmdlinerambo 9y ago
Whenever there is a free market, market participants do what they can to restrict the market. This is the nature of the free market.
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  That's why it's necessary for government to regulate free markets - to keep them as free as reasonably possible. On the surface, this sounds like a contradiction. Unfortunately it's also a little too easy to wind up with corporatism or oligarchy when government is afforded too much power to regulate.
jitix 9y ago
But isn't the data stored on LinkedIn's servers technically owned by LinkedIn? I support this decision in the interest of innovation but hiQ is using data that is physically on LinkedIn's systems and which has been legally acquired by LinkedIn from its users. The term "public data" is a very broad definition and needs to be well defined.
- morecoffee 9y ago
  Is the data still Linked In's once it leaves the server though? Hopefully the court will find that the answer is no.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  If you serve that data to a client by a simple HTTP request it's publicly accessible. My guess would be that they could claim copyright over all material published on LinkedIn, which they probably do, however the fair use of that copyright would be the question.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  In this case, it's a moot discussion. LinkedIn publicly disclaims ownership of the data.
jacquesm 9y ago
So, how can this be twisted so crawling the Google SERPS is legal?
gfodor 9y ago
One of the big dynamics of information I feel is still woefully under-specified is the fact that information aggregation results in power. In that light, you could imagine some framework where certain uses of public information that are inherently not aggregative are somehow legally and ethically distinct from those uses which involve aggregation. I have no idea if this distinction would be relevant for the purpose of a company enforcing use of their content, but I think on the side of data use itself, it certainly is a meaningful distinction.
dheera 9y ago
Every time there is a case about whether or not information is free to use in some way, it doesn't sit well with me. As of now deep down in my heart I don't really believe in intellectual property. I do believe in respect, and in giving credit where credit is due. But when all is said and done, I don't believe in copyrighting a number. I don't believe that it is anyone's right to dictate how bits that enter devices I own are used. How do protect inventions and businesses, you ask? I say: * If you have a secret you don't want to be distributed, don't share it with anyone you cannot trust. Trained models are a good example. * Provide a service that only provides a limited amount of information per unit time. The user is free to use the information they obtained however they wish, but even a thousand users wouldn't have a way to copy your whole database in a reasonable amount of time. Google search, for example. * Alternatively, if you are not sure you trust someone, take collateral from them. (e.g. "It is legal to share this information about me, but then it is also legal for me to share this other information about you [that you probably don't want shared]", or "If you share this information about me, you will be kicked out from the company/platform/etc.", or an Ethereum smart contract that causes you to be fined if someone else demonstrates that they got a piece of information that I shared with you.) * Build businesses that have stronger value propositions than restricting how information is used. Network effects, physical hardware, good service and support, good use of massive amounts of back-end data that only you have, are all options.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > But when all is said and done, I don't believe in copyrighting a number. I don't believe that it is anyone's right to dictate how bits that enter devices I own are used. Numbers can and are used to represent anything and everything. This has implications far beyond DRM. For instance: I don't believe you have the right to use my photo to make a defamatory Facebook account in my name.
  - dheera 9y ago
    In this case, I say the crimes are: - defaming - claiming that I am you and not in copying numbers.
bjd2385 9y ago
Well put!
a_lifters_life 9y ago
MS sucks what can I say?

anandsuresh 9y ago

This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties. In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces as they see fit. With a 3rd-party in the picture, updates to user-data may or may not be respected by the 3rd party, leading to poor user-experience. Quoting the article, "HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviors, such as when they might quit." Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. And while I have no control over the sharing of data, should something like this happen to me, I'd be more inclined to stop using LinkedIn, which in-turn affects LinkedIn's ability to do business.

redial 9y ago
Then don't make your profile public. You can't expect someone to forget you once had a bad haircut just because you now got a really cool one.
- deleted 9y ago
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- chii 9y ago
  actually, that happens a lot, at least before the advent of the internet. Physical photos are not always available, and people's memories fade. This is why a lot of people still think of information in the old way - as time goes by, it might fade.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. If you think you can do that, by all means try. But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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  - studentrob 9y ago
    > The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. When did we ever teach people that you can control where your data ends up on the internet? Aren't we trending towards teaching people to not even share data on "closed" services like Facebook and Gmail precisely because they are a single source for a lot of data to be misused by the company, or hacked by a malicious actor? Regarding data that is accessible without "friending" someone or logging in as the user themselves (e.g. Gmail), I hope people already realize that this data can easily be re-used. > But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot. If the majority of people think that they can share nude photos of themselves on their own blog or twitter and that this won't be re-used elsewhere, well... I must be living in a different reality, or I misunderstand your point.
syshum 9y ago
One solution to both HIq labs and linked in is to give users, not these companies, some kind of ownership over their data. Instead of having information about you be owned by which ever corporation collects it, have it at all times be owned by you. While there are some clear problems with this approach, something needs to be done about companies building databases of ruin where every moment everyone lives from the day they are born until the day they die are cataloged into database for review either by society in general or by algorithms looking to make predictions that impact an individuals future. I should have some level of control over my Personal information, today even if you actively suppress the 1st party info you put out in the world the number of 3rd parties adding to your profile dwarfs any data you personally put out there, from credit reports, to government databases to credit card companies to soon your web browsing history sold by the ISP's It is ,IMO, out of control
- nine_k 9y ago
  Data you own is not public, by definition. This needs to be made abundantly clear. Something like "all rights reserved" on images.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    As usual this is the "copyright" debate. So is your public profile copyrighted by you? The actual server is controlled by you or gives you a way to take the data down. But by then it could have been republished elsewhere!
- avip 9y ago
  You do "own" the data. It just so happens that by registering to LI, you've granted A worldwide, transferable and sublicensable right to use, copy, modify, distribute, publish, and process, information and content that you provide through our Services, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or others
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    To whom have you granted the license to? I could see a legal argument that you've granted LinkedIn such a license, along with the right for LinkedIn to sublicense and transfer it, but still retain the right to press claims against third parties that scrape LinkedIn and use the information. I don't think you've granted LinkedIn the right to sue to enforce your claims against third parties, so you'd have to sue directly.
deleted 9y ago
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cvsh 9y ago
>Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. What choice? The only choice you have is whether to post public info or not. You have no choice over what others do with it. You can't police what others do with information that you freely publicize.
- anandsuresh 9y ago
  The issue isn't that the data is public. The issue is the extraction of underlying behavior based on the spatial and temporal characteristics of the data being posted. E.g. the fact that I updated my profile on LinkedIn is not in question. But the underlying behavior is that the average user normally updates their profile around the time that they start a job-search. While this isn't true for every user, the use of an algorithm may turn up false positives, which may have unintended results, especially when this data is presented to your manager. Secondly, while the updated profile is public knowledge, the temporal characteristics of the update isn't a feature that is directly published by LinkedIn. Call it a product feature; it is tailored to present the qualifications of a user, not to advertise the fact that they may be looking for a job. While one can argue that update is public knowledge, and must therefore be available for data-mining purposes, there is a subtle, but potentially dangerous leak of information here that is open to interpretation. LinkedIn's position, that this leak may be potentially harmful to its users, and by extension, its core business, is therefore a fair point.
jaredklewis 9y ago
Though I disagree, I think basically understand your argument regarding why people should have to respect the wishes of a party when dealing with information that the party made public. What I cannot understand is how such a system could reasonably be enforced. Let's say John Doe posts his resume on a job board. If I print out his resume, but he later updates it, am I now somehow in the wrong for retaining the old copy? I am also a little puzzled by the notion that "persistence" is a new phenomenon. Of course there have been paper records and such for quite some time, but I'll put that aside for a moment. When I was younger, I was often cautioned to think carefully before acting, as a reputation decades in the making could be permanently ruined in just minutes. It seems to me that when it comes to mistakes and "bad" deeds, society's collective memory has always been rock solid. Rather the persistence, I think the new factor is that things are less regional than before. You can't just pick up and move to a new town, because they basically have the same Internet everywhere.
- anandsuresh 9y ago
  >What I cannot understand is how such a system could reasonably be enforced. That would be a 26 billion dollar question, and one I would very much love to solve one day! :) I believe that your example is fairly simplistic to capture the crux of the issue here. The metadata associated with posts often contain features that are quite revealing, but not necessarily the kind of data that the source would wish to be revealed. E.g. I have noticed multiple times that the number of cold emails I have received from recruiters is higher immediately after I update my LinkedIn profile, leading me to believe that the last-update timestamp is a feature that the LinkedIn search engine may be relying on to rank results. While my evidence is purely empirical, it isn't a stretch to imagine that it would be a reasonable thing to do, given that most users normally update their profiles when they are about to start searching for new opportunities. On the one hand, this is a an excellent product that allows recruiters to reach targets that exhibit behavior associated with active job-seekers, resulting in better connections. It results in a win-win situation where the recruiter gets a pretty good return on his/her investment, and the target receives the attention/information they were looking for with their update. False positives in this situation result in a few unsolicited emails/unwanted attention. On the flip side, this information can be repackaged to present a manager with a graph plotting the probability of an employee quitting. While this is a perfectly good product, no employee would every use a service that might reveal their future plans ahead of a time of their own choosing. Furthermore, false positives here can have a significant impact and LinkedIn may not remain in business for long if word of this product gets out.

rickpmg 9y ago

I have no love for linkedin, but not sure of your position. They collected the data, host it, etc, and incur costs for doing so. Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. People argue that the data is public. I say that's not the issue. While the data itself might be available elsewhere, it is raiding the _collection_ of it that is being argued, not that 'public' data is 'private'. The _value_ that LinkedIn adds is that they've built the structure to collect and maintain the data. They are _not_ asking the court to prohibit anyone from collecting the same data on their own, at their own expense. If someone wants to start a rival LinkedIn, they are free to do so.

redial 9y ago
> Just because they allow the public to access it, doesn't mean the public should have a right to re-use it. That is exactly what public means. Do not make it public if you don't want 'the public' to use it.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Let me replace the word "re-use" with "re-publish". Does your analysis change at all?
  - redial 9y ago
    No. Public means everybody can do whatever they want with it, no exceptions (except, as with all things, by law). If you want to restrict the information, then do it, but don't make it public and then when a competitor uses it claim it wasn't public 'for them'.
    - dahart 9y ago
      Linked in never made it "public". Use of their site is and always has been licensed. https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

cabalamat 9y ago

> If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. I wonder if the same ruling would apply to companies using Twitter's data feed? If so, it would be important in breaking open data silos.

avip 9y ago

Not sure how this view should be interpreted: - Websites should not have ToS - Websites may have ToS, users should be able to violate it without consequences if they don't like it ( = roughly current state of affairs) - Websites may only have ToS derived from some criminal act - something else?

TheCoelacanth 9y ago
How about "Website ToS should only be legally enforceable if users have actively indicated acceptance of them, not simply by saying that you agree to the ToS if you read the website".
- ikeboy 9y ago
  The current injunction says LinkidIn can't even refuse to serve pages if they detect a ToS violation.

dahart 9y ago

> If you're offering a service that is public LinkedIn is not a public service, LinkedIn is a private, for-profit business. A public service is normally publicly funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service > with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. LinkedIn licenses their service to both free and paid users, and they can legally and do attempt to police what users can access the information. Whether it's enforceable or not, LinkedIn has a EULA and use of their service, whether you have an account or not, is presumably governed by their license. They are well within their right to restrict requests being made by spammers and DDOS attacks, for example. How do you tell between legitimate requests and abusive ones, and how could you compel public access without enabling abusive ones? > LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can. The internet isn't a public service yet either, at least in the US. I think it should be, but it currently is not. This is conflating the knowledge that everyone with a computer and net access can currently access a LinkedIn server with the idea that everyone must be able to.

smilekzs 9y ago
> > If you're offering a service that is public > LinkedIn is not a public service A service that is public(ly accessible through Internet) != Public Service.
- dahart 9y ago
  That is correct. It's unfortunate, but such is the difficulty of language. "Public service" is a term that has precedence and legal meaning in the US, feel free to check out the article that I linked. It's totally fine to call a service that is publicly accessible a public service, but it is going to lead to miscommunication if you are suggesting that this public service should have the same kind of legal requirements and regulations that the other kind of "Public Service" already has.
  - vacri 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago

> I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest. Obviously LinkedIn can't control the information itself. But this case isn't about the information in the abstract. It's about an HTTP request to a piece of private property, and how LinkedIn programs that private property to respond to an HTTP request. It's well-accepted that owners of private property can make it available to the general public, with whatever restrictions they please. There is no good reason to treat web servers differently than store fronts. LinkedIn should be able to control who accesses their web servers and how.

vacri 9y ago
> There is no good reason to treat web servers differently than store fronts. LinkedIn should be able to control who accesses their web servers and how. These two statements do not agree with each other. An owner of a brick-and-mortar shop can't (legally) stand out the front and bar black people from entering, for example.
- KGIII 9y ago
  I believe that store can stop you from coming inside and photographing all the displays. I don't think they can stop you from photographing through the window. It's an interesting case.
  - wolco 9y ago
    In this case you go in and request the price and they tell you. They can't stop you from sharing the price its public now.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      We are just gonna beat this analogy to death, aren't we?
    - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ebbv 9y ago

I get your point but there's a really scary implication here that if I run a website I can't just ban any IPs I want that I deem to be abusing my service. If I spot a bot scraping my data, I should have the right to block it.

cmdlinerambo 9y ago

Whenever there is a free market, market participants do what they can to restrict the market. This is the nature of the free market.

hyperdunc 9y ago
That's why it's necessary for government to regulate free markets - to keep them as free as reasonably possible. On the surface, this sounds like a contradiction. Unfortunately it's also a little too easy to wind up with corporatism or oligarchy when government is afforded too much power to regulate.

jitix 9y ago

But isn't the data stored on LinkedIn's servers technically owned by LinkedIn? I support this decision in the interest of innovation but hiQ is using data that is physically on LinkedIn's systems and which has been legally acquired by LinkedIn from its users. The term "public data" is a very broad definition and needs to be well defined.

morecoffee 9y ago
Is the data still Linked In's once it leaves the server though? Hopefully the court will find that the answer is no.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
If you serve that data to a client by a simple HTTP request it's publicly accessible. My guess would be that they could claim copyright over all material published on LinkedIn, which they probably do, however the fair use of that copyright would be the question.
DannyBee 9y ago
In this case, it's a moot discussion. LinkedIn publicly disclaims ownership of the data.

jacquesm 9y ago

So, how can this be twisted so crawling the Google SERPS is legal?

gfodor 9y ago

One of the big dynamics of information I feel is still woefully under-specified is the fact that information aggregation results in power. In that light, you could imagine some framework where certain uses of public information that are inherently not aggregative are somehow legally and ethically distinct from those uses which involve aggregation. I have no idea if this distinction would be relevant for the purpose of a company enforcing use of their content, but I think on the side of data use itself, it certainly is a meaningful distinction.

dheera 9y ago

Every time there is a case about whether or not information is free to use in some way, it doesn't sit well with me. As of now deep down in my heart I don't really believe in intellectual property. I do believe in respect, and in giving credit where credit is due. But when all is said and done, I don't believe in copyrighting a number. I don't believe that it is anyone's right to dictate how bits that enter devices I own are used. How do protect inventions and businesses, you ask? I say: * If you have a secret you don't want to be distributed, don't share it with anyone you cannot trust. Trained models are a good example. * Provide a service that only provides a limited amount of information per unit time. The user is free to use the information they obtained however they wish, but even a thousand users wouldn't have a way to copy your whole database in a reasonable amount of time. Google search, for example. * Alternatively, if you are not sure you trust someone, take collateral from them. (e.g. "It is legal to share this information about me, but then it is also legal for me to share this other information about you [that you probably don't want shared]", or "If you share this information about me, you will be kicked out from the company/platform/etc.", or an Ethereum smart contract that causes you to be fined if someone else demonstrates that they got a piece of information that I shared with you.) * Build businesses that have stronger value propositions than restricting how information is used. Network effects, physical hardware, good service and support, good use of massive amounts of back-end data that only you have, are all options.

rootlocus 9y ago
> But when all is said and done, I don't believe in copyrighting a number. I don't believe that it is anyone's right to dictate how bits that enter devices I own are used. Numbers can and are used to represent anything and everything. This has implications far beyond DRM. For instance: I don't believe you have the right to use my photo to make a defamatory Facebook account in my name.
- dheera 9y ago
  In this case, I say the crimes are: - defaming - claiming that I am you and not in copying numbers.

bjd2385 9y ago

Well put!

a_lifters_life 9y ago

MS sucks what can I say?