6 ms·

robots.txt have no legal validity.

• ikeboy 9y ago
  I mean, it seems to have been cited in the lawsuit. See e.g. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5803b57737c581885cbd0667/t/597779d26a49634b3d745b33/1501002195360/062917+TRO+Hearing+hiQ+Labs+v+LinkedIn+Corp_.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5803b57737c581885cbd0... and search for it.
  • dognotdog 9y ago
    I doubt a bot could legally agree to a license put into robots.txt, even if it were able to make sense of it, and a human is never expected to read it. The purpose of robots.txt is to guide bots away from circular links and such that would result in bogging down the site and causing undue amounts of nonsense traffic. The purpose of robots.txt not access control. EDIT: typo fix
    • ikeboy 9y ago
      The human is expected to use it to not scrape sites that prohibit it.
  • scoot 9y ago
    Although it appears the court found for HiQ (against LinkedIn): https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/08/14/hiqlinkedintro.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/08/14/hiqlinkedintro.pdf
    • ikeboy 9y ago
      Temporary injunction, not final decision.