Scraping the open web is NOT the same as accessing privileged APIs to collect private information. If LinkedIn made their pages accessible to anyone as a sort o

Scraping the open web is NOT the same as accessing privileged APIs to collect private information. If LinkedIn made their pages accessible to anyone as a sort of public service (as they used to), people would think twice what data to put on there. The problem is the same as with Facebook: they pretend the data is private and secure, then let people siphon it away. Public and private networks are both fine, but huge corporations trying to mix both usually end up with the worst of both worlds.