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Making a second legally dubious assertion does not strengthen the first legally dubious assertion. Courts have tended to find that robots.txt is non-binding (e.
by gnfargbl 1y ago
Making a second legally dubious assertion does not strengthen the first legally dubious assertion. Courts have tended to find that robots.txt is non-binding (e.g. hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn).
It's a different situation if the website is gated with an explicit T&C acceptance step, of course.
- mpweiher 1y ago> Courts have tended to find that robots.txt is non-binding Evidence? Wikipedia says the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt#Compliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt#Compliance > e.g. hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn The Wikipedia page for this case mentions only legal means, not technical means and does not mention robots.txt at all. As far as I can tell, robots.txt wasn't really relevant to the ruling in that case.
- gnfargbl 1y agoThe actual ruling says, literally, that "Adherence to the rules in a robots.txt file is voluntary." It's not a settled area of law, but that seems to be the current position.
- mpweiher 1y agoAnd the other rulings said the opposite. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- gnfargbl 1y agoYep, absolutely. I hear you. Like everything legal, it seems to be fuzzy and context-dependent. And that is the point -- the HOPL asserts that you can just put a robots.txt on your website and say that it means bots accepted the terms in that file. In reality, that's a dubious claim.