Judge Backs Firm Scraping LinkedIn Data

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn must permit an unrelated company to 'scrape' data publicly posted by LinkedIn users, following a judgement in US District court. Start-up firm hiQ Labs uses the data to identify workers it deems likely to leave their jobs, and had been told to stop by the giant b2b network.

hiQ brought the suit and has been granted a preliminary injunction giving access to LinkedIn data. The Microsoft firm argued that hiQ was in breach of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the judge likened this to discriminative blocking of individual users and expressed concern over its 'unfairly leveraging its power in the professional networking market for an anticompetitive purpose'.

LinkedIn says it is 'disappointed' and will continue to fight the case 'to protect its members' ability to control the information they make available on the site', which has more than 400 million members and around 2 million paid subscribers.

Sourced from www.theverge.com and www.wsj.com/articles/judge-orders-linkedin-to-allow-startup-access-to-user-data-1502752182 .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.