Contractual Control over Information Goods after ML Genius v. Google (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Prof. Guy Rub, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law The copyright – contract tension Stewart Brand famously said that information wants to be free. We know, however, that many laws limit free access…
After hiQ Labs, Is Scraping Public Data Legal? (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Last year, the most important case in the history of web scraping—hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp.—settled. After two trips to the 9th Circuit, a remand from the Supreme Court, and nearly six years of…
Can Government Agencies Ban Scraping?–NAACP v. Kohn (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy For years, open-Internet advocates have argued that scraping bans infringe on First Amendment rights. After all, access to information is a protected form of speech. But since most scraping cases involve two private litigants, and…
2022 Internet Law Year-in-Review
Three dynamics combined to make 2022 a brutal year for Internet Law. First, the techlash is taking its toll. There is widespread belief that the major incumbents are too big, too rich, and too capricious to avoid pervasive government control….
Hello, You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Web Scraping Laws (Guest Blog Post, Part 2 of 2)
by Kieran McCarthy [Eric’s note: this is the second of a two-part series on the denouement of the hiQ v. LnkedIn case, which ended this week with a total loss for hiQ. The prior part explained the most recent ruling,…
As Everyone Expected Years Ago, hiQ’s CFAA Wins Don’t Mean It Can Freely Scrape–hiQ v. LinkedIn (Guest Blog Post, Part 1 of 2)
by Kieran McCarthy [Eric’s note: this is the first of a two-part series on the denouement of the hiQ v. LinkedIn case. This part explains the most recent ruling, a devastating but not unexpected loss for hiQ. The next part…
Does the CFAA Help Airlines Control Their Distribution Channels?–RyanAir v. Booking (Guest Blog Post)
by Kieran McCarthy When the Supreme Court decided Van Buren v. United States last summer, many Computer Fraud and Abuse Act experts felt that the decision avoided the worst interpretations of the CFAA, while consciously leaving most of its practical…
Section 230 Protect Apple’s App Store from Claims Over Cryptocurrency Theft–Diep v. Apple
This lawsuit relates to the “Toast Plus” app that was available in Apple’s app store. The plaintiffs claim it was a spoof app designed to steal cryptocurrency worth $5k in Diep’s case and $500k in Nagao’s case (ouch). The plaintiffs’…
Court Dissolves hiQ’s Injunction Against LinkedIn–hiQ v. LinkedIn
hiQ was a data snarfer. Specifically, it was “a ‘people analytics’ company that provided information to businesses about their workforces based on statistical analysis of LinkedIn members’ wholly public profiles.” In May 2017, LinkedIn sent hiQ a C&D and blocked…
More Evidence of the CFAA Post-Van Buren/hiQ Jurisprudential Anarchy (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) is a law that was written before the commercial Internet was a thing (1984). And many judges—particularly Boomers in the rarified air of the appellate courts—grew up in…