Google, Bing, etc are also scraping their site, and I see no cease and desist order there. Make Googlebot authenticate itself, or admit the data is publicly accessible.
No, but when they ask them to leave and they still take a coffee cup they are.
But that's not the point, the point is it's possible to give something for free and also refuse to give it to everyone under any circumstance.
They didn't give me a free cup of coffee and someone could reasonably mistake me for a homeless person based on my (lack of) fashion sense but that doesn't mean I could just reach over the counter and grab a cup because I saw them give one to somebody else when I walked through the door.
When a server sends you a response you aren't taking something, you are being given something. If the server thought you shouldn't have it, it wouldn't give it to you.
How can you say that hiQ isn't allowed to have this, but everyone else is allowed to take as much as they like? All that will happen is hiQ will create a string of shell companies that accesses LinkedIn as their proxies, and you will be wasting the court's time. Step zero is to establish that no one can have access unless authorized, and LinkedIn refuses to do this.
> When a server sends you a response you aren't taking something, you are being given something. If the server thought you shouldn't have it, it wouldn't give it to you.
That's not even a rational argument, ask some hacker sitting in prison how well that one went over.
> How can you say that hiQ isn't allowed to have this, but everyone else is allowed to take as much as they like?
Umm, private property? Terms of service? Take your pick...
> All that will happen is hiQ will create a string of shell companies that accesses LinkedIn as their proxies, and you will be wasting the court's time. Step zero is to establish that no one can have access unless authorized, and LinkedIn refuses to do this.
hiQ isn't fighting the validity of giving access to some people while denying them access to the very same data they are fighting a misapplication of a totally unrelated law (because it's the right thing to do).
This whole thing isn't about denying them access but "hiQ challenged LinkedIn’s attempt to use the CFAA as a tool to enforce its terms of use in court."
"Hacking" involves subverting authentication systems, which is a type of fraud. When there is no authentication system there can be no "hacking", and the CFAA should not be applicable.
The data itself isn't LinkedIn's property (argued elsewhere), so they don't have control over it after it leaves their servers.
This is wandering... please decide whether you want to argue the article, the case, or hypothetical free coffee.
