SoylentNews

tonyPick [blogspot.co.uk] writes:

Reuters has an update on the ongoing court battle between LinkedIn and hiQ Labs, and has issued a preliminary injunction stating that LinkedIn cannot prevent a startup from accessing public profile data [reuters.com]

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles.

The case is considered to have implications beyond LinkedIn and hiQ Labs and could dictate just how much control companies have over publicly available data that is hosted on their services.

There is additional background to this case [arstechnica.co.uk] from an earlier atricle at Ars Technica. TLDR version; HiQ scrapes data from public LinkedIn profiles, and then sells analysis of this data to relevant employers. LinkedIn claimed HiQ's access was not allowed and HiQ violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as a result. HiQ sued, asking the courts to rule that they were operating legally.

Also at The BBC [bbc.co.uk], with more details and background.

Original Submission