Web scraping is legal, US appeals court reaffirms

The U.S. appeals court ruled that scrapping publicly accessible data is legal.

A landmark ruling by the US Ninth Circuit of Appeals is the latest in a long-running legal battle between LinkedIn and a rival company. The case was sent back to the Ninth Circuit for a re-review after it reached the Supreme Court.

The Ninth Circuit upheld its original decision and found that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act does not apply to data that is publicly accessible on the internet.

The Ninth Circuit's decision is a major win for historians, academics, researchers and journalists who use tools to mass collect information that is publicly accessible on the internet. Without a ruling in place, long-running projects to archive websites no longer online and using publicly accessible data for academic and research studies have been left in legal limbo.

Privacy and security concerns have been caused by egregious cases of scrapers. Several tech giants have filed lawsuits against the startup after it claimed to have cracked billions of social media profile photos. Several companies, including Facebook, have had users' data scrapers over the years.

The case before the Ninth Circuit was brought by LinkedIn against Hiq Labs, a company that uses public data to analyze employee attrition. It was found that Hiq's mass scraper of user profiles was a violation of the terms of service. The case against Hiq was lost after the Ninth Circuit found that the CFAA does not bar anyone from publicly accessible data.

The Ninth Circuit said it relied on a Supreme Court decision in June of last year when it looked at the decades-old CFAA. The Supreme Court narrowed what constitutes a violation of the CFAA as those who gain unauthorized access to a computer system, rather than a broader interpretation of exceeding existing authorization, which the court argued could have attached criminal penalties to.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that the concept of "without authorization" does not apply.

We are disappointed in the court's decision. The case is far from over and we will continue to fight to protect our members. It's not okay when your data is taken without your permission and used in ways that you don't agree to. Our members trust us with their information, which is why we don't allow unauthorized scrapers on our platform.

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