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Ninth Circuit Again Holds Data Scraping From Public Websites Not Barred by CFAA

In 2017, the federal district court for the Northern District of California enjoined LinkedIn from blocking workplace analytics company hiQ from its site, finding that data scraping from public-facing websites did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). LinkedIn appealed and in 2020 the Ninth Circuit affirmed: [The CFAA’s] prohibition on accessing a…

Floppy disk containing the source code for the Morris Worm held at the Computer History Museum and Robert Morris on the right.

The Morris Worm, the First Indictment under the CFAA and Wake Up Call of a New Age

On November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, the son of a famous Bell Labs cryptographer, released and graduate student at Cornell University, released what became known as the “Morris worm” through Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Morris stated that his intent was “to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting…

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DC Federal Court Follows hiQ, Accessing Website in Violation of Site Terms Not Barred by CFAA

Last fall, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling enjoining LinkedIn from blocking hiQ from scraping data from its site finding that hiQ’s scraping of data from LinkedIn users’ public profiles did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). In Sandig v. Barr, academic researchers who intend to test whether employment websites…

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

Revised Assange Indictment Triggers First Amendment Concerns, Complicates Extradition

On May 23rd the Justice Department returned a superseding indictment against Julian Assange that not only includes and expands on the prior claim stemming from an attempt to hack into the Pentagon’s Secret Internet Protocol Network but adds sixteen additional charges stemming from obtaining and publishing classified information. Counts 5, 18: Attempted Unauthorized Obtaining and…

Venkat Balasubramani

CLBR #270: Venkat, Data Scraping and Daily Stormer

CLBR #270: Venkat, Data Scraping and Daily Stormer Focal Law Group’s Venkat Balasubramani joins us to discuss two recent developments: Dating Scraping after the hiQ Labs Decision The decision in hiQ Labs, Inc. v LinkedIn, Inc., No. 3:17-cv-03301-EMC (N.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2017) in which the court enjoined LinkedIn from blocking access to publicly available…

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9th Circuit Weighs in on CFAA and CAN-SPAM

9th Circuit Weighs in on CFAA and CAN-SPAM The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) provides civil and criminal penalties against come who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access and thereby obtains . . . information from any protected computer.” 18 U.S.C.§ 1030(a)(2). Courts have struggled over what is the role of…

Victory for craigslists in War Against Data Scraping: Circumventing IP Address Blocking May Trigger CFAA Claim

craigslists Wins Again Classified megasite craiglists won another victory in its fight to block 3Taps from aggregating and republishing craigslist ads. As set forth in the craiglists complaint, 3Taps copies (or “scrapes”) all content posted to craigslist in real time, directly from the craigslist website; markets a “craigslist API” to allow third parties to access…

Craigslist Complaint Against Data Scrapers Survives Motion to Dismiss

CRAIGSLIST WEB SCRAPING CASE CONTINUES BIG QUESTION ON WHETHER CFAA BARS ACCESS TO PUBLIC INFORMATION The court refused to dismiss much of Craigslist’s claim against data scrapers.  With respect to the CFAA claims, the court noted that  The parties have not addressed a threshold question of whether the CFAA applies where the wner of an…