Data Scraping On LinkedIn Vis-à-vis Commercial Usage

• Published date: 03 August 2021
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Privacy, Data Protection, Copyright
• Law Firm: Khurana and Khurana
• Author: Mr Arush Mittal

Data scraping is the method of obtaining and copying specific information from a website or other database. It is the primary method used by internet search engines and web aggregators to index and arranges the massive amount of data available on the internet or another database such as consumer product data or social media profile data. Such information may be readily available on Google or it may require access by accepting the terms of service agreement of the application.

The laws concerning data scraping of publicly available data are continually evolving and involve a huge number of statutory regimes such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"), privacy laws, Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") among the other statutes. Through this article, the authors aim to: firstly, discuss the rules and policies concerning data scraping and commercial usage of such data provided on the platform of LinkedIn; secondly, analyze the legality of publicly available data scraping in consonance with the case of HiQ Labs Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., and lastly, discuss what the awaiting decision holds and the way forward.

LinkedIn Rules and Policies

Rules Governing general usage:

The usage of LinkedIn Platform and its various other services such as LinkedIn.com, LinkedIn-branded apps, LinkedIn Learning, and other LinkedIn-related sites, by a user, is governed by the following documents/ agreements:

1. User Agreement
2. Privacy Policy
3. Cookie Policy
4. Copyright Policy
5. California Consumer Privacy Disclosure

Further, the paid services are subject to certain specific terms in addition to the above-mentioned agreements.

Rules related to data scraping:

As per Clause 3.4 of the User Agreement, LinkedIn reserves the right to restrict, suspend, or terminate the User's account if the user "breaches the terms of this Contract or the law or are misusing the Services (e.g., violating any of the Dos and Don'ts or Professional Community Policies)." Some key Don'ts with respect to usage of data available on LinkedIn are as under:

"8.2. Don'ts

You agree that you will not:

1. ...;
2. Develop, support, or use software, devices, scripts robots, or any other means or processes (including crawlers browser plugins, and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services;
3. ...;
4. Copy, use, disclose or distribute any information obtained from the Services, whether directly or through third parties (such as search engines), without the...