Hmmm.

So, if I'm reading this right:

If it's not behind a login, it's free game for scraping. CFAA only explicitly applies once you (the service provider) enters into an explicit relationship of use with someone else.

I.e. If LinkedIn made an account necessary to even browse the currently "public" data, and set limits as a condition of being a user that would be fine, and may give them a leg to stand on for future claims of misuse of their systems since the behavior is already covered by a default terms of use in creating an account.

In terms of making currently public data more difficult to access in response to scraping, I foresee business evolving even more in the direction through which everything gets locked behind an initial contract step to ensure that people can reserve the right to refuse access.

I'm very wary of the whole malicious interference with a contract reasoning that hiQ employed. Just because you're relying on a public data source to be accessible in a convenient way to you to deliver a service to an unrelated third-party should not obligate the party of the public data source to deliver data in a convenient way to you. That type of thing would lead to ridiculousness like being able to sue the makers of the Yellow/White Pages for instance for changing things up.

Further, I still see grounds for remedy to LinkedIn in that they do still have a right to refuse service to anyone, regardless of outstanding contacts entered into by that person. The only leg to stand on that I can see for hiQ is if the court limited the precedent being set in the event that LinkedIn identified them, notified them and requested them to cease and desist, hiQ refused (or hiQ offered to enter into an alternate business arrangement and LinkedIn refused to accomodate), and then LinkedIn implemented the interfering measure. In that circumstance, I can see a malicious interference maybe being upheld, but I still have very little sympathy for hiQ because whether the pages are public or not, they are imposing a significant cost on LinkedIn to serve that data if his is systematically enumerating the entire public LinkedIn dataset.

To me, hiQ is a guy OCR'ing the White Pages/recording a storefront 24/7. The details of how the Internet operates changes that a bit, but nevertheless, it is there.

It is a fundamental continuation of a trend I've noticed in Tech in that it is a field where practitioners/the businesses practitioners write code for for whatever reason assume that the platform running/servicing code they write fundamentally "belongs" to them. That any data their program can get access to is free-game.

I don't know where the disconnect is, or if maybe I'm just a freak in that I treat someone else's hardware as if I were entering their home. Even with the code I write.

You don't just waltz into someone else's space and start using all the amenities without asking. It's rude, and grounds to have admittance refused in the future. You don't do things to the system without asking.

It's like... Imagine most people are blind. You're a salesman walking into their space talking a good story or providing some service while completely ransacking their domicile for every shred of info you can possibly take with you. Filming the inside, the layout, rifling through mail and rolodexes, so on and so forth, while all they are aware of is explicitly what you tell them is going on.

As one who writes software, and automates tasks with computers, I feel it to be our duty to not facilitate that sort of behavior. I just wish I could figure out a way to spread that ethos and keep the bills paid.

Otherwise I fear we'll lose any benefit of an assumption of integrity we've managed to build up. Hell, maybe it's too late for that given the way things are going.