I definitely need to read the decision. I'm guessing BrightData didn't need to create an account to access the data or else Alsup's decision here would go against the Supreme Court's precedent for hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn ... but I'm curious if it intersects with that.<p>Edit: This does not intersect with hiQ Labs v LinkedIn. From the decision itself:<p>> <i>It bears emphasis that this action deals only with scraping data that X Corp. has made publicly available. X Corp. does not allege or in any way suggest that the data scraped was solely accessible to X users logged in to registered accounts or was otherwise password-protected. Rather, it points to materials advertising “techniques to scrape, structure, and analyze public web data” and “[t]ap into . . . public accounts,” as well as tools used to “gather
vast amounts of public web data” (Amd. Compl. ¶¶ 45, 50, 64). X Corp. “employs rate limits that cap the number of posts that may be viewed by registered users and those who access the platform without an account,” but that does not render public posts any less public (Amd.
Compl. ¶ 37). Nor do the other “industry standard automation prevention techniques” that X Corp. implements, such as CAPTCHAs and anomaly detection tools (Amd. Compl. ¶ 35).</i>
> Giving social networks complete control over the collection and use of public web data "risks the possible creation of information monopolies that would disserve the public interest," the judge wrote.<p>This person gets it. Information wants to be free.