Musk’s X Corp sues Israel’s Bright Data for scraping data

https://www.timesofisrael.com/musks-x-corp-sues-israels-bright-data-for-illegally-scraping-data/

by asdadsdad • 3 years ago

49 43 3 years ago

timesofisrael.com

seviu• 3 years ago

Good luck with that in Switzerland where this is 100% legal.

mschuster912• 3 years ago

Or in Germany, see §44b UrhG.

[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__44b.html

nmlracx• 3 years ago

It seems to me that Twitter's robots.txt only allows Googlebot:

https://twitter.com/robots.txt

Therefore, this disallows other bots in "maschinenlesbarer Form" and the scraping is illegal.

jauntywundrkind• 3 years ago

How the internet survives when basic rights conflict is the active question. 202x is the decade ever nation on the planet woke up & decided to start regulating what happens across the internet.

And most of these rules don't respect anyone else's. Your people in your country do whatever you say whenever they travel across the internet afar. But those people running their servers also have their own laws that apply to them. The potential for conflict here is vast.

tzs• 3 years ago

They aren't alleging that it is illegal. They are alleging that it violates terms that Bright Data agreed to when Bright Data signed up for Twitter.

How do website terms of service work in Switzerland, especially in the case where the person using the website has actually gone through the account creation process there?

orwin• 3 years ago

If it's like in Europe, if a contract is illegal or restrict rights disproportionately, it's unenforceable.

martin8412• 3 years ago

Much of the crap put into terms of service is null and void. It can't restrict your legal rights. As an example, they can't force you into arbitration if you want to sue them.

asdadsdad3• 3 years ago

interesting point. in which countries that would be 100% legal in general? BrightData is set up in Israel, right? Is that the case there? But I wonder if having a US entity (NY) they are bound to US jurisdiction for this. Also, what does that mean for all tooling that scrapes/d Twitter?

hhs• 3 years ago

If interested, this piece offers context with the docket and complaint documents: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/elon...

jcranmer• 3 years ago

Looking at the causes of action, the tortious interference claim is going down in smoke, because one of the elements is that the breach of contract needs to have harmed Twitter, and Twitter hasn't alleged any harm. Which is surprising, because you could pretty much just write a sentence that basically says that scraping causes extra load or extra instability or whatnot and that would satisfy Twiqbal, but there's not even that.

As for the other claims, it seems to boil down to "scraping is against our ToS, and therefore they breached their contract." I'm not savvy enough on the case law to know how strong of a claim this is, but on a first inspection, I've noticed something curious. Twitter talks about a couple of ways that scraping would breach their ToS and then when talking about Bright Data, they don't quite allege that Bright Data did any of those, just that it engaged in scraping.

(It also feels to me like someone started drafting up a claim on violating the CFAA, until another lawyer tapped them on the shoulder and informed them that 9th Circuit precedent from last year is that scraping is absolutely not a CFAA violation.)

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

Looking at the causes of action, the tortious interference claim is going down in smoke, because one of the elements is that the breach of contract needs to have harmed Twitter, and Twitter hasn’t alleged any harm.

Yes, they have (paragraph 77). I suppose you could argue that it is not pled with sufficient specificity, but it looks like they’ve probably pled sufficient details to support it without actually being very explicit in drawing the connection (e.g., providing a mechanism for evading rate limits denies Twitter revenue that otherwise would be received by people seeking the data paying through tiered API access that Twitter sells, referenced in paragraph 27.) This seems like the kind of thing that, if it is a problem, will likely just be addressed by an amended complaint.

As for the other claims, it seems to boil down to “scraping is against our ToS, and therefore they breached their contract.” I’m not savvy enough on the case law to know how strong of a claim this is, but on a first inspection, I’ve noticed something curious. Twitter talks about a couple of ways that scraping would breach their ToS and then when talking about Bright Data, they don’t quite allege that Bright Data did any of those, just that it engaged in scraping.

They identify in general terms the nature of the breach in the breach cause of action (paragraph 64 lists five specific categories of actions in violation of the ToS), each of which is supported more specifically in the general narrative in paragraphs 1-57 that are realleged in each cause of action.

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

IF interested and you don’t pay for Bloomberg Law, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67637345/x-corp-v-brigh...

preommr• 3 years ago

X Corp., formerly known as Twitter,

So this wasn't a joke? Musk is really rebranding everything as 'x'?

ceejayoz4• 3 years ago

The company has already officially been renamed. https://sfstandard.com/2023/04/11/twitter-is-now-called-x-co...

matteoraso• 3 years ago

That was the holding company, not Twitter itself. It does seem like Elon is going all in with the X rebranding, though.

dghughes• 3 years ago

I wonder if Twitter.com will be abandoned on Jan 21 2024? Someone can claim it and start their own website called Twitter.

I was going to joke about Prince and Weird Al fighting over the name but I see I said that already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11604783

NicoJuicy• 3 years ago

I don't even see how v - the everything app, will circumvent the 30% apple/Android tax, lol

DANmode• 3 years ago

Wait til you hear about the new sign!

EMIRELADERO• 3 years ago

For some who may be confused about this: Twitter (err... "X") is alledging that the scraper company explicitly agreed to their ToS, and is pointing to the company's twitter profile as proof. Since they registered the account in the first place, they had to affirmatively agree.

Ordinarily I would say scraping is legal, but only because there's no agreement between the scraping party and the service being scraped that states the contrary. In this case, the scraper agreed not to do so with Twitter, then breached that agreement.

berkle4455• 3 years ago

Good luck with that, Israel is a legal haven for seedy data exfiltration and backdoor SaaS companies.

vuln2• 3 years ago

The breadth of capabilities the small nation has is astounding.

porkbeer• 3 years ago

Thats a funny way to say that.

asdadsdad3• 3 years ago

I wonder is having a US entity (brighdata ny) makes things complicated

asdadsdad3• 3 years ago

oh, they are indeed filing against the Israeli entity - Bright Data Ltd

worldsavior• 3 years ago

Oh my god they actually rebranded to X.

Musk’s X Corp sues Israel’s Bright Data for scraping data

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