| As a user, it's in my benefit if a competitor comes along, takes LinkedIn's data that they are freely publishing on the public Internet, and does something useful with it. The correct analogy would be if someone took a copy of my personal resume that I put online, freely accessible on the Internet and did something useful with it. Heck, Google does this already by indexing and providing a directory of public content. The fact that LinkedIn 'allows' them to do this is by virtue that it makes business-sense to do so and drives traffic to their site. The rule should be plain and simple here: if you put user content online and do not make any efforts to restrict it (i.e. no passwords, no logins), call it "public information", you do not have any rights to say who can and cannot access that content, at the minimum. Unless I'm mistaken, you also cannot claim copyright infringement, as the user technically owns that content as well -- you just have a license to publish it (either to a private or public audience). It should be up to the user --- and in fact their right --- to police their own content online. Personally, I find it offensive that LinkedIn seeks to restrict the distribution of such content that I have published through their service, where the expectation it is public. They are not acting in my interest here, they are very clearly acting in their own selfish interest, which I find odd considering LinkedIn's supposed mission has always been to empower their users to achieve professional success. How exactly are they empowering me by restricting who I have told them can access my public content? And the fact such restrictions are solely decided by LinkedIn with no input of their users -- the ultimate owners here -- is a disgrace and violation of their own mission statement. This kind of concept is exactly what the Internet was founded on, folks. To say or think otherwise strikes at the heart of the open web and representing yourself as such is an affront against the great platform that has given rise to so many companies and provided so much opportunity in the world for the individual. This concept is bigger and more powerful than any one company, and deserves to be defended. |
In this case, it's not to _your_ benefit. They're going to warn your boss that you will quit soon.