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by rohansingh 2331 days ago
> Are you sure about this? I am not a lawyer, but I believe that the Terms of Service applies to all users, not just those that explicitly set up a user account.

How would that even work? If I browse to any random public page of your website, it's served to me before you've even transmitted the terms of service. How could I be bound by those terms of service when I haven't even seen them?
2 comments
andrewmutz 2331 days ago
As an engineer, I agree with what you are saying, but I think normal people and the courts disagree.

I think these sorts of contracts are called Adhesion Contracts (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/adhesion-contract.asp) and we interact with them all the time. For example, if you valet your car, the valet will hand you a piece of paper with a number printed on it to retrieve your car. On that paper you will find an adhesion contract that is valid and real (although not as powerful as the types of contracts that you sign)

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AstralStorm 2330 days ago
This does not work at least for software licensing based on precedents for shrink-wrap contracts, so again would not work for licensing use of data.

A paper served you by the valet is not an immediate contract as you can deny agreeing to it and service does not happen.

You cannot do that with a publicly visible website, unless you show ToS and require agreement before first use. If you allow a non-transferable license then said data cannot be used by a search engine. If it's transferable you just pushed the problem towards scraping a different bot. (Well, you could have a direct agreement with a few major search engines.)

Caveat emptor: not a lawyer.

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michaelmior 2331 days ago
IANAL, but it seems like ToS could still govern your use of the data which you viewed. Sure, it seems like you couldn't claim any violation based on visiting a random page. But if the ToS is clearly identified on the page and you do something with the data that violates them, perhaps the owner of the site has a case.
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cabaalis 2331 days ago
> perhaps the owner of the site has a case.

Except it sounds like the owner doesn't. If the information is on the page made public, the owner of the page can't place terms on what is done with the data downstream. They'd have to implement some real binding system such as authentication where CFAA would apply. (IANAL)

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turc1656 2331 days ago
Correct, but all of that is void if the data presented is any sort of protected information (copyright, IP, etc.). You can't, for example, scrape Yahoo Finance for pricing and dividend history and republish on your own stock tools website. They have a license to redistribute that data and publish on their own website. Similar story for copyrighted text and things of that nature.
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AstralStorm 2330 days ago
That would require at least showing that ToS on first use. A link on a page is insufficient.

And said ToS would have to force copyright reassignment rather than a general licence, making LinkedIn culpable for any unlawful content published by users of its site.

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