NEW
YORK, May 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Thursday
a federal judge dismissed a suit X brought against Bright
Data, a public web data company, reaffirming that public web
data does not belong to one entity and is available for public
use.
This legal victory has a profound impact on web scraping for the
collection of public web data and consequently the necessary uses
in all business sectors, research, and development of AI
models.
In throwing out all claims against Bright Data, U.S.
District Judge William Alsup wrote
that giving social media companies free rein of the collection and
use of public web data, "risks the possible creation of information
monopolies that would disserve the public interest."
In February, a judge came to a similar outcome in the lawsuit
Meta brought against Bright Data. These lawsuits are a pattern
that targets scraping companies, individuals, and nonprofits.
Lawsuits are used as a monetary weapon to discourage collecting
public data from sites so conglomerates can hoard user-generated
public data.
"Bright Data's victories over Meta (Facebook) and X (Twitter)
from the past year make it clear to the world that public
information on the web belongs to all of us, and any attempt to
deny the public access will fail. These lawsuits and the following
rulings in favor of web scraping will have positive implications
for society, innovation, research, AI, and beyond," said
Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data.
The X and Meta suits are monumental for the public good and free
markets while laying the groundwork for unified responsible
scraping guidelines.
There have been a number of unsuccessful cases in web scraping
that resulted in permanent bans from both Meta and X, in which
scraping was not defined as public or done unethically. Bright Data
only scrapes publicly available data, which is visible to anyone
without a login. At the time of the suit's filing, X had made the
information Bright Data scraped available to anyone on the
Internet.
Bright Data continually builds upon its scraping ethics.
Recently it launched Bright Shield, a product that ensures data
collection is compliant. Coupled with explicit guidelines and rules
for users of Bright Data's services, this complaint way of scraping
is widely accepted as a general need across industries.
About Bright Data
Bright Data is the #1 public web
data platform. More than 20,000 customers from Fortune 500
companies, academic institutions, non-profits, and small businesses
rely on Bright Data's solutions to retrieve and analyze web data in
the most efficient, reliable, and flexible way so they can make
faster, more informed business-critical decisions.
Contact
jennifer@brightdata.com
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SOURCE Bright Data Ltd.