Law note · United States (federal only)
hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp.
cite 938 F.3d 985 (9th Cir. 2019), affirmed on remand (9th Cir. Apr. 18, 2022)
stage IN FORCE in force since 2022-04-18
The Ninth Circuit held that automated scraping of publicly accessible web pages does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) because a website that permits general public access implicitly authorizes access to that public data, meaning 'without authorization' under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) requires more than a cease-and-desist.
Publishers cannot rely on the CFAA alone to block news aggregators from indexing publicly available content, though state contract claims and copyright infringement claims remain live theories.
Primary source: Decision date April 18, 2022 confirmed from search results
2019 F.3d citation widely documented