X Corp., until recently better known as Twitter, is suing the Israeli startup Bright Data. Elon Musk’s big toy Twitter claims that Bright Data has been “scraping” information – in other words stealing – from X Corp which the Israeli firm allegedly then uses for its own purposes.
According to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, X Corp/Twitter charges, “Bright Data scrapes and sells millions of records from X Corp.’s X platform, in blatant violation of X Corp.’s terms of service. Bright Data also induces and facilitates other X users to violate their own agreements with X Corp. by selling automated data-scraping tools and services that specifically target a wide range of X Corp. data.”
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Data scraping is the process of extracting data from a website or other online source using a computer program. This data can then be used for a variety of purposes, such as market research, price comparison, or product tracking.
There are a number of different ways to scrape data, but the most common method involves using a web scraping tool. These tools allow you to automate the process of extracting data from websites so that you don’t have to manually copy and paste the data yourself.
Once a firm has extracted the data, it can then store it in a spreadsheet, database, or other file format. This allows the organization to easily analyze the data and use it for its own purposes. And businesses have a wide range of areas where such data can be of value, from market research to keeping track of the competition.
Businesses like X Corp/Twitter, Google and Facebook make a fortune by collecting the data of the users of their free services and selling it to other parties. This is how they can afford to offer such free services. But they always need to be on the lookout for firms that try and scrape such data without paying for it.
Bright Data calls itself the world’s largest data collection platform “dedicated to helping all businesses view the Internet just like their consumers and potential consumers do each and every day.” The firm says that it helps global brands gather publicly available web data in an ethical manner and transform unstructured data.
Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner dismissed the lawsuit as nothing but an effort on Twitter’s part to force third parties to pay for something that is publicly available.
“Bright Data is transparent in its public web data collection practices and is fully compliant with the law,” he said. “We are committed to making public data broadly available to everyone to benefit society and will vigorously defend our position in court to ensure the Internet remains accessible to all.”
