Israeli data collection company Bright Data won big in court against Meta/Facebook in a case dealing with data scrapping. And the court’s ruling is not just a victory for Bright Data, but for everyone and could have serious repercussions in the future for big firms like Facebook and Google.
Meta has sought a summary judgment from the court in its case claiming that Bright Data had basically stolen its data through the process of data scraping. But Bright Data countered that the information it used is general information collected from all over the web and not proprietary. So, it does not matter who collected it or how once the information is available it cannot belong to any one organization. The judge agreed.
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“The Facebook and Instagram Terms do not bar logged-off scraping of public data; perforce it does not prohibit the sale of such public data. Therefore, the Terms cannot bar Bright Data’s logged-off scraping activities,” wrote U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in his ruling.
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.
Founded in 2014, Bright Data offers its partners and clients several layers GDPR and CCPA compliant proxy network and data collection solutions which it states are unique and unrivaled – with 72 million residential IP addresses and over 750 granted patent claims.
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.
“When Meta approached us with a demand to stop allowing our customers to collect public data (scraping) from Facebook and Instagram, we decided that the right thing to do was to refuse and resolve this in court because public data should remain public,” said Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data. “Despite many efforts by tech giants to exclusively control public information on the internet, common sense prevailed. Public information is public. This has always been our claim, and we are very happy about the decision of the court that supports this approach. Bright Data, as the leading web data collection company, will continue to fight for the basic right to free access to public information on the web.”
Meta has yet to comment on the court’s ruling.
