Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has dropped its lawsuit against the Israeli data collection company Bright Data over data scrapping.
“The notice of dismissal,” said Bright Data, “ends the tortious interference claim, which focuses largely on customers’ use of Bright Data’s services and waives Meta’s ability to appeal the summary judgment opinion.
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The news comes just one month after a court dismissed Meta’s attempt to have the suit tossed. A federal judge wrote a summary judgment opinion in favor of Bright Data, which rejected Meta’s breach of contract claim and, said Bright Data, “confirmed that Bright Data’s public scaping of Facebook and Instagram did not violate Meta’s Terms of Use.”
“This is not a settlement. Bright Data did not make any agreement with Meta or make any changes to its conduct. This was a total concession by Meta to drop the case it brought against Bright Data for scraping public web data on its website,” added the company.
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.
“This concession by Meta is a pivotal moment for Bright Data and the web scraping community. We are thrilled with the outcome of this case, solidifying that public information is just that public,” said Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data. “Bright Data remains committed to keeping public web data freely accessible to everyone. The internet was intended for everyone’s benefit and no single entity or person should claim they own it.”
Bright Data said it “only scrapes publicly available data,” which is visible to anyone without a login and that “Meta has made the information Bright Data scrapes available to anyone on the Internet and Bright Data’s technology allows organizations to access data to provide information for research and business decisions alike.”
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.
