A federal judge in California rejected a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against Israel’s Bright Data, which entailed the scraping of public online data and its proper use.
X, previously known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against Bright Data, claiming that the latter “scrapes data from X” and sells it “by employing complex technical methods to circumvent X Corp.’s anti-scraping technology.” X further stated the company infringed its term of services and copyright.
Data scraping is the process by which automated programmes search through publically accessible websites to gather data. This data can then be utilised for a variety of reasons, such as targeting online advertisements and training artificial intelligence models
In a Dallas County lawsuit, X had previously demanded more than $1 million in damages from unspecified defendants for “unlawfully scraping data associated with Texas residents.”
“X Corp. wants it both ways: to keep its safe holds yet exercise a copyright owner’s right to eliminate wrestling fees from those who want to obtain and copy X users’ content,” Judge William Alsup ruled in dismissing the complaint.
He added on to state that X was “happy to allow the extraction and duplication of X users’ content so long as it is compensated” and that it was not “looking to safeguard X users’ privacy.”
Meta has earlier complained to Bright Data, but their complaint was also rejected.
In an email, Bright Data claimed that its triumphs over Meta and X proved that online public data “belongs to all of us, and any attempt to deny public access will fail.”
According to the company, “what is occurring now is unprecedented; how it will impact general business, research, AI, and beyond.”
According to Bright Data, it only scrapes data that is freely accessible to the public and does not require a login. X provided at the time of filling the lawsuit that Bright Data had scraped from available information.
