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U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled on
Thursday that X, formerly Twitter, failed to plausibly allege
that Bright Data Ltd violated its user agreement by allowing the
scraping and evading X's own anti-scraping technology.
Alsup said using scraping tools is not inherently fraudulent,
and giving social media companies free rein to decide how public
data are used "risks the possible creation of information
monopolies that would disserve the public interest."
The judge also said X was not entitled to "de facto copyright
ownership" in copyrighted content that X's users made available
to the public.
Lawyers for X did not immediately respond on Friday to requests
for comment.
Or Lenchner, Bright Data's chief executive, said in a statement:
"Bright Data's victory over X makes it clear to the world that
public information on the web belongs to all of us, and any
attempt to deny the public access will fail."
Alsup said X can try to amend its complaint, which sought
unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for breach of
contract, trespass and misappropriation. The San Francisco-based
company sued Bright Data last July.
In January, another San Francisco judge ruled that Bright Data
had not violated Meta Platforms' terms of service by scraping
data from Facebook and Instagram. Meta ended its lawsuit against
Bright Data a month later.
Then in March, another San Francisco judge dismissed X's lawsuit
against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which
published articles based on scraped data that faulted a rise in
hate speech on the platform.
X claimed that the articles were scaring away advertisers,
costing it millions of dollars, and has appealed the decision.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. His other
businesses include electric car company Tesla.
The case is X Corp v Bright Data Ltd, U.S. District Court,
Northern District of California, No. 23-03698.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by
Marguerita Choy, Kirsten Donovan)
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