This action does more than that. The court left the preliminary injunction against LinkedIn in place: "The district court granted hiQ’s motion. It ordered LinkedIn to withdraw its cease-and-desist letter, to remove any existing technical barriers to hiQ’s access to public profiles, and to refrain from putting in place any legal or technical measures with the effect of blocking hiQ’s access to public profiles."
So LinkedIn is prohibited from blocking hiQ's access by technical means. That's a strong holding. If this case is eventually decided in favor of hiQ, scrapers can no longer be blocked. Throttled a little, maybe, but no more than other users doing a comparable query rate.
So LinkedIn is prohibited from blocking hiQ's access by technical means. That's a strong holding. If this case is eventually decided in favor of hiQ, scrapers can no longer be blocked. Throttled a little, maybe, but no more than other users doing a comparable query rate.