Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome extension. Help?

Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by verdverm on Monday January 30, 2023 @01:50PM (#34584555)

1) Talk to a lawyer, many will do an initial consultation for free. Expect to pay money to have them help you with response letters. I would not recommend doing this alone

2) It does sound like your app is more general, like you say, similar to browser automation tools or AutoHotKey. The user requests are not coming from an IP you control. Remove references / examples to LinkedIn for sure. This is basically what they are asking you to do. Talk to a lawyer

Side note, I thought LinkedIn lost that case on appeal, and after being sent back down from the Supreme Court for re-evaluation.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/court-rules-that-data-scraping...

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Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by KieranMac on Monday January 30, 2023 @02:45PM (#34585343)

Again, this is old news and wrong.

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/12/hello-youve-be...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by verdverm on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:34PM (#34585971)

I assume you are only referring to the LinkedIn losing part of my comment. It would be nice if your comment was more specific to this. Thank you for sharing the link though, I recall seeing that page too

As I understand it, OP built a no-code browser automation extension, which can be used to create a LinkedIn automation. It does not come with this ability out of the box, though it seems easy to install: https://browserflow.app/shared/1ac2a868-02ac-4435-a91f-b0203...

I'm not convinced that LinkedIn has a solid case for Cease and Desist. The court didn't find that someone cannot _build_ such a tool, only that they cannot run it (_conditions & nuances_). OP is not running any such scraping service (except maybe during development), and it is in fact a user of the browser extension who would be violating the ToS. This is not unique to Browserflow and the same situation could exist for any browser automation tool.

That being said, LinkedIn (Microsoft) could bury OP in legal fees, so decide if you want to die on that hill...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by KieranMac on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:58PM (#34586284)

Read the link; there's plenty of detail there. Not going to comment on the specifics of OP's case in a public forum, but if the OP wants a free consult, I'll do that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by tptacek on Monday January 30, 2023 @07:45PM (#34589145)

They don't need a case for a C&D. All a C&D does is put the receiving party on notice. They aren't enforceable. What makes them meaningful is that they suggest LinkedIn might sue in the future (or take other adverse action).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome... by seng on Monday January 30, 2023 @10:45PM (#34590668)

There's both local and cloud version of the app. The cloud version of the app runs from the infra that he manages. Hence, he would liable for the violations that happen using the cloud platform that he manages.

[ Parent | on HN ]