ARTICLE · 01 MARCH 2024

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Data Scraping From A South African Perspective

Swart Attorneys

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LinkedIn has been trying to stop a data analytics company from scraping its publicly visible content over the past years due to concerns about users' privacy and unlawful competition.

South AfricaPrivacy

LinkedIn has been trying to stop a data analytics company from scraping its publicly visible content over the past years due to concerns about users' privacy and unlawful competition. The U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals in the United States of America recently confirmed its previous view that web scraping is legal in certain circumstances and prevented LinkedIn from blocking it.

LinkedIn's action was motivated at least in part by some bad press that it had unfairly suffered, namely that it was hacked and the data of countless users compromised, when in fact it was information that that had been scraped without its consent.

This post explores some initial thoughts on the position under South African law.

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