Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 04/19 – Scraping The Web’s Still Legal

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Courts have reaffirmed the right to scrape the public facing web. We have some hints about how the Twitter edit button might work. Updates on the whole Twitter/Elon situation. Microsoft wants to bring in-game ads to Xbox. And a new startup accelerator you’re gonna want to put on your radar. Sponsors: OurCrowd.com/ride Links: Web scraping is legal, US appeals court reaffirms (TechCrunch) Twitter's in-development Edit button offers hints as to how the feature could work (TechCrunch) Apollo Global Considers Participating in a Bid for Twitter (WSJ) Insteon is down and may not be coming back (Stacey On IOT) Microsoft reportedly wants to bring ads to free-to-play Xbox games (The Verge) Andreessen Horowitz unveils piloted program for early-stage entrepreneurs (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the TechMeme Right Home for Tuesday, April 19th, 2022. I'm Brian McCalla today. Courts have reaffirmed the right to scrape the public-facing web. We have some hints about how the Twitter edit button might work. Updates on the whole Twitter and Elon situation. Microsoft wants to bring in-game ads to Xbox and a new startup accelerator you're going to want to put on your radar. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Weird one to lead off with today, but it is an important legal ruling that basically affirms the internet as we know it. A U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that scraping publicly accessible content on the internet is legal, thereby ending a landmark case that LinkedIn brought against a rival, quoting TechCrunch.

The landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals is the latest in a long-running legal battle brought by LinkedIn aimed at stopping a rival company from web scraping personal information from users' public profiles. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year, but was sent back to the Ninth Circuit for the original appeals court to re-review the case. In its second ruling on Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the Internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, which governs what constitutes computer hacking under U.S. law. The Ninth Circuit's decision is a major win for archivists, academics, researchers, and journalists who use tools to mass collect or scrape

information that is publicly accessible on the internet. Without a ruling in place, long-running projects to archive websites no longer online and using publicly accessible data for academic and research studies have been left in legal limbo. But there have been egregious cases of web scraping that have sparked privacy and security concerns. Facial recognition startup Clearview AI claims to have scraped billions of social media profile photos, prompting several tech giants to file lawsuits against the startup. Several companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Parlor, Venmo, and Clubhouse have all had users' data scraped over the years. The case before the Ninth Circuit was originally brought by LinkedIn against Hick Labs, a company that uses

public data to analyze employee attrition. LinkedIn said Hick's mass web scraping of LinkedIn user profiles was against its terms of service, amounted to hacking, and was therefore a violation of the CFAA. LinkedIn first lost the case against Hick in 2019, after the Ninth Circuit found that the CFAA does not bar anyone from scraping data that's publicly accessible. On its second pass of the case, the Ninth Circuit said it relied on a Supreme Court decision last June, during which the U.S. Top Court took its first look at the decades-old CFAA. In its ruling, the Supreme Court narrowed what constitutes a violation of the CFAA, as those who gain unauthorized access to a computer system rather than a broader interpretation

of exceeding existing authorization, which the court argued could have attached criminal penalties to, quote, a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity. Using a gate up, gate down analogy, the Supreme Court said that when a computer or websites gates are up and therefore information is publicly accessible, no authorization is required. The Ninth Circuit in referencing the Supreme Court's gate up, gate down analogy ruled that, quote, the concept of without authorization does not apply to public websites, end quote. I will note this quasi-descenting tweet, though, by friend of the show Martin SFP Bryant, quote, broadly right, but there needs to be some protection for scammy and crappy operators scraping a platform's user's personal data for their own commercial gain, end quote.

Code on Twitter's website is giving us hints about how an upcoming edit button could work by making a new tweet with the updated content and listing the old tweets, before the edit. Quoting TechCrunch. As noted by reverse engineer Nima OG, also good friend of the show, I would point out, who helpfully tweeted a gif of the button in action based on his findings, access to the edit tweet feature would be found in the three dot menu at the top right of your tweet. From this menu today, you can do things like delete a tweet or pin it to your profile, among other things. So this would be a natural place to correct a tweet as well. OG shows that after you correct the tweet, you'll then click an update button to post it to the Twitter timeline. But when asked about how the edit history would appear to other users, OG didn't know yet.

He told TechCrunch that from what he had observed in code from the Twitter website, the edit button didn't actually edit the tweet on the back end. It creates another new tweet. He suggested that it would be possible to make a list that includes the old version or versions of the prior tweet and append them to the newly revised version. Another reverse engineer, Alessandro Paluzzi, also discovered the edit button in development. Similarly, he noted that Twitter had not yet created the user interface where the original tweet or logs related to the edits would be shown to other users.

However, details provided by reverse engineer Jane Manchin Wong offer a bit more insight. She found code references related to the work-in-progress edit tweet feature in the recent build of the Twitter web app. She also noted that the edit button wasn't actually correcting or changing the text in the original tweet. It was creating a new tweet with the updated content. She says that this new edited tweet would include the list of the old tweets prior to the edit. In other words, the new tweet would point to the original tweet and the edit history, end quote. Getting to mention a bunch of friends of the show on today's show, always nice to see members of the mutant podcast army actually making the news.

Speaking of Twitter, an update on, well, you know, sources are telling the Wells Street Journal that Twitter is expected to rebuff Elon Musk's bid to take over the company in the coming days. But meanwhile, private equity firm Apollo Global is considering participating in a bid. Morgan Stanley is also interested, quote, Apollo, one of the world's largest buyout firms, has held discussions about backing a possible deal for Twitter and could provide Mr. Musk or another bidder like private equity firm Toma Bravo with equity or debt to support an offer, the people said. Apollo, which owns Yahoo, has also been evaluating potential cooperation between the online media company and Twitter, the people said. There is no guarantee Twitter would be receptive to that

or any other deal. Private equity firms, including Toma Bravo, are circling Twitter. People familiar with the matter said last week after Mr. Musk launched his surprise bid. There is no guarantee any private equity firm will end up making a firm bid, whether for the entire company or just a portion, and there may well be no deal in the end with Mr. Musk or anyone else. Taking Twitter Private would rank as one of the largest leveraged buyouts of all time, and the company doesn't have the attributes of a typical LBO target like strong, stable cash flow. New York-based Apollo is a private equity and lending behemoth with roughly $500 billion under management known for buying companies in a range of sectors, including media, and for its big

insurance arm. The firm often invests across a company's capital structure providing preferred equity or debt in addition to doing straightforward buyouts. Toma Bravo, a technology-focused investor that manages about $100 billion, has historically relied almost exclusively on private credit financing for its deals, including its recent $10.7 billion deal for software maker, Annaplan. Smart Home and Internet of Things company Instion has seemingly shut down operations, as Instion home hubs suddenly have stopped working, and LinkedIn profiles of top executives at the company show their roles have ended, quoting Stacey on IoT.

I'm getting reports from dozens of Instion users that as of Friday, their smart home hubs have stopped working. So far, none of them have heard from the company, and Instion's Twitter account hasn't been updated since June of 2021. I reached out to Rob Lillinus, the president and chairman of Smart Labs, the company that owns Instion and have not heard back yet. However, Lillinus no longer lists Smart Labs, Smart Home, or Instion anywhere on his LinkedIn profile, and other members of the Instion management team have also appeared to decamp Smart Labs based on their LinkedIn profiles.

Mike Nunez, the former CIO at Smart Labs, lists his role at Instion slash Smart Labs as ending in April 2022. Dan Craig, the chief research officer, lists his role at Smart Labs as ending in 2022. Matt Noelect, the president and COO, lists his role at Smart Labs as ending in 2020. And Tom Carter, the CIO, doesn't list his role in the company at all. Smart Labs is a combination of smart home brands that include Instion and Nokia Smart Lighting, which Smart Labs purchased last year. It also owns the SmartHome.com website where consumers can buy Instion Gear. An email to Smart Labs corporate office in Irvine, California has not been returned,

and a call to the company's phone number returns a message saying Verizon could not complete the call and asking me to check the number before trying again. Multiple tries return the same message each time. Lillianess is a former executive at Nokia, who lives in Seattle and invested $7.3 million in the smart labs business before taking on his leadership role at the company. At the time, he expressed optimism that Instion's proprietary technology could become the underpinned of a big shift to smarter homes. However, the adoption of proprietary technologies such as Instion didn't pan out as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigby prevailed. And now with the looming launch of the Matter smart home interoperability standard, Instion's core tech will be even further marginalized.

However, this means thousands of Instion users, who I know as a vocal and pretty satisfied bunch, will be left with gear that doesn't work. Instion does provide local control of its smart lights and nodes through hubs in the home, but there are plenty of cloud components to get the system to talk to Alexa or Google, and last year in outage in Instion's AWS cloud, frustrated users for several days, end quote. By the way, my apologies to whatever listener it was that tipped me to the story on Twitter last week, I couldn't find your tweet in order to give you proper credit. Microsoft is reportedly working on a program to let select brands advertise within free-to-play Xbox games, such as, say, on an in-game billboard, but they apparently won't be taking a

revenue cut yet, quoting Insider. Insider was unable to learn if Xbox will also offer other types of in-game ad units like Avatar skins or video ads that play in gaming lobbies. Insider was also unable to determine if Microsoft has pitched the Xbox offering to advertisers yet. Insider's sources expect this capability to be live by the third quarter, while ads in most of the most ads in mobile games are common ads in console games are rare. Xbox currently allows limited forms of advertising. Right now, advertisers can buy ads on the Xbox dashboard, and they can buy in-game ads on certain games through third parties, Yahoo, and Anzou, respectively.

This new program, however, could open up Xbox to more advertisers who went to message people in games because it will provide tools any participating game developer can use to sell ads. The two sources said the Tech Giant did not seem intent on taking a cut of ads, revenue and that it seemed more interested in building out the Xbox ad network. Ad revenue will be shared by the game developer and the ad tech company that places the ad, those sources believe. One of the sources speculated, Microsoft isn't currently interested in collecting a cut of ad revenue because it wants to provide more money-making opportunities to developers who make free-to-play games.

Microsoft started talks to build an Xbox in-game ad network around 2018 or 2019, but that process accelerated thanks to the 2020 release of the latest Xbox and the boom. in free-to-play titles, the two sources said, end quote. Finally today, heads up, you prospective startup founders, there's a new accelerator to put on your radar. A16Z has unveiled Start, an accelerator that offers early stage founders up to $1 million in capital from its seed fund after quietly piloting this program for over a year, quoting TechCrunch. In exchange for an unannounced percentage of ownership, A16Z start offers early stage founders up to $1 million in venture capital. The checks are powered by A16Z's seed fund, a $400 million investment

vehicle that closed in August 2021. Specific investment terms, such as ownership stake or how the firm decides what specific fraction of $1 million to invest, is not yet disclosed publicly and will be discussed with final candidates. On the relatively brief application form for start, A16Z names six categories, American dynamism, consumer, enterprise, fintech, games, and other, within which it's looking for founders. The areas largely line up with A16Z's carved out funds, though surprisingly don't include a mention of crypto despite A16Z raising a $2.2 billion vehicle for that sector last year. The firm also does not specify how long the program runs or who is mentoring the startups. Further, while the company is offering up to twice the $500,000,

that famed Accelerator Y Combinator now promises some of its startups. It is not divulged publicly whether part of its investment will come, as with YC, in the form of an uncapped safe, meaning that the company's valuation will be determined in the next subsequent round. Last month, Sequoia similarly debuted an accelerator with an emphasis on backing early stage outlier founders from across Europe in the United States. Cohorts of about 15 startups will go through eight-week sessions, and similar to A16Z, Sequoia plans to invest $1 million in accepted founders and doesn't disclose ownership targets. Since first running the program in the fall of 2021, A16Z has received over 1,000 applications

and accepted 11 entrepreneurs, which works out to a 1.1% acceptance rate. For comparison's sake, Wye Combinator received 17,000 applications and accepted 414 entrepreneurs for its latest batch for a 2.4% acceptance rate. A16Z declined to share how many founders will be accepted into the program, but it appears that the application to acceptance ratio will be similar in rigor to what Y Combinator has reached over time. A startup that gets accepted into the program may join for the stamp of approval, but it will gladly stay when it knows that A16Z doesn't just have the ability to make a first check, but lead literally every following round until the company is ready to go public.

And given today's founder-friendly-ish market, that stability could resonate. end quote. By the way, I think that last bit is key. At this point, A16Z is as close to an end-to-end startup founding solution as you're going to find anywhere. Forget growth specialists, forget seed specialists, forget accelerators, forget operations teams. Andresen at this point, pretty much does it all. My kids have inexplicably gotten into the Ghostbusters franchise lately, so yesterday's Papa Day festivities included us going into Tribeca to visit the Ghostbusters Firehouse, then up to the Upper West Side to see Gozers building, and imagine the Staypuff marshmallow man clumping down Central Park West before my first trip to a shake shack in about

three years, and then capped it all off with a trip to the Central Park Zoo, which I had never been to myself. My boy Max is the one most obsessed with the Ghostbusters right now. and he's still young enough that it's kind of unclear to me. To what degree he thinks they're real, and to what degree he understands it's all just a movie. Like, he wanted to know how long it took them to repair the street after all the earthquakes in front of Gozer's building. But then at the firehouse, he was disappointed

that the door was apparently a different color than it was in the movie. But then, when we walked around the side of the building and looked in the little alley behind the firehouse, one of the cellar doors had been left open, and so we could see into the basement. I guess the firemen work out down there because I saw a bunch of boxing heavy bags hanging there, but Max was craning his neck

to try to see the ghost containment unit, which he sure was down there. Anyway, it was a fun day, for 24 hours at least. I had no idea what had happened in the world of tech, which I kind of enjoyed. Talk to you tomorrow.