A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, against Bright Data Ltd, an Israeli data-scraping company. 

The lawsuit accused Bright Data of illegally copying and selling content from the social media platform, as well as providing tools that enabled others to do the same.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, presiding over the case in San Francisco, ruled that X failed to present a plausible case that Bright Data had violated the platform’s user agreement by allowing data scraping and circumventing X’s anti-scraping measures. 

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• U.S. judge dismisses X Corp’s lawsuit against Israeli data-scraping company Bright Data Ltd

• Judge rules that using scraping tools is not inherently fraudulent and warns against information monopolies.

• Bright Data CEO celebrates victory, asserting that public web information belongs to everyone.

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X Corp’s Lawsuit Against Israeli Data-Scraping Company Dismissed by U.S. Judge

Judge Alsup emphasized that using scraping tools is not inherently fraudulent and cautioned against granting social media companies unchecked control over public data, as it could potentially lead to information monopolies that would not serve the public interest.

Furthermore, the judge stated that X does not have “de facto copyright ownership” over copyrighted content its users have made available to the public. 

This ruling highlights the complex nature of data ownership and the balance between protecting intellectual property rights and ensuring public access to information.

Following the dismissal, Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data issued a statement celebrating the victory and asserting that public information on the web belongs to everyone. 

He emphasized that any attempt to deny public access to such information is bound to fail.

While the ruling allows X to amend its complaint, which sought unspecified damages for breach of contract, trespass, and misappropriation, the outcome of this case is significant in the ongoing debate surrounding data scraping and its implications for social media platforms and the public.

This is not the first time Bright Data has faced legal challenges from social media giants. 

In January, another San Francisco judge ruled that the company had not violated Meta Platforms’ terms of service by scraping data from Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta subsequently dropped its lawsuit against Bright Data a month later.

X Corp has also been involved in a separate lawsuit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which published articles based on scraped data that criticized the rise of hate speech on the platform. 

X claimed that these articles had scared away advertisers, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. 

However, the case was dismissed in March, and X has since appealed the decision.

As the legal landscape surrounding data scraping continues to evolve, the outcome of such cases will have far-reaching implications for the future of data access, ownership, and the balance between social media platforms’ rights and the public interest.

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