A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X Corp against an Israeli data-scraping firm accused of illegally copying and selling content from a social media platform. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that X, formerly Twitter, failed to sufficiently demonstrate that Bright Data Ltd violated its user agreement by facilitating scraping and circumventing X’s anti-scraping technology.
Alsup emphasized that using scraping tools isn’t inherently deceptive and cautioned against granting social media companies unchecked authority over public data, warning against the potential emergence of information monopolies detrimental to the public interest.
Furthermore, the judge ruled against granting X “de facto copyright ownership” in content made available to the public by its users. Lawyers representing X and Bright Data did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Alsup granted X the opportunity to revise its complaint, which sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract, trespass, and misappropriation. The lawsuit was initially filed by the San Francisco-based company against Bright Data in July.
In a related development, another San Francisco federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by X against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate in March. X alleged that articles based on scraped data, published by the nonprofit, led to advertiser apprehension, resulting in substantial financial losses. X has appealed the decision. Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, leads various ventures, including electric car manufacturer Tesla.
The case, titled X Corp v Bright Data Ltd, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under docket number 23-03698.