Interesting. From what I can gather, the material in HiQ Labs v. LinkedIn was not claimed to be under copyright and that the argument being fought over in court was with respect to mechanically subverting access to a competitor.
You appear to have claimed that rights over material is broadly relinquished if it's published in public:
> If information is your competitive advantage maybe you shouldn't have it on a publicly accessible website
And your distinction was further clarified when you argued that placing barriers to access fundamentally changes the equation:
> Note, a simple sign up being required to view a website makes it not publicly available information any longer and you can cover usage, again, in a license.
Perhaps you meant to speak only of material which is not subject to copyright? In which case I think your argument does track.
Mmm I’ll go with that, to be honest I saw that LinkedIn had initially made a complaint under DMCA (which HiQ then got an injunction for) as well and given how the case played out I was uncertain to the extent the case was signaling that you may be waving certain rights by making some content publicly available with no gating like a sign up.
You appear to have claimed that rights over material is broadly relinquished if it's published in public:
> If information is your competitive advantage maybe you shouldn't have it on a publicly accessible website
And your distinction was further clarified when you argued that placing barriers to access fundamentally changes the equation:
> Note, a simple sign up being required to view a website makes it not publicly available information any longer and you can cover usage, again, in a license.
Perhaps you meant to speak only of material which is not subject to copyright? In which case I think your argument does track.