Elon Musk’s X Corp. (formerly Twitter) suffered a setback in its legal battle against Israeli data-scraping firm Bright Data Ltd. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed X Corp.’s lawsuit, which alleged that Bright Data illegally copied and sold platform content and facilitated others in similar activities.
The San Francisco judge ruled that X Corp. failed to provide compelling evidence that Bright Data had violated the user agreement or circumvented X Corp.’s anti-scraping technology. Judge Alsup noted that the use of data-scraping tools isn’t inherently fraudulent, cautioning that allowing social media companies to have full control over public data could lead to information monopolies that would not serve the public interest.
Alsup also clarified that X Corp. doesn’t hold “de facto copyright ownership” over content made publicly available by its users. In response, Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner emphasized that the ruling reinforces public access to web information.
While this decision represents a win for Bright Data, Judge Alsup left the door open for X Corp. to amend its complaint. The company initially sued Bright Data in July last year, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract, trespass, and misappropriation.
This case follows other legal setbacks for X Corp., including the dismissal of its lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate in March. X Corp. claimed that the Center’s articles, which used scraped data to criticize the rise of hate speech on the platform, were responsible for advertisers pulling back from the platform.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion marked his entry into the social media industry. His other ventures include Tesla, the electric vehicle company.
The case is X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-03698.
