Judge lets Reddit DMCA lawsuit against SerpApi move forward

In short: A federal judge said Reddit’s DMCA case against web scraper SerpApi can mostly continue, even as Google recently lost a similar case.

What happened

A US judge largely denied a request from SerpApi to throw out Reddit’s lawsuit at an early stage. Reddit claims SerpApi worked with Perplexity AI to pull Reddit posts from Google search results in a way that got around Google’s access controls.

The case centers on the DMCA, a US law that, among other things, can ban breaking digital locks that control access to content (like picking a lock on a door). Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said Reddit has plausibly claimed there was a coordinated effort, with SerpApi selling a tool that could bypass Google protections and Perplexity AI paying for it.

This comes shortly after another court dismissed a similar DMCA case brought by Google against SerpApi. The judge in Reddit’s case said that decision does not block Reddit’s claims, in part because Reddit pointed to specific terms in its Google licensing deal. Reddit says partners like Google must delete posts that Reddit flags after users remove them, and that scraping makes it harder to keep that promise.

Some parts of Reddit’s lawsuit did get tossed. The judge dismissed Reddit’s unjust enrichment and unfair competition claims, saying copyright law covers that ground.

Why it matters

This fight could shape how easily AI companies and scraping services can collect public internet text for products that answer questions. If Reddit eventually wins, it may be easier for it to push scrapers toward paid licensing deals, and harder for deleted posts to keep showing up elsewhere.

Source: Arstechnica