// ARS TECHNICA — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Reddit keeps its strange DMCA fight over Google search results alive
Reddit advances lawsuit accusing Perplexity AI of conspiring with web scraper.
On Friday, a judge largely denied a motion to dismiss from a web scraper, SerpApi, which is accused of conspiring with Perplexity AI to illegally scrape copyrighted Reddit content from Google search results.
In his opinion, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that at this early stage, Reddit has plausibly pleaded that there was a conspiracy, with SerpApi providing a product to circumvent Google access controls and Perplexity AI paying for it.
Engelmayer’s decision came less than two weeks after another court dismissed a similar action raised by Google, finding that the company had not proven that rights holders, such as Reddit, had ever authorized the search engine to prevent the scraping of protected content. Google told Ars that it planned to amend its complaint to keep its lawsuit alive, but SerpApi told Ars that Google and Reddit were both trying to “use the DMCA to wall off the open Internet by retroactively claiming control over content that they didn’t author and don’t own.”
For both Google and Reddit, the mission is to first prove that SerpApi and Perplexity AI conspired to access snippets of works covered by the Copyright Act that were, second, protected by a technological measure effectively controlling access, and that, third, the defendants circumvented that technology.
Google failed on the first prong, giving SerpApi a rare win at such an early stage, but it may strengthen Google’s arguments that Engelmayer agreed with Reddit that it was plausible the company had authorized Google to use anti-circumvention technology to block malicious scraping. And it’s likely upsetting to web scrapers like SerpApi that Engelmayer thinks Reddit can make that case, even though Google’s technology was invented more than a year after Google and Reddit struck their licensing deal.
According to Engelmayer, it would be impractical to expect partners to update licensing deals every time a company rolls out new security methods. Additionally, Engelmayer found that “the Google Decision is not to the contrary” of Reddit’s case because, unlike Google, Reddit went “beyond the bare allegation” that Google used to broadly claim that it generally “has licenses to display copyrighted content.” Instead, Reddit argued that its licensing agreement with Google directly prohibits certain uses of Reddit data that are now being accessed due to the circumvention methods employed by malicious web scrapers.
Specifically, Reddit argued that when it licenses content to partners like Google, its partners agree to delete posts that Reddit flags when users remove content. According to Reddit, “millions of posts” are deleted monthly, and unsanctioned efforts like SerpApi’s partnership with Perplexity AI make it impossible for Reddit to protect its promise to users to honor content removals. And allowing deleted posts to fester in Perplexity AI’s answer engine allegedly harms Reddit’s reputation, as well as its profits, Reddit successfully argued.
If Reddit wins the fight, the popular online discussion forum could be in a better position to force all AI scrapers to enter into licensing agreements. Reddit has asked the court for an injunction blocking SerpApi and Perplexity AI access to both Reddit and Google websites, another injunction stopping circumvention of Google SearchGuard, and a third stopping SerpApi and Reddit from using previously scraped data.
A Reddit spokesperson celebrated the ruling against the motion to dismiss in a statement provided to Ars.