Reddit does not own the user-generated content on its platform. Its users do. Reddit’s own user agreement says so. But last October, Reddit served SerpApi, Perplexity, and two other webscraping companies with a lawsuit making claims of copyright protections over information that its users post. The lawsuit was light on facts and theories but full of inflammatory language. We moved to dismiss the suit, standing up for our business, our industry, our customers, and our belief in a fundamentally open internet.

Then, in February, Reddit amended its complaint. Instead of addressing the deficiencies in its lawsuit that our motion pointed out, Reddit attempted to distort its privacy policy to support extraordinary claims of authority over its users’ content.

We can see right through this. Reddit’s arguments aren’t about protecting users or any legitimate copyright interests. Reddit is trying to protect its ability to monetize its users’ content. If Reddit succeeds, it won’t just be a blow to the defendants in this case. It will be to the detriment of Reddit users and of everyone interested in a free and open internet.

We have again asked the court to dismiss Reddit’s case, but this time with prejudice. Because this fight will have ramifications reaching far beyond the parties involved, I want to take a moment to explain why SerpApi is right and Reddit is wrong.

Let’s start with the most basic fact: Reddit did not write the content at the heart of this lawsuit. Reddit’s users did. Reddit’s own user agreement says so explicitly: users “retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content.” Reddit holds only a non-exclusive license. That means Reddit cannot exclude anyone from using user content. That’s not a loophole. It’s the law.

Reddit wants to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law passed to prevent the pirating of movies and music, to become the gatekeeper for content that belongs to tens of millions of people who chose to post publicly. They never consented to Reddit enforcing “access controls” on their behalf. Most of them don’t even know this lawsuit exists. Reddit is attempting to assert rights that belong to others. No court has ever let a party like Reddit bring a DMCA claim: one that doesn't own the copyrights, doesn't hold an exclusive license, and doesn't control the technology allegedly circumvented. Reddit is asking this court to be the first.

Reddit’s amended complaint tries to fill this gap by pointing to a miniscule amount of content it claims to have authored, including boilerplate text from Reddit’s own Public Content Policy. Functional, administrative text lacks the originality copyright requires.                   

But even the user content that Reddit claims that it is protecting is not copyrightable. Here is what Reddit is asking a federal court to protect:

• A partial sentence listing movie titles. You cannot copyright a single incomplete sentence.
• A date: “May 17, 2024.” You cannot copyright a date.
• A fragment of a restaurant recommendation with a street address. You cannot copyright a street address.

Copyright law is designed to protect genuine creative expression, not snippets of functional, factual text that appear in search results. Without copyrightable works, there is no DMCA claim. It’s that simple.

And regardless of whether you look at Reddit’s claims over user-generated content or Reddit-generated content, Reddit remains many steps removed from any reasonable DMCA claim. This is a part of the lawsuit that I believe deserves more attention. Reddit’s complaint does not allege that SerpApi ever accessed Reddit.com. It alleges that SerpApi accessed Google’s publicly available search result pages, which sometimes display brief snippets of Reddit content, just as they appear to any person typing a query into Google.

Think about that for a moment. Reddit isn’t suing Google for scraping its users’ content. And it’s not suing SerpApi for scraping its users’ content, either. Reddit is suing SerpApi for using Google. For accessing the same public search results that any developer, researcher, or student could access for free in any web browser. If that theory holds, then reading Google Search results is a DMCA violation. That cannot be what Congress intended when it passed a law designed to stop the piracy of DVDs.

Reddit’s complaint describes SerpApi as “mimicking human behavior” to access Google Search pages. What Reddit calls “mimicking human behavior” is simply retrieving the same search results any person can access by typing a query into Google. That is not circumvention. It is how the internet works and is completely legal.

The DMCA defines “circumvention” specifically: “to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure.” SerpApi does none of those things. We do not break encryption. We do not pick locks. We do not impair anything. We access public web pages that are freely available to every person on earth. Mimicking a human browser is not the “electronic equivalent of breaking into a locked room,” which is what Congress said the DMCA was meant to prevent. It is the electronic equivalent of reading something in a library.

Critically, Reddit’s own complaint admits that Google’s bot-detection technology, the alleged “access control” at issue, allows human users to access Google SERPs “seamlessly” without disruption. A measure that leaves the front door open to everyone cannot be an “effective” access control under the DMCA. The Sixth Circuit said it plainly in Lexmark: a lock on the back door doesn’t control access to a house whose front door has no lock. And Reddit never alleges that Google deployed SearchGuard to protect Reddit's users' copyrights, or that any Reddit user authorized Google to do so. Reddit is claiming protection under a lock it does not own, on a door that belongs to someone else.

Even if you were to entertain all of Reddit’s flawed theories, its lawsuit still shouldn’t move forward, because Reddit has nothing to sue about. For a lawsuit to proceed in federal court, a plaintiff must allege a real, concrete injury. Reddit identifies three alleged harms. None holds up.

• Reputational damage: Reddit says users might lose trust in it. But Reddit’s own Privacy Policy tells users their public content will appear in search results. Reddit cannot allege harm it explicitly authorized.
• Lost licensing revenue: Reddit speculates it would have secured AI licensing deals, but offers no specific contract, no specific opportunity, no specific dollar amount. Speculation is not injury.
• Anti-scraping costs: Reddit says it spent money on anti-scraping tools because of SerpApi, even though Reddit’s own complaint contains ZERO allegations that SerpApi ever accessed Reddit’s platform. The Supreme Court has held that you cannot manufacture standing by spending money on self-protective measures in response to speculative future harm.

There is no injury because SerpApi did nothing wrong. We accessed public information. We made it useful. That is our business.

This is Reddit’s Amended Complaint—their second attempt after we pointed out the same deficiencies in their first filing. Reddit’s problems did not go away because they are not fixable. Reddit does not own the content. The snippets are not copyrightable. SerpApi did not access Reddit’s platform. And Reddit did not allege any real injury. Its amendment fails to change those facts.

And finally, I want to say one more thing, because this lawsuit is not just about SerpApi.

Reddit is a platform built on the contributions of millions of people who posted publicly, freely, and in good faith. In doing so, they are exercising the same First Amendment rights that SerpApi deeply values. Now Reddit wants to monetize that content without users’ knowledge or consent and is attempting to use  litigation to shut down anyone who accesses it without paying Reddit a toll. But Reddit doesn’t own it. The people who wrote it own it.

Platforms that aggregate user content should not be able to weaponize copyright law to wall off the public internet. That’s not what the DMCA was designed for. And to date, U.S. courts have blocked these attempts.

SerpApi has operated transparently and lawfully since 2017. We believe in the free exchange of ideas and information, as protected by the First Amendment, and we provide structured access to information that is already public. We help developers, researchers, and businesses build on the open web. We will continue to do that, and we will fight every attempt to stop us.

You can read our motion to dismiss and Reddit's amended complaint below: