Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
swmonkey.com
Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
1–10 of 76 posts
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#2Maybe you can crowdsource pricing info. That way, you're not scraping, and users are voluntarily sharing what they've searched.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#3Maybe you can crowdsource pricing info. That way, you're not scraping, and users are voluntarily sharing what they've searched.
Or maybe they could provably crowdsource some of the information and say that the fraction that is bot / crowdsourced is proprietary and irrelevant. Then send a copy of the HiQLabs v. LinkedIn case. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-bruta...
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#4Calling it Southwest monkey is clearly a mistake.
You have little argument there, and you should change that because to a 3rd party it could look like a service offered by Southwest itself.
The part about scraping, etc, is more complicated and you may want to fight that.
See: http://blog.icreon.us/advise/web-scraping-legality and https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li... as two quick examples I found on previous cases that have gone to court.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#5Craigslist has litigated the scraping issue heavily, and precedents are bad for SWMonkey.
https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2017/04/17/craigslist-garn...
Edit: But the LinkedIn case seems favorable: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#6In the blog post, the link to their product page is broken...
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#7Given they're charging for this service, maybe there's a way to make it work economically by having low cost workers (e.g. Mechanical Turk or even a bank of workers in certain countries) perform the checks manually (you could even create a browser extension that automates the form filling, but leaves a human to push the button and parse the results). At least by offering it as a paid service, they have some sums they can run to see if manual would work.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#8Might be worth to check out the recent LinkedIn vs. startup scraping case: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling...
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#9Craigslist has litigated the scraping issue heavily, and precedents are bad for SWMonkey. https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2017/04/17/craigslist-garn... Edit: But the LinkedIn case seems favorable: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...
I know of a company that scrapes craigslist in bulk. The owner insisted that he's had no problems. Importantly, his company is not based in the US. Maybe he just ignores their c&d letters.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#10Craigslist has litigated the scraping issue heavily, and precedents are bad for SWMonkey. https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2017/04/17/craigslist-garn... Edit: But the LinkedIn case seems favorable: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...
I know of a company that scrapes craigslist in bulk. The owner insisted that he's had no problems. Importantly, his company is not based in the US. Maybe he just ignores their c&d letters.
> Importantly, his company is not based in the US.
Guessing it's in Ukraine, or somewhere in Eastern Europe :)