Live data from Hacker News

Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

rte.ie

131–140 of 303 posts

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#131
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re bigger in Europe

That's probably true. I've never used them in the US but they seem to often be the site of choice in Europe and Asia (and, based on one recent experience in Europe, can have inventory that can't be accessed any other way). That said, you also have to take direct bookings into account which is most of what I (at any rate) do.

You may have used them indirectly though due to them owning a lot of OTAs. It’s basically a duopoly of Booking Holding and Expedia Group.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#132
post #130

> the companies, which use screen-scraping software to find and resell tickets, add additional charges and make it difficult for the airline to contact passengers. AFAIK, it's impossible to resell flight tickets in EU, they are attached to real names that are checked upon boarding time. If wonder how did Booking manage to resell Ryanair tickets at scale?

Do they buy-and-resell or do they just provide a front for the ticket-buying flow with their own fees added on top?

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#133
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how does booking.com pay for the tickets? Do they use a new card for every transaction or do they buy thousands of tickets with the same card? Do they use a corporate card or personal card (which might be against ToS)? If they use a corporate card, isn't it easy for Ryanair to see it and block the transaction? Also, cannot airline see that requests come from datacenter IPs and not from residential? It looks…

>Also, cannot airline see that requests come from datacenter IPs and not from residential? Easily solveable by getting a data SIM, plugging it into a LTE/5G USB stick, and routing your traffic through that.

[deleted]

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.

And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel rea…

Flying budget air carriers is already so incredibly cheap in the EU. It is cheaper to fly from Belfast to London, than it is to fly Houston to Austin (half the distance) or Houston to New Orleans (roughly the same distance).

I wish the US could figure that out.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they could hire some mechanical turks from Africa to type prices into an Excel sheet for $5000.

Oh lord you need to rephrase that....

Which part? Mechanical turk is an Amazon service for crowdsourcing work, and Africa has cheap IT literate labor so would be a good source for this type of work.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.

And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel rea…

I think they just want to bring back smoking on planes

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#138

> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing o…

We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.

Airlines were a lot more expensive everywhere back then. The majority of the drop in airline prices is from improving aircraft. They use ~1/3 the fuel per passenger mile today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/medi...

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel rea…

Flying budget air carriers is already so incredibly cheap in the EU. It is cheaper to fly from Belfast to London, than it is to fly Houston to Austin (half the distance) or Houston to New Orleans (roughly the same distance). I wish the US could figure that out.

[deleted]

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel rea…

Flying budget air carriers is already so incredibly cheap in the EU. It is cheaper to fly from Belfast to London, than it is to fly Houston to Austin (half the distance) or Houston to New Orleans (roughly the same distance). I wish the US could figure that out.

RyanAir used to fly to Morocco, and it was often cheaper to go Dublin -> Marrakesh than it was to get a plane or train from London to Manchester.

Lot of it comes down to individual airports and fees. Part of the reason that RyanAir flies into Buvais rather than CDG or Orly when you fly with them to 'Paris', or that other joke airport they use instead of Berlin.

Post reply on HN