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

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

#241

Post by pimeys »

thinkindie wrote: post #152
piltdownman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ryanair flies to Berlin. Even before the new airport, they were flying to Schoenefeld which was just outside the city limits. In fact, the old airport was just across the runaways of the new one and you can still reach the old terminal building with the commuter train. Schoenefeld was the old East Berlin airport, which was indeed suboptimal for the load of travellers it got over time.

The are going to renovate Schönefeld and make it a private airport for German politicians. I guess the project will be ready in 20-30 years...

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

#242

Post by skissane »

arghwhat wrote: post #34
skissane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ruling (which I haven't read) says automated booking via screen scraping is illegal: wouldn't a workaround be to replace the automated process with a human in a low-cost country?

Sure, but that's what you want, not what booking.com wants. Booking.com wants to charge you for the service, and if they're not part of the transaction they'd have to get money out-of-band, e.g. as a subscription for the price finding service. Remember that this lawsuit is between two large companies both trying to get your money.

> Booking.com wants to charge you for the service, and if they're not part of the transaction they'd have to get money out-of-band

I think you misunderstand what I meant. To be more specific: if the ruling says that automated booking via screen scraping is illegal – what's to stop Booking.com hiring warm bodies in low cost countries, replacing their fully automated solution with a semi-automated solution to dodge the ruling, and continuing to charge their customers for that service?

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

#243

Post by heavyset_go »

chrisjj wrote: post #197
SteveNuts wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty soon every single website will be hidden behind a login page

And pretty soon afterward, every one of those login page will be circumvented by a bot signup.

Don't worry, you'll need to upload your photo ID to be able to login and do anything online.

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

#244

Post by shiroiushi »

arghwhat wrote: post #119
SoftTalker wrote: post #96

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…

Maybe the answer is for the US government to not regulate these things, but instead somehow allow the EU to regulate them on US soil. (No, I have no idea how that would work legally.)

Because when the EU regulates things like this, the result is usually pretty good. But when the US regulates things, it turns into regulatory capture and only helps the big corporations at the expense of everyone else.

It's a bit like unions: Americans complain about how bad labor unions are, because in the US they didn't work out very well at all. But Europeans like unions, because over there they seem to work pretty well. So obviously, the US just can't do unions properly, just like they can't do a lot of regulation properly (see: FAA/Boeing).

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

#245

Post by shiroiushi »

xienze wrote: post #149
SoftTalker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then. I'm not sure this is the gotcha you think it is. Air travel, even in coach, was downright luxury compared to where it is today, and I'm not even talking about in the distant past, I'm talking about 25 or so years ago. Seats are narrower, legroom is practically nonexistent, and the seats only recline like two inches these days. Also almost everything…

Air travel in coach is still not too bad as long as you take an international flight. The US domestic flights, however, are truly awful.

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

#247

Post by nicoburns »

shiroiushi wrote: post #244
arghwhat wrote: post #119

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…

Maybe the answer is for the US government to not regulate these things, but instead somehow allow the EU to regulate them on US soil. (No, I have no idea how that would work legally.) Because when the EU regulates things like this, the result is usually pretty good. But when the US regulates things, it turns into regulatory capture and only helps the big corporations at the expense of everyone else. It's a bit like u…

And of course it's circular:

The US doesn't do things like well because Americans don't trust their institutions and think governments are inherently corrupt and ineffective, so they think might as well join in (and then perpetuate that corruption/ineffectiveness).

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

#248

Post by nicoburns »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #193
arghwhat wrote: post #119

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…

Can you cite examples of any industry or niche , anywhere in the world, that was newly regulated, and once regulation tool place, prices materially dropped? Geniuinely curious.

Card payments are regulated in the EU, and prices are much cheaper. Contrast that with New Zealand where there is often a 2.5% surcharge on credit card and contactless payments.

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

#249

Post by hdmoore »

byteknight wrote: post #172
hipadev23 wrote: post #162

This will very likely be overturned as it flies in the face of the 9th circuit court decision on HiQ vs LinkedIn. This is in a different circuit, so it'll need to be elevated, but CFAA is absolutely the incorrect tool to be utilized here. [1] https://calawyers.org/privacy-law/ninth-circuit-holds-data-s...

CFAA was already reworded I thought to avoid these exact types of situations? Among other things, responsible disclosure.

The CFAA has not been amended, but there was DoJ policy change on enforcement. So everyone is always breaking the law in the course of normal business, and it's still up to the prosector to determine who to go after: - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-...

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

#250

Post by nickpsecurity »

dantheman wrote: post #209
nickpsecurity wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything about regulating Big Telecom. They didn’t want to run lines to people, drop long distance, increase broadband speed, etc. Each time, the behavior was countered by regulation or the threat of it. Splitting MA Bell into the Baby Bells also helped for a while. Then, they started merging back together. Then, the oligopolies made service worse again. If left on their own, they collude to do a minimum form of co…

What are you talking about - that is deregulation. This was a government granted monopoly - you don't get more regulated than that.

They broke a private company into many competing companies. Then, at various times, they forced the companies to serve customers in ways they were simply unwilling to. They’d tell lies why it couldn’t be done. After regulation or threat of it, they rapidly accomplished what they previously couldn’t.

A recent example that isn’t regulation so much as revealing was Google Fiber vs established telecoms. The established companies had low speeds on purpose in many areas. They couldn’t do better. After Google Fiber hit, we’d sometimes see a comparable offering show up in just that area very quickly. As in, they could’ve done it the whole time but refused to soak up more profit.

That’s the kind of abuse that regulation is supposed to deal with. Whereas, the breakup was using regulation to force the companies to operate like a free market. That’s often necessary because the companies will make more profit if they collude to cheat customers. Or workers as we saw in the wage scheme in Silicon Valley.

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