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American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

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Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#261

Post by TameAntelope »

jrockway wrote: post #209
bastardoperator wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a favorite Airline? I view them all with contempt given their poor business practices. Who's your favorite serial killer?

I've flown over half a million miles on American. They've been pretty nice to me every time. I have nothing to dislike about them.

I'm skeptical of the new rewards program, but I've only ever maintained Gold, so it won't really be hard to switch, should I decide to.

I imagine for you it's more or less impossible to start over now, so it's pretty lucky that they've been good to you so far!

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#262

Post by listenallyall »

enos_feedler wrote: post #145
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been on the other side of this, defending against bots. Basically: Well-behaved and well-intentioned scraping bots are rare. You’d get a lot of users setting update rates to 60 seconds that did a new login every time and creating as much traffic as 1000 users. Then they’d release the script for integration with something people and suddenly you have 1000 people each creating 1000 times as many login requests as…

Makes sense. Thanks for this context.

Does it make sense? Bots rarely make HTTP requests for images, css, video clips, large JS files, custom fonts, etc. Real people do. A well-written bot just seeking some specific data can often complete it's task with less than 1% of the resources that would be sent to a "real" user.

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#263

Post by paxprose »

xbar wrote: post #180
paxys wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RIP password managers then, I guess

Yes. And iCloud-based Safari-storage of passwords for all iPhone users.

And every piece of financial software that does anything with your banking information.

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#264

Post by TameAntelope »

GordonS wrote: post #41
yuy910616 wrote: post #8

I can't seem to find a reason why "screen scraping" is important here, as oppose to just scraping? My understanding is that screen scraping is taking a picture of the rendered website and using an OCR or some other sort of recognition tools to extract the data. If it is just scraping - it should be perfectly legal right?

Screen scraping isn't exclusively about using OCR - it more usually means parsing text content from HTML.

What's the "screen" part of this, though? I guess if you have to render the page fully (execute the JS as well), rather than just parse the returned HTML, that to me is more "screen scraping" vs. "scraping".

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#265

Post by tiahura »

rhizome wrote: post #243
tiahura wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if TPG is an agent of the customer, then AA should be suing the customer. As the great Professor Hecker repeated so often in Business Associations - “The tortfeasor is always liable.” E.g. when you get hit by the Dominoes delivery driver, you can sue the delivery driver.

I was just looking at this in the context of the Rogel Aguilera-Mederos (110 year sentence) truck-crash case the other week. IANAL, but as I understand it there's a legal concept called "respondeat superior" and the "McHaffie Rule" that may complicate that assertion. A lawyer could and probably would stomp me on this description, naturally.

Respondeat superior means the employer is also liable, not solely liable. Again, the tortfeasor is always liable. Iaal.

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#267

Post by dang »

hlbjhblbljib wrote: post #208
KieranMac wrote: post #188

As an attorney who focuses in this area, I can say that the most interesting question is first where this case will be decided. Texas, and the Northern District of Texas in particular, has historically been the worst jurisdiction in the country for web scrapers to litigate. Southwest has a long history of litigating successfully there, including two cases from just last year. If TPG is going to win, first they'll nee…

I'm surprised more businesses don't ban all of Texas as customers to prevent any litigation happening there.

Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#268

Post by nunez »

icehawk wrote: post #42

The funny thing is, American sends points data to my email. I wonder if that sort of thing could be leveraged for something similar.

This is how AwardWallet gets around Delta's ban on scraping. Forward your award summaries to them; they parse it and put it into their platform.

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#269

Post by tedunangst »

akersten wrote: post #259
KieranMac wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American Airlines is alleging 12 legal claims: 1. Breach of Contract 2. Tortious Interference with a Contract 3. Unfair Competition by Misappropriation 4. Trespass 5. Trademark infringement 6. Dilution 7. Dilution under Texas State Law 8. False Designation of Origin 9. Copyright Infringement 10. CFAA 11. Violation of Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act 12. Unjust Enrichment

IMO it would serve the common person well if we changed the way the law works so that if a corporation sues you for a laundry list of things, if a single claim gets thrown out, then they all do. That prevents this insane pile-on where a half-afternoon's work by 4 people in their giant legal department turns into a multi-year nightmare for an average citizen. I think that would be a fair way to reign in the corporate…

Meh, Red Ventures' estimated $11 billion valuation is slightly more than AA's market cap.

Re: American Airlines and The Points Guy are suing each other

#270

Post by bastardoperator »

jrockway wrote: post #260
bastardoperator wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty nice isn't how I would describe great service. That's my point, the bar is low when it comes to airlines. In your case they should be treating you like a legend.

One time I lost my keys and missed my flight, and they bumped some paying customer so I could get home sooner. Still feel a little bad about that one. Another time, I was walking out of the Admirals Club at DFW to board my flight. One of the agents came running out to tell me I was walking in the wrong direction. But, it's not always great. I had an award ticket in 1st class out of LHR, and they didn't clean the plan…

LOL, that other person was probably me, doh! It's fair, air travel comes with a lot of anxiety and heightened emotions because most people are going somewhere important or just trying to get home.
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