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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

#281

Post by darkwizard42 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #113
darkwizard42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but this is about PRIVATE data like your miles and points after logging in to AA. So not even sure your comment applies here.

But it's only accessing your private data with your authorization (by providing them your credentials). There is no hacking involved and it's not accessing people's information without consent.

I'm just responding to the claim of the parent comment that public stuff on the internet should remain public... This information is expressly NOT public, not sure why the expectation is that everyone should be able to see it.

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

#282

Post by brendoelfrendo »

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…

Then they would just send you 12 consecutive lawsuits. If they're that big and well-funded, they've got the time.

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

#283

Post by dghlsakjg »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #273
paxys wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious how Breach of Contract can fly, considering TPG never agreed to a contract with AA to begin with. And AA is obviously not suing their own customers.

There's a ToS, which is a contract. From the AA website: "By logging in, you accept the AAdvantage terms and conditions"

Yeah, but it would seem that the points guy ISN'T logging in. The AA customers are logging in using a tool provided by TPG.

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

#284

Post by dghlsakjg »

Nextgrid wrote: post #113
darkwizard42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but this is about PRIVATE data like your miles and points after logging in to AA. So not even sure your comment applies here.

But it's only accessing your private data with your authorization (by providing them your credentials). There is no hacking involved and it's not accessing people's information without consent.

It think you'll find that on page 47 of subparagraph 4 of the t+c you agreed to 27 years ago when you first flew on AA (since amended twice daily), that the data in question is in fact property of AA.

In all seriousness, this is the crux of many of the issues on the internet: Data about you, or generated by your activities, is probably not your in a legal sense.

In other words AA gives users a limited license to access AA data, and they are mad that you are allowing TPG to use that license. AA sees this as sharing your Spotify password to give them access to music.

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

#285

Post by joquarky »

whiddershins wrote: post #232
nybble41 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is their case then exactly? Speculating, but TOS generally say that you're not allowed to share your password with anyone. Assuming that's true for the AA site, AA might argue that TPG is encouraging users to break their TOS ("tortious interference"). Though if app doesn't actually share the password with TPG and just uses it locally there may well be a question of whether entering your password into a third-p…

So I wonder what if any legal difference there would be if TPG was only providing a web app that runs in the browser.

Also, would there be any legal difference if they wrote a browser plug-in/extension that provides additional information while you're logged into AA's site?

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

#286

Post by captainredbeard »

cracrecry wrote: post #58
cbtacy wrote: post #6

https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/legal-infor... "Unless otherwise noted, all information, AAdvantage® account information, articles, data, images, passwords, Personal Identification Numbers ("PINs"), screens, text, user names, Web pages, or other materials (collectively "Content") appearing on the Site are the exclusive property of American Airlines Group, Inc., or American Airlines, Inc., or their su…

They can say whatever they want. It is a completely different thing whenever that is legal or not. I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that does not make it legal. There are always fair use clauses that copyright law accepts. That data about a customer is the exclusive property of a company is not…

> I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that > they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that > does not make it legal.

True, but there isn't a long standing practice of binding people to the terms and conditions of a service regardless of fastidiousness on the part of the user (whether that's warranted / reasonable or not).

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

#287

Post by BeFlatXIII »

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…

That also happens when county prosecutors are up for re-election. Stack charges in case the jury finds one claim weak, there are 5 synonyms for the same underlying crime that the jury is willing to convict on. Also helps with forcing plea bargains.

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

#288

Post by jessriedel »

kmeisthax wrote: post #203
jessriedel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks much for the info. Why can't you just ignore API requests once it exceeds a threshold rate?

For the specific use-case of "badly written scrapers", this might be reasonable, but usually by the point when engineering needs to care about scrapers, other people at the company are involved and just view it as a service theft issue. i.e. "Why waste time and money forcing people to scrape fairly when we can just ban all scrapers?" Not to mention, actually malicious traffic will find any non-Sybil criterion you use…

> "Screw it, everyone but Google or a browser is banned."

Thanks! Why don't malicious actors just spoof browsers?

More generally, I would think that any defense that prevented malicious actors would prevent badly written scrapers, simply because malicious actors can do anything a badly written scraper could do, but can also take more active steps to evade defenses.

(These are honest questions; I have very little knowledge about this.)

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

#289

Post by artdigital »

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…

As a non-american reader, it feels bizarre to me that the direction of a case changes so drastically depending on where it will be held, within the same country

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

#290

Post by jlmorton »

dheera wrote: post #215
jlmorton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly bizarre and Byzantine approach to legalizing screen scraping. If we want to make screen scraping affirmatively legal, we can simply do that. We don't need to anthropomorphize HTML/JSON parsing as equivalent to human vision, and then declare any efforts to restrict that vision to be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lol.

It isn't bizarre; screen scraping and re-presenting information to the user in a way that is convenient for them is absolutely essential to many assistive technologies.

Perhaps I misunderstood.

The airlines are already legally required to make their websites accessible in the United States, including to screen readers, by virtue of the Air Carrier Access Act. They already all comply with this.

Unrelated to screen readers, American Airlines and Red Ventures are involved in a dispute about the _legality_ of screen scraping. The dispute involves lawsuits, but does not involve technological measures to obfuscate or otherwise obstruct screen readers, or even screen scraping.

Your comment seemed to suggest that we should make _screen scraping_ legal by considering it the same as vision, and that any efforts -- including legal efforts -- to prevent screen scraping should run afoul of the ADA.

That was my understanding, and that's indeed a bizarre view.

If your point was limited simply to making screen readers accessible, then I think your point is perfectly fine, but kind of a non sequitur, because this dispute is not about technological measures to control screen scraping, it's about legal measures.

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