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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

#301

Post by dragonwriter »

paxys wrote: post #241
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

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.

> Curious how Breach of Contract can fly, considering TPG never agreed to a contract with AA to begin with

AA presents an argument for the ToS binding TPG as a party.

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

#302

Post by dragonwriter »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #283
throwaway09223 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

AA provides a number of arguments against that. That's part of the dispute.

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

#303

Post by Spivak »

scoot wrote: post #211
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…

So, basically, you forgot to rate limit your API?

There’s no winning here. Sending back a bunch of 429’s is still part of your API. Sure it’s less expensive to do than the operation the client was probably requesting but it’s not free and it’s stateful. For the kinds of bad actors people are talking about in this thread you still want to blackhole them.

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

#304

Post by hnburnsy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #66
maxmorlocke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Founder of a company in the travel space that relies heavily on scraping. What's interesting here is that there's conflicting precedent... and fundamentally that is what matters. hiQ vs LinkedIn is a great example of accessing data via a scraper that potentially violates the Terms of Services agreement, but found that Microsoft/LinkedIn violated antitrust laws. EF Cultural Travel vs Explorica is another e…

A fair test would be that if you are able to delegate manually retrieving the information to a friend or colleague, you should be allowed to delegate it to a machine.

Good question!

Can I give limited power of attorney to a third party to retrieve and my frequent flyer account information?

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

#305

Post by Spivak »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #189
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…

> Then of course there are people trying to make a business out of extracting your company’s data, If I can do this by hand there's no legal reason I can't do it by machine. You can try to defend against it, I guess, but the second you start impacting your obligations to someone else (like disabling their account after they paid you) you are in the wrong.

Accesses and privileges given to you does not always extend to agents acting on your behalf.

Having a driver’s license does not grant someone acting on your behalf the right to drive on public roads if they don’t have their own license. And more directly it also doesn’t grant you the ability to use your autonomous driving software on public roads either.

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

#306

Post by snowwrestler »

listenallyall wrote: post #262
enos_feedler wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are all static files that are easily (and typically) cached in front of the application. Pulling customer-specific data from an authenticated session taxes the application (and DB) directly.

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

#307

Post by callalex »

artdigital wrote: post #289
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

We tend to helplessly accept a lot of out in the open corruption here.

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

#308

Post by hnburnsy »

matt_heimer wrote: post #129
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…

The more relevant sections are a little further down: Your account information is owned by and proprietary to American Airlines. While you may access your account information through the Site, you may not give access to your account to any person or entity other than a member of your household or a person that you directly supervise as part of your career or employment. You may not give access to your account to any…

So can't share with grown children or business manager or lawyer.

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

#309

Post by ashtonkem »

KieranMac wrote: post #214
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…

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

Some of these are serious, like the CFAA claim, some are genuinely hilarious. Dilution? Really? Unfair competition? Are they accusing TPG of creating an airline?

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

#310

Post by HWR_14 »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #182
smsm42 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some parts of healthcare - like drugs - can be seen as commodity, a lot of it is not. Service differs significantly from doctor to doctor. Not disclosing the prices makes it easier for the providers to have higher prices but it doesn't make the service in question a commodity.

While surgery may not be a commodity, the same mechanisms of price discovery lowering prices across the board apply. Even if a surgeon is more skilled, are they worth 3x the cost?

A surgeon can easily be worth 3x the cost. Some surgeries have a significant risk of death, for instance. Or a low chance of success. Both of those factors may change dramatically with surgeon skill.

And those are no brainless. A more skilled surgeon on cosmetic surgery with lower recovery times and or prettier work could easily command a premium because their supply is so low and rich enough people have huge demand.

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