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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

#71

Post by robjan »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #56

I had always assumed Booking.com had some resale agreement with hotels and airlines - there was always some weird issue where if I called a hotel and asked for a room it was more expensive than booking.com or was not available yet was on booking.com What gets me is why on Earth any provider would allow this - dealing direct is so much more sane 99% of the time, and a package holiday provider already has a reseller ag…

Booking.com is a travel agent and they do have agreements with most airlines using GDS such as Amadeus or Sabre. It's a symbiotic relationship.

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

#72

Post by ta1243 »

2rsf wrote: post #53
ta1243 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair relies on dark patterns and brainwashing as part of the checkout process to sell you hotels, insurance, car hire, etc. Those feed into their income stream. If you bypass that process they don't make their profit.

I am not sure what "dark patterns and brainwashing" are you referring to, I booked flights through Norwegian- a calm scandinavian low cost company, and had to say no many times to car and hotel offers. The same when renting cars from big companies.

Lets say 20% of people booking through ryanair and paying £30 for a flight go for their "upselling" (which is deliberatly designed to get more people to add it). That makes ryanair £50 each. That pushes the revenue per customer upto £40.

Lets say the cost is £35, and thus ryanair makes £5 profit per passenger.

Now lets say someone else comes along as sells the ryanair flight for £30 and has their own "upselling": "Click here to not avoid missing out on our great protection package" etc. Ryanair now is making a £5 loss on each ticket sold, and the reseller is making it instead.

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

#73

Post by simiones »

mschuster91 wrote: post #43
arghwhat wrote: post #22

> 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…

> 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 Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…

There is no general legal right for one entity to interpose itself between another entity and its customers. The concept of a User Agent is not a legal concept, it is merely a technical term. If RyanAir doesn't want you to interact with its site through Firefox, they have a legal right to do so. They doubly so have the right to ban Booking.com from buying tickets on your behalf, and then selling them to you for more money.

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

#74

Post by gruez »

codedokode wrote: post #40
figmert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be mistaken, but from what I'm understanding is that Booking.com books the flights for you, by automating the booking process on Ryanair (and subsequently add their own fees), whereas the likes of SkyScanner show you the information, then direct you to the Ryanair website to book through the airline.

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.

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

#75

Post by reddalo »

walthamstow wrote: post #12
always_learning wrote: post #10

pretty bad precedent, id argue that anything thats publicly accesible is free to be scraped. So unless they did something illegal via bypassing security, then this sets a really bad tone for internet archival, web scraping and data collection in the future.

As I understand it, scraping data read-only is fine (Google Flights, Skyscanner etc) but using automated processes to book tickets on behalf of customers without sending them to the Ryanair site is not fine.

I'm not sure Google Flights actually scrapes RyanAir. I think they connect to API services such as Amadeus.

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

#76

Post by dmbaggett »

sega_sai wrote: post #61

If it was up to me, I would have required all airlines publish their fares in machine readable format.

They were once required to do so (and may still be; I’m not sure at this point), at least if they want to offer flights to or from the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATPCO

However, interpreting this data properly is decidedly nontrivial (>1M LoC).

Pricing does not imply booking is OK, though. And even circa 1999, Southwest hassled us (ITA Software) about even showing their fares, without us offering any way to book any flights on any carrier.

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

#77

Post by ivan_gammel »

em500 wrote: post #41
ivan_gammel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Booking an American company now? The company in Amsterdam is a subsidiary of Delaware company with HQ in Connecticut.

Company nationality is a somewhat diffuse concept. IKEA, Chrysler, Fiat and Citroen have holding companies in the Netherlands. Should they be considered Dutch companies? Share owners (also of American listed and incorporated companies) are from all over the world.

It depends, right? In case of Booking, aren’t other subsidiaries also selling airline tickets? It would be reasonable for all those sites to have a common platform for data and that means the holding company is the right target to sue.

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

#78

Post by gruez »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #45
doix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I was mixing concepts. SkyScanner and Google flights both do what you say. The companies that SkyScanner and co find are what Ryanair are complaining about. So the likes of; Trip, MyTrip, Kiwi, Expedia, GoToGate etc. I wonder if this will affect all of them.

GoToGate is what booking.com flights actually are (at least last time I booked). So probably.

Wikipedia says they did it at some point, but stopped.

>GoToGate was used for a time as the flight provider for Booking.com for various European countries.[7]

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

#79

Post by CaptainZapp »

mschuster91 wrote: post #43
arghwhat wrote: post #22

> 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…

> 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 Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…

> Where is a service where I can just enter from/to which city/airport I want to fly (or in Europe also rail)

Try momondo.com. You can add # of luggage (checked in & cabin) and play with some other parameters. They won't, or very rarely will, show train connections. They sometimes show bus connections, though.

For train travel I find trainline.com quite good. It gives you an overview over what's available an with which carriers. They are UK focused but offer tickets throughout Europe.

The Man in Seat 61 is (https://www.seat61.com/) is an invaluable resource to inform yourself about train travel. Mostly focused on Europe but covering the world.

Hope this helps.

Edited to add : I use Momondo as an information resource about available carriers and pricing for specific routes. I would never book via an OTA, but strcitly with the airline executing the flight. No matter if it's a few franks more.

If there's any problem with your flight you're up shit creek if you have to deal via a third party.

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

#80

Post by wodenokoto »

arghwhat wrote: post #62
mschuster91 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…

> Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. This lawsuit is not about ryanair's pricing model, so that the company engages in bad practices is irrelevant to the court decision. What matters is that booking.com wants to earn money on sell…

I think parents point is:

It’s only because of Ryan Airs business model of upselling via dark patterns that they care.

And because of these dark patterns, parent as a consumer is willing to pay someone else to go through the booking process and avoid the dark pattern on their behalf.

And the point is good: if company A is annoying to interact with, why can’t you pay company B to do it for you?

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