Slashdot Mirror
Texas Court Blocks Screen-Scraper
An anonymous reader writes "A Texas court has granted American Airlines
an injunction against Farechaser to stop them from using a screen-scraper to copy airfare information from their website in violation of the terms and conditions. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, Farechase.com's own terms and conditions prohibit users from doing to them exactly what they are doing to AA.com. The EFF is involved, but it's unclear whether they're supporting the enforceability of a website's terms and conditions or Farechase's right to violate them."
Legislations, counter-legislations.
Did the web die suddenly or did it just wither away without anyone noticing?
Yes, I am a Muslim. No, I am not a Terrorist.
My employer has "requested" that I write a screen scraper to grab information from a competitor's site. The data will then be put into our databases, and sold as our own. This is in violation of the competitor's terms of agreement, and I have thus far not done this.
I am unable to find anything on Google relating to the legality of this, but I believe that it is probably not legal. However, I was told to "do it and let the lawyers deal with it".
Whether it is legal or not, I do not feel that it is ethical, and may leave the company if I am pushed to do this.
Does anybody know where I can read any case law on screen scraping? Aside from the current article, that is.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
And a screen-scraper begins?
The "Copyright Basics" page of the US Copyright Office lists the following as not copyrightable:
- Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents
- Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration
- Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)
I don't see how "prices" or "facts" immediately fit in, and I don't have the ability to interpret the actual law, so I'll stop right here.In any case, I don't feel too much sympathy for somebody who plucks airfares from airline sites. The accuracy is questionable (unlike a real travel agent site, who can in fact realize the price for you), to say the least.
If what you say is true, can I just rip off the numbers from, say, Tom's Hardware, and republish benchmarks with my own text?
That's apples and oranges. Froogle Google et all like DealTime use scraping (or whatever they do) to SUPPORT the original owners by directing traffic their way. Froogle Google is no different than any other search engine except it specializes in merchant sites.
The people in this case are stealing information solely for their own gain.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
At my company, a major major market site, we publish all kinds of advice, hot socks, bond rates, mutual fund performance calculations etc., etc., etc... All this is publicly avalible on the site.
I noticed that a bunch of smaller companies were scraping our content, stuff we owned, and redisplayed it on their sites..
So, what we did was block the servers that were scraping us, and it largely has stopped the problem. Trying to stop the remaining theifs from manually copying our content isn't worth our legal department's time, and since they are all teny tiny sites doing this, we don't care that much anymore.
But the larger theifs who were profiting from out content --and scraping in large amounts-- don't do so anymore as a result from denying their scraping servers.
FYI, the phone book example happened in the Netherlands. The most successful phone book site was sued by the biggest telco (effectively the sole telco for home connections, ex-government) for listing the phone numbers of their customers.
The telco won, the site had to remove the numbers.
You have indeed touched upon an important point. Fair use isn't really the issue here. It can easily be argued that airline fares are facts. Facts can't be copyrighted.
Feist Publications, INC. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 US 340 (1991)
I'll never forget their position on Microsoft "Smart Tags." That's when I realized I didn't understand EFF anymore. The very idea that a web browser displaying a page "incorrectly" could possibly be copyright infringement... *sigh*
This was no simple case of "incorrectly" displaying a web page. This was a case of intentionally modifying the text of a potentially copyrighted work, providing links to some external site.
In my opinion, and obviously many others (since it seems to have gone away on its own anyway), what they did was sneaky and wrong, not unlike many similar spyware programs.
As for this case, hm, I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this. I kinda want to say that, copyright aside, just the fact that they took the time to compile the list, and are making it available *to their visitors*, makes it wrong to just copy the data and post it on your own site. But, then again, I'm not sure. It's a tough one...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Using your logic google should be illegal. You can find out a lot about people using google. It's a complete and utter invasion of privacy, it should be closed. I think you'll find people completely disagree with you.
However, I would say that Amazon selling their customer list is different then me assembling lists of information off the web. I give Amazon my information, and they have a privacy policy, I expect them to follow it. I have to give my address to get something shipped to me. I don't have any other choices. Amazon is collecting private personal information from me that I have no alternative other then not do business with them. Information on the web is available to anyone, I'm not attempting to hide it, if I was it wouldn't be on the public web. If someone else posted it about my private life that they shouldn't be, I can send them a C&D letter about invading my privacy.
The screen scrapers however, are collecting publically available information. Just like if someone decided to mail me on the basis of looking up my name in the telephone book, I can't object to that. I can object if I ask them nicely to stop sending me mail, or calling me, but it's not like can I say you can't use the phone book to lookup my number to contact me.
Spammers who collect e-mail addresses I see as more of a nuciense, but I'm very protective of my e-mail address so it's less of a problem for me. However, my e-mail address is google'able, and you can find it out on the web. I'd be supportive of anti-spamming laws, because they are using public information to electronically do the equivilent of stalking, or repetative time wasting phone calls. Just like I can get a court order for some crazy person who follows me, I'd like to be able to get one for spammers to say look, stop it. I can't stop people who access publically available information. Now there are some things no one should be posting on the web, that'd be a personal privacy issue. However, airline tickets isn't one of them.
I've seen a lot of companies intentionally do things, just so the only way to gather information is thru an automated system. They don't present the information in a simple easy to use form, just raise the bar of entry. Just like companies who will only give you a 100 page invoice on paper. They won't give it to you in an electronic format. However, you can lookup individual line items one at a time on the web. In a lot of cases, they are doing that to customers who own the information, but they just don't want the customer to be able to figure it out. Stuff like only telling you the prices one at a time over the phone. They do this to make it impossible for someone to verify they are being billed correctly. I've done work in this area, trust me, companies don't want you to be able to double check them to realize how badly they have screwed up. I firmly believe that technology should be usable in such cases. I some what seem this case in that vein of keeping big companies honest.
Technology solves these problems. It empowers people to optimize problems, and save money, generate more profit, hire more people. Established corporations don't want anyone to do that, so they put up silly rules to govern how you can get the information that is yours from them. It's silly.
Kirby
Wanna see something stupid up in Canuckistan? Our post office is suing a company that makes StrongPost, claiming that the post office owns the word "Post". So much for Post cereals, Post-It Notes, etc. Now THAT's stupid
This is where I go out on a limb because I could not find the citation. I remember reading that the Supreme Court ruled in a case where a map publisher sued another publisher for copyright infringement. The defendant used the plaintiffs map to create a new map. The plaintiff had introduced small errors into the maps in order detect such copying. The court ruled in favor of the defendant on the basis that since it was a new representation, it did not copy the creative aspect of the map. The introduction of errors is not a basis for copyright protection because nobody would ever be able to copy facts.
I have seen many times, for instance on BestBuy.com and Amazon.com, where the manufacturer has restricted the posting of prices for their merchandise. If Amazon or BestBuy sets a price for a companies product that is below the minimum advertisible price, then they can't show it to the public. They can only tell you the price once you show intent to purchase, such as placing it in your shopping cart.
The point is manufacturers do have control over what happens with their pricing. I'm not sure if this is entirely applicable to this case, but it is something to look at.
American uses Sabre internally (in fact used to own the WHOLE thing) and owns 25% of Worldspan (got it when they bought TWA): both customers of Farechase.
Ultimatly this is about controlling the distribution channel for tickets: first stop paying commission to travel agents (that's right! they make 0% commission now) and now try to put a clamp around screen scrapers.
Then there's the the fact that Orbitz is owned by the majors and is the very definition of collusion.
The owners of Worldspan (which powers Orbitz and is Delta, American and Northwest) plan on bypassing SABRE and putting inventory on Worldspan for sale through Orbitz. This has already been announced. Why? Because if you buy a ticket through a SABRE channel (like travelocity), SABRE charges AA (and every other airline) a $4 segment fee. Not so when you buy it through your own CRS/GDS system.
Again, it's about controlling the distribution channel.
I wouldn't know this except I used to be employed by American as a SABRE programmer.
American is nothing more than a bunch of slimy bastards (like all airlines with the exceptions of Southwest and JetBlue) and will deserve their bankruptcy filing when they do it.
And they WILL given the failed airline economic model that the "majors" subscribe to. In a very funny ironic turn of events two new 747s are valued at more than the whole of AMR (AA's parent).
Don't buy their stock anytime soon except to short it.