[HN Gopher] Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.co...
___________________________________________________________________
Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court
ruling
Author : rodhan
Score : 241 points
Date : 2024-07-22 08:20 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rte.ie)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rte.ie)
| snowpid wrote:
| Though I am not a legal expert, it is fascinating, that both
| European companies had this dispute in front of US courts. One
| hypothesis would be, that Ryan Air lawyers saw higher chances
| there than in EU courts.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Isn't Booking an American company now? The company in Amsterdam
| is a subsidiary of Delaware company with HQ in Connecticut.
| snowpid wrote:
| Looks like an American company called Priceline bought
| booking.com and rename themself after them.
|
| Booking.com brands themself as European, during the DMA
| debattes and complained they have a disadvantage to American
| competitors.
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| Booking.com BV is a Dutch Company which has subsidiaries all
| over the world but is also itself a subsidiary of Booking
| Holdings Group which also owns Priceline, Kayak, OpenTable
| and quite a few more companies.
| em500 wrote:
| 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.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| 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.
| doix wrote:
| Pretty light article, does anyone have any more context? Does
| this set a strong precedent for all these types of sites?
| Booking.com wouldn't be the only site reselling airline tickets,
| in fact I wasn't even aware they did flights.
|
| Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to
| something like SkyScanner or Google flights?
|
| > "We expect that this ruling will end the internet piracy and
| overcharging perpetrated on both airlines and other travel
| companies and consumers by the unlawful activity of OTA (online
| travel agent) Pirates," Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary
| said.
|
| Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd
| party than with the airline directly? Sometimes it's a few bucks
| and I book with the airline directly, but sometimes it's over $50
| cheaper to book through some 3rd party I've never heard of.
| figmert wrote:
| 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.
| doix wrote:
| 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.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| GoToGate is what booking.com flights actually are (at least
| last time I booked). So probably.
| gruez wrote:
| 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]
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yup, and having needed customer service the one time I booked
| a flight through booking.com, I can confirm that they
| absolutely get in the way - a name change on a ticket turned
| into an almighty rigamarole with charges left right and
| centre - even though it was booking who had truncated the
| name - and the airline wouldn't talk to me directly as I
| wasn't the booking party, booking.com was. The airline said
| the change would have been free if they could do it
| themselves, but the request had to originate from
| booking.com, who not only charged nearly EUR200 but also took
| so long about it (a week) they were almost too late.
|
| I never thought I'd find myself arguing Ryanair's corner, but
| adding booking.com to the mix likely just makes an already
| poor experience with Ryanair truly dire.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Which is why I always try to cut out as many middlemen as
| possible, especially when traveling. Except Costco, because
| it's Costco.
| baxtr wrote:
| Which is actually convenient for booking users. The Ryanair
| website is a big mess.
| 2rsf wrote:
| I recently ordered ticket from Ryanair, if you simply look
| for the "next" button nothing is a mess. The only somewhat
| messy thing is the content of what you buy, for example a
| family package has only one large suitcase which is
| unusual, and that Ryanair are super strict at the airport-
| I saw someone taking out socks to remove extra 300 grams
| from their suitcase.
| maccard wrote:
| Is it? it's certainly no worse than EasyJet, and unlike the
| larger transatlantic carriers (ba/united/delta are the ones
| I'm most experienced with) the websites are navigable,
| performant, and actually functional.
|
| Meanwhile booking.com has a recurring pattern of diverting
| you via search results to show you extra sponsored results.
| My experience is that Ryanair is far easier to navigate and
| book than Booking.com
| codedokode wrote:
| 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 like it is super easy to block this on airline side.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Virtual credit cards are an established financial
| technology.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number
|
| IP addresses are a tradeable commodity.
| codedokode wrote:
| To issue virtual card numbers you must be a bank, right?
| tblt wrote:
| To be issued a virtual card number, you need only be a
| bank customer
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| codedokode wrote:
| It is not very reliable link though, there will be
| errors, timeouts.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to
| something like SkyScanner or Google flights?_
|
| Presumably, given they're fine with Google Flights:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67873695
|
| _" In a statement, Ryanair described the online agents as
| "pirates". It said it would "continue to make its fares
| available to honest/transparent online travel agents such as
| Google Flights," which it said "do not add hidden mark ups to
| Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings
| directly on the Ryanair.com website"."_
| chrisjj wrote:
| > honest/transparent online travel agents such as Google
| Flights
|
| Disingenuous at best. Google Flights is not a Ryanair agent.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > Does this set a strong precedent for all these types of
| sites?
|
| Ryanair has successfully sued other companies doing the same
| for a while now. But I mostly know about their cases in the EU.
| This case is from USA.
|
| > Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd
| party than with the airline directly?
|
| It's not necessarily cheaper, the flight-search is usually just
| better in filtering, and has a cache of previous results. So
| humans might get the same cheap result if they just search long
| enough and know how to use the airline-site efficiently.
| chx wrote:
| > Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd
| party than with the airline directly?
|
| > sometimes it's over $50 cheaper
|
| $ tells me you are in the US where these kind of legacy
| shenanigans happen. Never with Ryanair.
| doix wrote:
| I'm actually from the UK, just wrote it in dollars since it's
| a currency I assume everyone knows the value of. I just check
| SkyScanner and buy from the cheapest reseller. Very recently
| I had to buy a ticket from Edinburgh to Oslo, it was PS45
| cheaper to buy it from Trip.com than directly from Norwegian
| Airlines.
|
| Out of curiosity, I did go and check a bunch of routes that I
| know Ryanair flies on SkyScanner, and it was cheaper to buy
| directly from Ryanair. So fair play to them, I'm surprised
| anyone would buy from a 3rd party when buying direct is
| cheaper.
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| There was similar case with Kiwi.com.
|
| Issue was that Kiwi pocketed refounds, would not inform customers
| of flight changes, changing baggage was very hard...
|
| Ryanair service is OK (if you take it as a bus company). There do
| no play dead as Airbnb support. During covid they provided
| refunds sooner than Lufthanza for example.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Did Ryanair try blocking their IP's or adding captchas? Or did
| they sue because the cat and mouse game became too much?
| walthamstow wrote:
| If you play the whackamole game with IP blocking and captchas,
| you'll be playing it forever. A court ruling against the
| practice is much more effective.
| pickledoyster wrote:
| iirc, Ryanair login-walled ticket prices, which means anyone
| accessing the pricing/booking pages were agreeing to their ToS
| Closi wrote:
| I'm not sure that's what login-walled means (ie I can access
| pricing and booking pages without logging in)
|
| If you search on google you are also agreeing to their terms,
| there just isn't a checkbox.
| codetrotter wrote:
| This case is about more than that:
|
| > It says the companies, which use screen-scraping software
| to find and resell tickets, add additional charges and make
| it difficult for the airline to contact passengers.
| benj111 wrote:
| What it's 'about' (according to one side) and the law
| involved are 2 separate things.
|
| When I buy something from the supermarket, they add
| charges and make it difficult for the manufacturer to
| contact me directly, so that isn't illegal. Many things
| with bad outcomes are legal.
|
| Breaking the terms of service of the site may be illegal,
| and if you're mis representing yourself to log in, even
| more so.
|
| But then you're also moving away from what I would term
| screen scraping.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > make it difficult for the manufacturer to contact me
| directly
|
| Probably a good thing in the case of most manufacturers.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > If you search on google you are also agreeing to their
| terms, there just isn't a checkbox.
|
| Depends where you are, really. In Europe, where Ryanair
| does virtually all their business, courts have generally
| been reluctant to take the "haha, you clicked on the
| website, you've magically agreed to the license" thing as
| being particularly meaningful, and recent regulations have
| cut down the usefulness of EULAs even further.
|
| That said, Ryanair prices aren't login-walled anyway.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Nah, just went to their website; you don't need to be logged
| in to price tickets.
|
| (It's _possible_ that this is a recent DMA/DSA compliance
| thing, I suppose.)
| always_learning wrote:
| 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.
| walthamstow wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| And here I was thinking that read-only was part of the
| definition of scraping?
| tgv wrote:
| The article mentions reselling.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, it's not a terribly well-written article, and
| _Ryanair_ is certainly trying to push the line that this is
| about scraping, but it's hard to imagine that the _resale_
| thing wasn't a significant part of the case.
| skissane wrote:
| If the ruling (which I haven't read) says automated booking
| via screen scraping is illegal: wouldn't a workaround be to
| replace the automated process with a human in a low-cost
| country?
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| That sounds like a very Amazon-esque solution!
| arghwhat wrote:
| Sure, but that's what _you_ want, not what booking.com
| wants. Booking.com wants to charge you for the service, and
| if they 're not part of the transaction they'd have to get
| money out-of-band, e.g. as a subscription for the price
| finding service.
|
| Remember that this lawsuit is between two large companies
| _both_ trying to get your money.
| skissane wrote:
| > Booking.com wants to charge you for the service, and if
| they're not part of the transaction they'd have to get
| money out-of-band
|
| I think you misunderstand what I meant. To be more
| specific: if the ruling says that automated booking via
| screen scraping is illegal - what's to stop Booking.com
| hiring warm bodies in low cost countries, replacing their
| fully automated solution with a semi-automated solution
| to dodge the ruling, and continuing to charge their
| customers for that service?
| whazor wrote:
| Or performing screen scraping in a country where it is not
| illegal.
| reddalo wrote:
| I'm not sure Google Flights actually scrapes RyanAir. I think
| they connect to API services such as Amadeus.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Google owns ITA which has all of the pricing data.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software
| chx wrote:
| Not Ryanair, no. Wizz Air got semi-recently hooked into
| the GDS systems but Ryanair no.
| sva_ wrote:
| In fact I wrote my own RyanAir scraper to get the best prices
| on flights (it is trivial to implement, they barely have any
| rate limits - in particular if you use the API endpoint where
| you search for flights departing from a specific airport).
|
| But I guess my scraping is a lot less, as I'm only looking for
| a few flights
| chrisjj wrote:
| Same here. Except my rate was sufficient to trigger
| throttling.
| sva_ wrote:
| Which API requests did you use?
| chrisjj wrote:
| HTTP POST :)
| arghwhat wrote:
| This lawsuit is not about scraping, it is about booking.com
| acting as a reseller of ryanair products without a reseller
| agreement - to which they mention that booking.com adds their
| own profits to the transaction and makes ryanair unable to
| communicate with the real customer - _through_ "unauthorized
| access" (scraping).
|
| What we on hackernews would consider scraping is not covered by
| this lawsuit, and ryanair's vendetta is not against scraping
| but "pirate online travel agencies" (resellers).
| wcedmisten wrote:
| Would a restaurant have the same case against Doordash? Seems
| like a fairly common business model
| arghwhat wrote:
| Depends. Established, well-behaved food delivery apps have
| agreements with the restaurants and have direct integration
| - not scraping. They take absurd margins, but that's a
| separate issue.
|
| When the food delivery apps "scrape", it's _sometimes_
| okay, but often not: The food offered by a place might be
| made to be eaten immediately, in which case a 60 minute
| delivery might guarantee a horrible experience. The food
| might not even be safe to transport by intermediate
| handlers, such as if the food is not packaged in sealed
| containers. In both cases, the food place ends up with
| dissatisfied customers and bad reputation for something
| they neither did nor wanted to do.
|
| John Oliver had an interesting video on the topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFsfJYWpqII
| ericd wrote:
| Why is the CFAA mentioned, then? That's historically been
| used as a bludgeon against scraping.
|
| "A US court ruled that Booking.com violated the Computer
| Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing part of Ryanair's website
| without permission, court documents showed, a ruling the
| airline said would help end unauthorised screen scraping by
| booking sites."
| lesuorac wrote:
| Ryanair had previously send Cease & Desist letters to
| Booking.com so they were very explicitly unauthorized
| Booking.com from accessing their website.
|
| The part that annoys me is the losses are redacted [1].
| Judging by the length of the redaction its much more than
| the $5000 they were ultimately awarded. I'm also very
| unclear what harm will actually befall Ryanair if the
| losses weren't redacted.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18414221/354/ryanair-
| da...
| ericd wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't kept up very closely with
| the movements in scraping legality, but my impression was
| that it was ruled in the past few years that if it's on
| the public internet with no login-wall being
| circumvented, then CFAA isn't applicable? I seem to
| recall a collective sigh of relief around some of those
| rulings.
| slightwinder wrote:
| It's not public, it's just generally accessible but with rules.
| It's similar to how a physical shop is accessible to everyone
| by default, but the owner still has the right to refuse
| business and deny access if you behave bad. The problem is that
| you can't easily deny companies like booking-com access to a
| website, as they can circumvent any technical barrier.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Simple scraping is one thing. Scraping to resell in breach of
| agreed terms is quite another.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Simultaneously being hostile towards users with upselling dark
| patterns and towards web scappers where everyone is a suspect,
| that's what most of the web has become.
| rob74 wrote:
| Mind you, Booking.com is no stranger to using dark patterns
| itself...
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I'm avoiding them at all cost, unfortunately I'm unable to
| avoid airline reservation websites and apps
| 2rsf wrote:
| Even more than Ryanair, they are on the verge of cheating in
| the search and order process while Ryanair "merely" shows
| aggressive offers.
| teeheelol wrote:
| I'm not sure why because Ryanair looks really good on the
| scrapers. I bet it drives a lot of business their way.
|
| That is of course until you add all the additional charges.
| surfingdino wrote:
| You can fly for not a lot of money on Ryanair, their fee
| structure, website, and app are similar to all other budget
| airlines. Those extra fees are for handling your luggage (extra
| manpower and fuel). If you want to complain about Ryanair's
| fees, get hold of the Fees Schedule for the airport you fly
| from and to. You will learn how much airports charge for
| landing, parking, hangarage, handling, fuel, etc. It's an eye-
| opening read.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Ryanair's claim was that Booking.com etc was reselling its
| seats, adding its own charges on top, and providing false
| passenger details. It's in Ryanair's interest to portray this
| as basically a screen scraping case (because Ryanair don't like
| screen scraping in general), but there does seem to be more to
| it than just that.
| ta1243 wrote:
| 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.
| 2rsf wrote:
| 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.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Lets say 20% of people booking through ryanair and paying
| PS30 for a flight go for their "upselling" (which is
| deliberatly designed to get more people to add it). That
| makes ryanair PS50 each. That pushes the revenue per
| customer upto PS40.
|
| Lets say the cost is PS35, and thus ryanair makes PS5
| profit per passenger.
|
| Now lets say someone else comes along as sells the
| ryanair flight for PS30 and has their own "upselling":
| "Click here to not avoid missing out on our great
| protection package" etc. Ryanair now is making a PS5 loss
| on each ticket sold, and the reseller is making it
| instead.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I still don't understand, I flew with them last year, and
| just now I dry-ran booking a flight from Prague to Bologna.
| The entire thing feels quite streamlined and
| straightforward. Pick two dates, you're offered flights on
| or around the dates, you pick the flights, then you pick
| the "package" (basic, regular, plus, flexi plus) and it
| shows a HUGE matrix with big fat check marks for stuff you
| get and no check marks for stuff you DON'T GET (reserved
| seats, cabin luggage, checked luggage, free check-in at the
| airport). Honestly, if someone can't navigate the process
| as it is today, I'd be worried about them traveling to a
| foreign country. Any additional offers (hotels, insurance,
| cars) you can safely ignore.
| switch007 wrote:
| Yes, in their defense, that matrix is an improvement.
| Though it's not perfect and still intended to fool
| people: you would expect as you go up the tiers that
| everything from the previous tier is included but that's
| not the case: "Plus" doesn't include a carry-on/priority
| boarding from the "Regular" fare. And the most expensive
| option "Flexi Plus" doesn't include a checked bag (easy
| to miss when all other options are included)
| chrisjj wrote:
| Consider the business it drives away from Ryanair by the price
| raise.
| arghwhat wrote:
| > 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 or other service aspects, 3.
| Add your own profit. I don't think this sets any precedent
| against scraping on its own.
|
| (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel would
| also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying
| entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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, bookingcom acts as
| a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have _any_
| legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?!
|
| Side note: Where is a service where I can just enter from/to
| which city/airport I want to fly (or in Europe also rail), what
| luggage and passengers I carry, and it spits me out the
| cheapest price offered for the route and sells me the ticket(s)
| without having to create individual accounts, spread payment
| info around and try to fight myself through a shitton of dark
| patterns, broken English and constantly changing UIs? I know
| this shit is possible, travel agents live and breathe for that
| stuff, but I'd like to do that _myself_ instead of getting
| upselled by the travel agent. Rail and flight should be dumb
| pipes.
| com wrote:
| Just for rail, I quite like trainline.com. It tries to hide
| the madness that is very poor national/private rail service
| and their ticketing regimes, but really there's only so much
| you can do, so often I get two or more tickets for legs of
| travel, some of which change as I remain on the same train?!?
| ytwySXpMbS wrote:
| I use Railboard, exactly like trainline but without the
| booking fee as it's made by national rail
| com wrote:
| Thanks for that! Unfortunately UK only? Do you know of
| similar no-fee apps for pan-European travel?
| arghwhat wrote:
| > 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 selling ryanair tickets while evading using
| reseller agreements by using the site as if they were a
| private customer (likely also against the terms of service),
| with supposedly some bad side-effects like ryanair being
| unable to communicate with the customer (which could be bad
| if they wanted to e.g. give you a notice about the flight
| during the sales process).
|
| You will have to sue ryanair specifically about their pricing
| to get a decision on that, which of course first requires
| ensuring that it is unlawful or unfair business conduct
| within your jurisdiction (which it might not be).
|
| > bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should
| Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from
| doing so?!
|
| They are not your useragent, they are acting as a reseller:
| You buy a product from them which they acquire elsewhere,
| taking a profit in the process.
|
| If they were in fact entirely transparent in the process,
| merely allowing you to purchase the product at the best
| available price directly (e.g., a plugin to find
| deals/discounts, VPN to get it from the cheapest region,
| etc.), then the case would have been hard or impossible for
| ryanair to make.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| 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?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Isn't the issue that you can do that, but Company A can
| also add in a clause that you can only do business with
| us (or with this specific product/website/etc. we offer)
| if you agree to be buying the tickets for yourself and
| not for someone else. In which case, if Company B says
| they are, they are lying.
|
| I think one interesting question from this is what
| happens when you put an AI in there instead. If Company B
| sells an AI that Person can use to interact with Company
| A, at what point does it count as Person's interaction
| and at what point does it count as Company A's
| interaction.
|
| Obviously Person is allowed to use technology to interact
| on behalf of them. They are using Chrome, or IE, or
| Firefox, etc. This doesn't count as
| Google/Microsoft/Mozilla interacting with Company A. So
| on a continuum (likely multi dimensional) from internet
| browsers to what Booking.com did in this case, including
| AI somewhere in the continuum space, where is the legal
| limit?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They are not your useragent, they are acting as a
| reseller: You buy a product from them which they acquire
| elsewhere, taking a profit in the process.
|
| Yeah so what? Why should anyone, be it a private person or
| a commercial entity, be restricted from buying something
| and then re-selling it to another person or entity?
|
| The only thing I'm willing to accept as a restriction for
| _any_ kind of legal transaction is a reasonable price cap
| (i.e. no sale above face value of tickets + 5% fees) to get
| scalpers under control and for security reasons (e.g. name-
| bound tickets for sports events to prevent hooligans from
| attending or flight tickets to prevent terrorists from
| boarding).
|
| But neither applies in this case - flight tickets usually
| are not a scarce commodity that attracts scalpers and the
| airline has the full set of PNR data.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _flight tickets usually are not a scarce commodity that
| attracts scalpers_
|
| If airline ticket resale was as easy as concert tickets,
| you'd probably see a predatory scalping market develop.
| Airplane tickets are scarce in that there is limited
| ability to adjust supply, especially in the short term.
| If flights to a destination are booked, you can't just
| throw another plane on the route because the gates are
| limited and inflexible.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > If airline ticket resale was as easy as concert
| tickets, you'd probably see a predatory scalping market
| develop.
|
| I don't think so, because a predatory scalping market
| only happens when artists are pricing their tickets below
| the market rate.
|
| Airlines have so such compunction, so they'd just raise
| their prices until scalpers no longer had a margin
| opportunity. Or, to put in another way, airline pricing
| is _already_ as "predatory" as the most aggressive
| scalping markets.
| inopinatus wrote:
| > Why should anyone ... be restricted from buying
| something and then re-selling it to another person
|
| because:
|
| > flight tickets usually are not a scarce commodity
|
| Airline tickets are _not a commodity_ , full stop. They
| form a contract for a service between the airline and the
| customer. They're not a bag of fucking apples. Travel
| agents, when arranging air fares, are agents in the legal
| sense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_agency) and
| not resellers. Booking.com were screwed on that front
| because they were deceptive in the particulars, a failure
| of good faith dealing that undermines the claim of
| agency.
| jddj wrote:
| Airline websites stick a giant middle finger up at the
| traditional ecommerce mantra that every extra second costs
| you N% of sales.
|
| I had to load the desktop version of vueling.com the other
| day just to have the UI understand that I didn't want to
| purchase a return flight.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Vueling doesn't even comply with GDPR on their marketing
| sign up. It's a singularly terrible experience.
| simiones wrote:
| 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.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| > 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| I much prefer to book directly for air and hotels. If
| something goes wrong, there's one less level of
| indirection.
| gomox wrote:
| On the flip side if something goes wrong you get to
| discover what $RANDOM_VENDOR in $RANDOM_COUNTRY thinks is
| a reasonable policy for handling it, which is not usually
| a big risk for domestic USA travel, but for international
| travel can be a true wrench in the spokes.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe but if $RANDOM_VENDOR isn't willing/able to help, I
| don't really expect Expedia to. That said, I do use an
| agent to arrange self-guided walking trips and things
| like that and they seem to be a useful resource rather
| than planning and booking the whole thing myself, in
| part, because a lot of local knowledge can be involved.
| But that's different from booking 5 nights in some
| European city.
| snotrockets wrote:
| I had a couple of times when car rentals and hotels
| decided to add surprise charges when I arrived. As those
| was booked through Expedia, the latter refunded me those
| immediately (and I suspect went and got them back from
| the vendor later)
| nkg wrote:
| >If there's any problem with your flight you're up shit
| creek if you have to deal via a third party.
|
| I have learned that the hard way. My flight was cancelled
| and I don't get any notification. There is a real
| communication issue between OTAs and airlines. After a week
| of poking the customer service, I got a refund from Opodo,
| fortunately.
| notresidenter wrote:
| rome2rio.com comes closest to that experience compared to the
| other services (not affiliated)
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| To answer side question: try skiplagged.com
| amelius wrote:
| > (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel
| would also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying
| entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.)
|
| How difficult would it be to destroy Booking.com's entire
| businessmodel or at least their grip on the market?
| gumby wrote:
| > Booking.com's ... grip on the market?
|
| Do they have a significant grip on the market? I've never
| used them, but for all I know they sell a majority of plane
| tickets.
|
| Then again I haven't used Ryanair either. The reputations of
| Ryanair, Spirit etc are sufficient for me to avoid them. But
| in booking.com's case I barely even know it exists.
| naiv wrote:
| They own Priceline, Kayak, Agoda and a lot of other sites
| gumby wrote:
| Ah, thanks. I do use kayak to look up flights (which I
| then book directly).
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| They're bigger in Europe
| bboygravity wrote:
| And (South East) Asia
| dgellow wrote:
| Under the brand name Agoda if I remember correctly
| ghaff wrote:
| That's probably true. I've never used them in the US but
| they seem to often be the site of choice in Europe and
| Asia (and, based on one recent experience in Europe, can
| have inventory that can't be accessed any other way).
| That said, you also have to take direct bookings into
| account which is most of what I (at any rate) do.
| dawnerd wrote:
| You may have used them indirectly though due to them
| owning a lot of OTAs. It's basically a duopoly of Booking
| Holding and Expedia Group.
| amelius wrote:
| > According to Booking Holdings (Booking.com)'s latest
| financial reports the company's current revenue (TTM ) is
| $22.00 B. In 2023 the company made a revenue of $21.36 B an
| increase over the years 2022 revenue that were of $17.09 B
|
| (from a google search)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is that 1% or 100% of their market? Did they turn a
| profit?
| gumby wrote:
| Wow! Shows I'm living under a basket.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Those numbers did not answer any of your questions.
|
| They are doing significantly better than the main
| competing travel agent website:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BKNG/booking-
| holdi...
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/EXPE/expedia/ma
| rke...
|
| What I always find interesting is middlemen businesses
| that don't do any of the risky and laborious work, such
| as operating hotels and airlines and car rental
| businesses, earning higher profit margins and profits
| than the businesses that have to put much more on the
| line.
|
| You would think the internet would especially be able to
| split the profit margin of these middlemen between the
| customer and the actual businesses that do the work by
| automating and commodifying the middleman's function.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's normal. Information is a very valuable resource.
| It's often the case that advertising companies can be
| very profitable while people advertising using them have
| worse margins.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The information being referred to here is not scarce,
| though.
|
| All airlines and hotels and car rental websites show
| everyone the information, at the cost of a few minutes
| low effort button clicking. A vast change from how
| difficult and time consuming it was to access information
| before the internet.
| stby wrote:
| At least enough grip on the market to get designated as a
| gatekeeper under the DMA by the EU [0].
|
| [0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/05/13/bookingcom-
| gatekeep...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive
| then.
| arghwhat wrote:
| And you still regulate it, just differently.
|
| The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive
| is wrong, and comparing the air travel market _over half a
| century ago_ with the market today, and crediting a change
| made in 1978 for the difference doesn't make sense.
|
| EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights
| for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of
| delay, and yet air travel reached a point some years before
| covid where some providers played with the thought of having
| tickets be free - the main source of income for the airlines
| was in duty-free on either end of the journey anyway, so more
| travelers meant more revenue even if their tickets were zero.
|
| Disallowing discriminatory and unfair business practices is
| not the same as having the government set travel prices.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Flying budget air carriers is already so incredibly cheap
| in the EU. It is cheaper to fly from Belfast to London,
| than it is to fly Houston to Austin (half the distance) or
| Houston to New Orleans (roughly the same distance).
|
| I wish the US could figure that out.
| piltdownman wrote:
| RyanAir used to fly to Morocco, and it was often cheaper
| to go Dublin -> Marrakesh than it was to get a plane or
| train from London to Manchester.
|
| Lot of it comes down to individual airports and fees.
| Part of the reason that RyanAir flies into Buvais rather
| than CDG or Orly when you fly with them to 'Paris', or
| that other joke airport they use instead of Berlin.
| thinkindie wrote:
| Ryanair flies to Berlin. Even before the new airport,
| they were flying to Schoenefeld which was just outside
| the city limits. In fact, the old airport was just across
| the runaways of the new one and you can still reach the
| old terminal building with the commuter train.
| Schoenefeld was the old East Berlin airport, which was
| indeed suboptimal for the load of travellers it got over
| time.
| pimeys wrote:
| The are going to renovate Schonefeld and make it a
| private airport for German politicians. I guess the
| project will be ready in 20-30 years...
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, European air travel is often pretty cheap
| relative to trains. Varies enormously though.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| A pilot friend who flew for ryanair showed me around
| control tower of Frankfurt Hahn (hint: nowhere near the
| real frankfurt) some ten years ago. We were shooting the
| shit with the controllers as a private jet plane came in
| on the radio, asking permission to land. After some back
| and forth they discovered this was the fake frankfurt,
| and eventually didn't come in for landing. That got a
| good chuckle from everyone...
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I think they just want to bring back smoking on planes
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > having tickets be free - the main source of income for
| the airlines was in duty-free on either end of the journey
| anyway
|
| I'm sure that was pretty far-fetched and not something
| actually viable. Considering duty-free isn't even a thing
| for most Ryanair/other cheap airline flights because they
| are inside the EU.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Can you cite examples of any industry or niche , anywhere
| in the world, that was newly regulated, and once regulation
| tool place, prices materially dropped?
|
| Geniuinely curious.
| TylerE wrote:
| Internet access after the telcos were forced to share
| their last mile fibre?
| NohatCoder wrote:
| Telephone roaming charges in the EU.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| Everything about regulating Big Telecom. They didn't want
| to run lines to people, drop long distance, increase
| broadband speed, etc. Each time, the behavior was
| countered by regulation or the threat of it.
|
| Splitting MA Bell into the Baby Bells also helped for a
| while. Then, they started merging back together. Then,
| the oligopolies made service worse again.
|
| If left on their own, they collude to do a minimum form
| of competition while cooperating on profitable ways to
| cheat customers. That's called cartels. It's as big a
| threat to the free market as governments.
| dantheman wrote:
| What are you talking about - that is deregulation. This
| was a government granted monopoly - you don't get more
| regulated than that.
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| When California re-regulated the wholesale energy markets
| after the Enron debacle.
|
| Source: https://www.apep.uci.edu/PDF_Research_Summaries/I
| mpact_Of_El...
| Retric wrote:
| Airlines were a lot more expensive everywhere back then. The
| majority of the drop in airline prices is from improving
| aircraft. They use ~1/3 the fuel per passenger mile today. ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/medi...
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| How much of that "fuel per passenger" metric comes from
| simply packing passengers tighter?
| Retric wrote:
| On net close to 0. Roughly 50% the cargo holds of
| passenger aircraft are now taken up by air freight which
| adds quite a bit of drag and isn't part of those
| comparisons and offsets the reduction in passenger
| legroom.
|
| That freight also helps explain why nearly empty flights
| can make sense economically.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Most of what makes travel shitty is that simply far too many
| people are traveling. I do think it's better for the world
| for less travel to happen in general, so I fully support
| this.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Alright, you first
| maeil wrote:
| I've been doing it, now you join.
| xienze wrote:
| > We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive
| then.
|
| I'm not sure this is the gotcha you think it is. Air travel,
| even in coach, was downright luxury compared to where it is
| today, and I'm not even talking about in the distant past,
| I'm talking about 25 or so years ago. Seats are narrower,
| legroom is practically nonexistent, and the seats only
| recline like two inches these days. Also almost everything is
| a la carte.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You already have the choice to pay more to upgrade to
| better seats/experience. If I value price over luxury, why
| would you want take that choice from me? There is no world
| where we regulate first class for everyone but at basic
| economy prices.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Exactly. You can still fly businesses and pay the same
| price as before, it just became massively more accessible
| than before,
| Marsymars wrote:
| > You can still fly businesses and pay the same price as
| before
|
| You can't really though - e.g. 25 years ago you could fly
| economy from Vancouver Canada to Sydney Australia for
| $2600. (Inflation adjusted.) You can now do that flight
| for $1400. Pretty good, but the kicker is that flying
| business class is now $5300. Even premium economy is
| $4400. (Prices are all the cheapest I see on Google
| Flights over the rest of 2024, so some of them are
| limited to very specific dates.)
|
| Probably the most equivalent price to 25 years ago is
| basic economy plus paying for a meal, snack, checked bag
| and selection of an exit row seat, but today's premium
| economy is probably the most equivalent service level to
| yesterday's basic economy.
| fermisea wrote:
| So you believe poor people shouldn't be allowed to travel?
| darknavi wrote:
| A good video on the history of the subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc
| Oras wrote:
| I always thought booking sites had partnerships with airlines and
| using an API!
| michaelt wrote:
| Most airlines have partnerships with booking sites, provide an
| API, pay the booking site a commission, and have a pricing
| structure that lets them profitably sell tickets at the
| advertised prices.
|
| Ryanair doesn't pay a commission to booking sites, and their
| pricing model is to advertise $15 flights but making booking an
| obstacle course so plenty of passengers find themselves paying
| $60 instead.
|
| They therefore don't provide an API for the booking sites to
| use.
| dhx wrote:
| It appears the latest opinion may not yet be published for this
| case 20-cv-01191-LPS, Ryanair DAC v. Booking Holdings Inc. et al,
| United States District Court of Delaware.
|
| This is the first opinion on the case from 2021 which denied
| Booking Holdings Inc request to dismiss:
|
| [1]
| https://www.ded.uscourts.gov/sites/ded/files/opinions/20-cv-...
|
| Ryanair (Irish company) makes one claim against Delaware
| corporation Booking Holdings Inc (including subsidiaries Kayak
| Software Corporation and Priceline LLC as Delaware corporations
| and Agoda as a Singaporean company) citing 18 USC 1030(a)(2)(C),
| (a)(4) and (a)(5)(A)-(C)[2]. Amongst reasons to seek dismissal of
| the case, Booking Holdings Inc name drops Etraveli, Mystifly and
| Travelfusion as the three companies which were used by Booking
| Holdings Inc to scrape airline websites including Ryanair's
| website.
|
| It's hard from just this opinion to figure out what exactly
| Booking Holdings Inc, Etraveli, Mystifly and/or Travelfusion may
| have been found to do wrong. It sounds most likely that Ryanair
| may have successfully argued their public website is a "protected
| computer" because there is a "By clicking search you agree to the
| Website Terms of Use" button on their main website search form,
| and the ToS is the form of "protection". Looking behind the
| scenes, it's a fairly simple "anonymous token" API request
| without any secrets being required to ask the API to respond.
|
| Deleting the HTML elements from the DOM that provide the "By
| clicking search you agree.." and the associated checkbox doesn't
| prevent the form from being submitted and results returned
| successfully.
|
| [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
| qingcharles wrote:
| Didn't the HiQ case rule that under the federal CFAA at least,
| the ToS isn't a form of protection?
|
| Here in Illinois, at least, they make it up to a felony to
| violate a web site ToS, and it's specifically worded as such in
| the statute.
| bradvl wrote:
| The reason that Ryanair is against OTAs reselling flights is not
| the fees, it's that they're often resold as a package holiday.
|
| Package holidays are flights bundled with hotels etc and are
| usually sold at much higher margin.
|
| Ryanair has its own package holiday business and prefers that
| they make the margin, not someone else.
|
| There are many more package holiday companies than airlines, they
| want to use this ruling and the fact that they also own an
| airline to restrict competition and make more money.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Or selling insurance, renting a car, etc.
| oneshtein wrote:
| So, basically, Ryanair is against free market. They want to
| have monopoly, to raise prices. Good for Ryanair, bad for
| consumers.
| zie wrote:
| This is like standard business methodology these days. Nearly
| every company prefers this. Just ask any olympian how hard it
| is to even get to the olympics let alone win.
|
| Business would much rather be proprietary and not have to
| work that hard.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Booking is just acting as a middleman. Booking flights are
| still being booked through Ryanair, which was part of the
| suit.
| s_dev wrote:
| >Ryanair is against free market. They want to have monopoly,
| to raise prices.
|
| This is the goal of almost every business and that isn't
| against the free market it is the free market and the precise
| reason we have regulators to ensure competition.
| hbosch wrote:
| Booking.com isn't the market force keeping Ryanair's prices
| down.
| miohtama wrote:
| Ryanair wants to make it harder for consumer to compare
| prices.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| And Ryanair wants to upsell you during the buying process,
| which they can't do as well, if you don't buy on their
| site.
| sureIy wrote:
| This is the reason.
|
| Nothing is stopping airlines from offering 1-click
| bookings, except that lengthy funnels bring in tons of
| cash. Ryanair has been a master at this since the
| beginning of time.
|
| In 2020 I booked a flight directly on Google Flights and
| the booking was complete before I even realized, it was
| so simple. I never found that UI again.
| mFixman wrote:
| A big part is fees. OTAs like Booking sell the base part of
| flight from Ryanair and low cost airlines at the same price as
| the airlines but with much higher fees for luggage and extras.
| They hide this second part from flight search engines, so they
| appear cheaper when including luggage.
|
| I'm sure that a lot of dislike from low cost airlines comes
| from shitty OTAs rather than the airlines themselves.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Boosting this.
|
| I recently tried to use Expedia to book a flight from
| Vancouver to Toronto on Porter Airlines because then I could
| use my TD Reward points.
|
| The default prices that showed up in the results looked the
| same on Expedia or directly on Porter, so it didn't seem like
| I was losing anything.
|
| Except that base flight included no carry-on and no checked-
| baggage, which I needed to do. On Porter directly fixing that
| cost an extra $40. Expedia said it cost $60.
|
| For this particular flight I also needed to be able to make
| changes after booking. On Porter that increased the cost by
| $100. On Expedia, $150.
|
| I still did it, cuz, y'know - points. But I shook my fist at
| Expedia the entire time.
| sureIy wrote:
| It can go both ways.
|
| Pros of Expedia: - they have my card
| - their website does not suck as much as the airline's
| - they let me cancel within 24/48 hours for free and
| immediately
|
| The second point can be a huge selling point and it applies
| to a lot of OTAs. Every time I try to book direct "because
| it's best" I easily spend triple the time and sometimes I
| get fleeced anyway (oh, here's a $5 convenience fee for
| using a credit card we don't like)
| xmprt wrote:
| Not that this would help now, but you might have been able
| to book through Expedia and then later add the luggage
| through the airline directly. Still can't use points on it
| but maybe you could have saved the points for another
| vacation some other time.
| b800h wrote:
| So this was a criminal offence. Who goes to jail?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| 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 agreement.
|
| Just stomp booking.com into the ground - I simply don't
| understand why hotels and airlines don't do it?
| jsiepkes wrote:
| > Just stomp booking.com into the ground - I simply don't
| understand why hotels and airlines don't do it?
|
| Classic prisoners dillema. The problem is all the hotels, etc.
| need to be on the same page.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| No that's the search engine trap - which hotel shall I go to
| is a _map_ not a search page. It's a marketing exercise -
| which influencer, which email drop, which word of mouth.
|
| It's everything that was before Google captured all the
| advertising revenue there ever was. And reduced it to a list
| on a black ink on white page
|
| Airlines are in a race to the bottom because there are only 8
| bits in the 1970s booking system so there is only a
| competition on seat price. Chnage that to be able to have
| different parameters and we compete on other factors
|
| If hotels are just competing for price on booking.com then
| they are heading to the same trap - beautiful architecture,
| fantastic location, smiling staff, 1950s movie stars making
| films in the courtyard- none of it matters if it's price per
| room in NYC.
|
| The only way cows stop being treated like cattle is to make
| sure every human sees them as individuals - it's a lot of
| work. But the struggle is worth the abbatoir.
| robjan wrote:
| 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.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| I was at a startup event last year where someone that had been
| very senior and instrumental in Ryanair starting was talking to a
| small audience (<40 people). He told the story of how they didn't
| notice booking.com was "stealing" so much of their profit. To
| rephrase his words: "We gave those guys free advertising on our
| site and without us realising they were quickly making more
| profit per head than we were. Before we noticed and could do
| anything they had gotten too big to effectively cut off." So it's
| funny to see this posted and that the frenemy fight continues to
| this day.
| dzonga wrote:
| skyscanner would list ryanair traffic on their sites. even
| though they don't make money from ryanair via click referrals
| but because of the traffic that ryanair brings.
| sega_sai wrote:
| If it was up to me, I would have required all airlines publish
| their fares in machine readable format.
| dmbaggett wrote:
| 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.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Ryanair does. The machine is yours running a browser.
| maronato wrote:
| Displaying the fares in a separate website isn't the problem.
| The resale of tickets is, since other aggregators need to pay
| Ryanair a license fee to resell, and Booking is avoiding that
| by using RPA
| Havoc wrote:
| How does the fraud part come in here? Not seeing it
| chrisjj wrote:
| When buying the ticket, Booking.com pretends to Ryanair to be
| the customer.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Can someone clarify what "access parts of Ryanair's website
| without authorisation" actually means? Are they referring to
| programmatic account creation?
| nness wrote:
| I'd love to read the full text of the judgement, as the news
| articles and press releases are vague as to how the ruling was
| reached.
|
| My assumption is that the issue was not about
| automation/scraping, but rather, the way in which booking.com
| engaged in scraping amounted to some kind of fraud.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Jury Verdict:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18414221/457/ryanair-da...
|
| > Part E: Computer Fraud an Abuse Act Loss
|
| > Did Ryanair prove by a preponderance of evidence that it
| suffered actual economic harm caused by Booking.com violating the
| Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and, if yes, state the amount.
|
| > X Yes _ No
|
| > $ 5000
|
| > Part E Nominal Damages
|
| > $ 0
|
| > Part F: Punitive Damages
|
| > $0
|
| I know Rynair won the lawsuit but uh, having to pay only 5k
| sounds like a win for Booking.com
| eli wrote:
| Yeah but they have to stop doing it
| lesuorac wrote:
| Or what? They'll have to pay another 5k for 4 years of access
| (lawsuit was filed in 2020)?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Worst case: An injunction is filed and they have to shut
| down.
|
| Likely outcome: they negotiate a deal with RyanAir for
| access to their data & API.
| eli wrote:
| At the least, they would find out real fast how big those
| punitive damages can get when it's a repeated and willful
| violation.
|
| CFAA isn't a joke - there are potential criminal penalties
| to executives and others within the company.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Could you give examples please. I looked at Wikipedia [0]
| and did a quick Google but didn't turn up any examples of
| punishment of C-suite in these circumstances.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Ac
| t
| ActionHank wrote:
| This sets a precedent going forward that will impact
| Booking.com and many other services that do the same thing.
|
| I would imagine that it is also a nice foundation for cases
| against AI training data scraped from sites.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Pretty soon every single website will be hidden behind a
| login page
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Yeah but then they'll have an unauthenticated API, I see
| this often.
|
| Website owners will also never stop scraping and
| prosecuting the owner of every crawler (who can obfuscate
| their identity anyways) is impossible.
|
| Captchas are going to increasingly become more obsolete.
|
| It's a fools errand to spend resources fighting scrapers.
|
| Edit (non cancerous URL)
| https://i.redd.it/o6xypg00uac91.png
| ffpip wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/o6xypg00uac91.png
|
| non-cancerous url
| chrisjj wrote:
| And pretty soon afterward, every one of those login page
| will be circumvented by a bot signup.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Don't worry, you'll need to upload your photo ID to be
| able to login and do anything online.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| So they could hire some mechanical turks from Africa to type
| prices into an Excel sheet for $5000.
| miroljub wrote:
| Why Africa? Why not southern Wyoming?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's the openAI way.
| alwa wrote:
| For context, OpenAI recently caught flak from the less
| substantial organs of the American press for outsourcing
| RLHF/safety/content moderation tasks to a small SF firm
| called Sama (surely coincidental, eh @sama?). Sama hired
| workers in Kenya, Uganda, and India and paid them well
| above prevailing local wages, but the work involved the
| usual unpleasantness that content moderators have to deal
| with.
|
| Much ballyhooing about "neo-colonialism" followed.
|
| [0] https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-
| workers/
| chx wrote:
| I refuse the framing of tech bros exploiting African
| workers as "Much ballyhooing about neo-colonialism".
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Offering locally competitive wages is exploiting?
|
| If a company is based in NYC, and has a branch in rural
| Ohio, are the Ohioans being exploited if they aren't paid
| as much as their NYC counterparts despite drastically
| reduced cost of living in rural Ohio?
| Marsymars wrote:
| Well... yes?
|
| If digital widget producers are worth $x to the company,
| and get paid 0.8 _x in one location and 0.4_ x in another
| location, I'm not sure why I'd regard that as anything
| other than exploitative.
|
| CoL isn't really related to the market value of labour
| for remote-capable jobs; it would be similarly
| exploitative if the company paid childfree people,
| vegetarians, and basement apartment dwellers less because
| of their drastically reduced cost of living.
|
| I could see a point for fairness if the salaries were
| scaled so that average post-CoL savings in different CoL
| areas were equal, particular within regions (e.g. a
| country) where people have freedom of movement.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Isn't this the classic problem with getting involved in
| poorer economies? The African workers are worse off than
| if they were treated as an average US worker, but better
| off than an average African worker, and definitely better
| off than if Sama has hired Americans instead.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| offering jobs well above prevailing local wages =
| exploiting
|
| I would assume you also believe that every single person
| working for a wage is also by definition exploiting
| regardless of where they are? Otherwise it would make
| very little sense...
| stonogo wrote:
| Offering jobs in areas with laxer worker protections is
| arguably exploitative because in most or all of america
| this sort of work comes with counseling, due to the
| horrific nature of some of the content to be moderated. I
| don't know offhand of OpenAI ensured this was available;
| if not, that's a substantial financial savings at a cost
| of human suffering, which fits some folks' definition of
| exploitation.
| theptip wrote:
| Quite obviously, minimum wage is many times higher in the
| US.
| nilamo wrote:
| Minimum wage is not applicable for gig work. It would
| basically be the same business model as companies like
| https://rev.com, which can be <$1 per video transcribed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _which can be <$1 per video transcribed_
|
| The average wage in Nigeria is about $25 per day [1]. The
| fundamental difference between Wyoming and West Africa is
| cost of living.
|
| [1] https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-
| nigeria/
| nilamo wrote:
| I fail to understand how that applies to what I said.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _fail to understand how that applies to what I said_
|
| "<$1 per video transcribed" may be an order of magnitude
| more expensive.
| nilamo wrote:
| More expensive than what? And how does that relate to
| minimum wages? And how does that relate to minimum wages
| with respect to gig work?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _More expensive than what?_
|
| "The average wage in Nigeria is about $25 per day." Wages
| in Southern Wyoming are more expensive than that. Gig or
| minimum is irrelevant.
|
| > _how does that relate to minimum wages_
|
| Wyoming is subject to the federal minimum wage.
|
| > _how does that relate to minimum wages with respect to
| gig work?_
|
| We're comparing two numbers and observing one of them is
| bigger.
| nilamo wrote:
| But we're comparing minimum wages in two places when the
| minimum wage is not a relevant number, since, as stated
| above, minimum wage does not apply to gig work.
| jfyi wrote:
| Shhhh, we didn't tell Wyoming.
| rolph wrote:
| the original chess playing Mechanical_turk was a fraudulent
| device, likely more at home proximal to the nigerian
| princes, than with wild west gypsy wagon snake oil peddlars
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_turk
| petsfed wrote:
| Do you not know anything about the economy of southern
| Wyoming?
|
| Extractive industry is such a job creator there that for
| decades now, e.g. McDonalds couldn't keep enough people on
| hand. Why would I work a shitty job for minimum wage, when
| I could work another, similarly shitty job, for 4 times
| that amount?
|
| Extractive industry is such a job creator in Wyoming that
| they actively resist e.g. renewable energy projects that
| would provide economic stability during inevitable bust
| years, because it challenges the _concept_ of extractive
| industry, even as extractive industry generates the boom
| /bust cycle.
|
| Southern Wyoming doesn't even have fucking Uber, you really
| think they're starving for gig-sector jobs like this?
| pipes wrote:
| Because racism!!! Not really, there have been quite a few
| stories recently about companies claiming to be AI powered
| when in fact they are using African workers to perform
| tasks. The Turk bit is just what Amazon called their
| platform for outsourcing crappy repetitive work, which is
| named after the famous mechanical Turk.
| swarnie wrote:
| Oh lord you need to rephrase that....
| schnebbau wrote:
| Which part? Mechanical turk is an Amazon service for
| crowdsourcing work, and Africa has cheap IT literate labor
| so would be a good source for this type of work.
| mtmail wrote:
| Cheap IT literate labor can be found around the world
| (also thanks to Mechanical Turk and similar services), no
| need to single out one region.
| qeternity wrote:
| What is the issue with singling out a region with a
| factual statement?
|
| It wasn't a pejorative comment. Africa and SE Asia have
| huge labor forces that perform this work.
|
| People really need to stop trying so hard to be offended.
| rolph wrote:
| Mechanical_turk == Automaton
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_turk
| stonogo wrote:
| No, it is specifically not an automaton. It has a human
| operator.
| dhx wrote:
| Given the two possible outcomes:
|
| 1. Jury verdict is "NO" to CFAA violations.
|
| 2. Jury verdict is "YES" to CFAA violations and the jury award
| $0.
|
| Is option (2) worse for Ryanair because it more negatively
| impacts any appeals process that they may have otherwise
| planned?
|
| Does the award of $0 become a precedent which is stronger than
| option (1) in deterring would-be CFAA litigants of the future?
| lesuorac wrote:
| You cannot have option 2; jury instructions required that
| CFAA requires >= $5k of damages. ("If your answer to that
| question is no, do not answer the remaining questions in
| Section 1").
|
| So, damages of 5k is strictly the lowest amount possible
| while also answering YES for CFAA.
| soci wrote:
| > the companies, which use screen-scraping software to find and
| resell tickets, add additional charges and make it difficult for
| the airline to contact passengers.
|
| AFAIK, it's impossible to resell flight tickets in EU, they are
| attached to real names that are checked upon boarding time. If
| wonder how did Booking manage to resell Ryanair tickets at scale?
| gopher2000 wrote:
| Do they buy-and-resell or do they just provide a front for the
| ticket-buying flow with their own fees added on top?
| chrisjj wrote:
| The latter.
| chrisjj wrote:
| By injecting the real names. Hence fraud.
| steelframe wrote:
| Did I miss something about what the term "internet piracy" means?
| From TFA:
|
| > "We expect that this ruling will end the internet piracy and
| overcharging perpetrated on both airlines and other travel
| companies and consumers by the unlawful activity of OTA (online
| travel agent) Pirates," Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary
| said.
|
| I thought piracy was distributing unauthorized copies of things
| like music and videos. Wouldn't booking.com's actions be closer
| to unauthorized ticket brokering?
|
| I guess if you want to demonize someone for doing something you
| don't like it sounds worse to be labeled a "pirate" than an
| "unauthorized broker."
| rolph wrote:
| this looks like scalping to me.
|
| [the airline, Europe's largest by passenger numbers, has in
| recent years launched a series of legal actions against third-
| party booking platforms that resell its tickets without
| permission.
|
| It says the companies, which use screen-scraping software to find
| and resell tickets, add additional charges and make it difficult
| for the airline to contact passengers.]
| codersfocus wrote:
| Why are two European companies suing eachother in a US court?
| Ryanair doesn't even serve the US, right?
| hipadev23 wrote:
| This will very likely be overturned as it flies in the face of
| the 9th circuit court decision on HiQ vs LinkedIn. This is in a
| different circuit, so it'll need to be elevated, but CFAA is
| absolutely the incorrect tool to be utilized here.
|
| [1] https://calawyers.org/privacy-law/ninth-circuit-holds-
| data-s...
| byteknight wrote:
| CFAA was already reworded I thought to avoid these exact types
| of situations? Among other things, responsible disclosure.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Or the 9ths decision gets overturned...
| jcranmer wrote:
| I haven't followed the facts of this case, and I haven't found
| any quickly online. The best I have is the order on the motion
| to dismiss [1], which covers why the judge thought HiQ v
| LinkedIn wasn't sufficient prior precedent to preclude this
| being a CFAA violation, along with Ryanair's motion for summary
| judgement [2] which suggests the results of discovery.
|
| The short answer is... uh, not much. The order on the motion to
| dismiss suggests that to violate the CFAA, there is a
| requirement that you're specifically bypassing some form of
| access control, and it says the complaint sufficiently alleges
| such control (specifically password-protects internet
| accounts). Which... is a somewhat weak argument, but the judge
| here seems to think that HiQ is narrowly focused on "what's
| publicly available without requiring users to authenticate
| themselves." The motion for summary judgement states:
|
| > Booking and Kayak admit that their access was intentional,
| and there are no factual disputes that Booking's and Kayak's
| access circumvents authentication mechanisms implemented by
| Ryanair specifically to keep Defendants out.
|
| which, again, is vague on what those authentication mechanisms
| were, and it's not like this article provides any elucidation.
|
| It's far from certain that this will be overturned on appeal,
| but "creating an account to use for screen scraping" doesn't
| sound like something that CFAA prohibits.
|
| [1]
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.731...
|
| [2]
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.731...
| inopinatus wrote:
| We may well find that this matter doesn't ultimately hinge on
| screen-scraping as much as it does deceptive behaviour by an
| agent.
| poikroequ wrote:
| I suspect there are lots of details and context absent from this
| article. It's hard to believe this is only about booking.com
| scraping Ryanair's website. What part of it was "unauthorized",
| exactly? While it's generally legal in the US to scrape publicly
| available information, that doesn't translate scraping info that
| requires logging into an account first.
|
| It seems the bigger issue at hand may be booking.com purchasing
| the tickets and adding a lot of hidden fees on top.
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