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Texas Court Blocks Screen-Scraper 433

Posted by timothy from the bits-is-bits dept.
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."
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Texas Court Blocks Screen-Scraper More

Texas Court Blocks Screen-Scraper

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  • It's a sad time (Score:2, Interesting)

    by asramchusak ( 652686 )
    Legislations, counter-legislations.

    Did the web die suddenly or did it just wither away without anyone noticing?

  • Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eese ( 647951 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:08PM (#5506971)
    If you are making information available to the public, what right do you have to be angry when someone, *gasp* uses that information?

    • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by neurostar ( 578917 ) <neurostarNO@SPAMprivon.com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:14PM (#5507022)

      what right do you have to be angry when someone, *gasp* uses that information?

      Well, it's one thing if the people 'using' the information aren't charging for it. I'm not familiar with the circumstances of this particular case. If you are charging for the information you're grabbing then it gets into the grey area...

      neurostar

    • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Informative)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:15PM (#5507031) Journal
      what right do you have to be angry

      Copyright, that's what.

      Imagine if you write excellent articles, which indirectly pays for your website, and another (probably bigger) website just copies your stuff without paying you or even crediting you.

      The circumstances are not exactly the same, but the law is basically the same. Past fair use (such as quoting a paragraph in a review), you need permission to republish.

      • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:17PM (#5507057)
        You cannot copyright figures, numbers, prices, etc.

        Remember Walmart trying to sue over the Black Friday?

      • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Breakfast Pants ( 323698 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:33PM (#5507176) Journal
        Facts are not copyrightable. Airfares are facts. There was a big case between the bells and 3rd party phonebook makers where this was determined to be the case.
        • True, but compilations of facts have been determined to be copyrightable (such as each individual phonebook).

          It is a weird and not entirely logical batch of case law.
          • True, but compilations of facts have been determined to be copyrightable (such as each individual phonebook)

            What kind of phone books? The white pages, for example, are NOT copyrightable. This was decided by the Supreme Court, in Fiest vs. Rural Telephone.

            The court agreed with the lower courts that putting together a phone book was a lot of work, but decided that the Constitution requires that there be some creativity, and "take the names of everyone with a phone and put them in alphabetical order" doe

        • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:46PM (#5507285) Journal
          Facts are not copyrightable.

          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?

          • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Samrobb ( 12731 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:16PM (#5507507) Journal
            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)

            Emphasis added. I think you could reasonably argue that the website fell into the category of "public document or other common sources". If they tabulate their data and make it available on the webite - which I'm willing to bet is the case - then it would seem that the US Copyright Office would not conisder the information to be copyrightable[1], unless they're using "public documents" in some twisted legal sense...

            "Your Honor, these documents were available to the public, but they were not 'public documents' as specified in section 10, paragraph 3, subparagraph 6a of Title 3 of the Maleficient Goombah code."

            [1] Is that really a word?

        • I think you've misinterpreted that ruling. Collections of fact can be copyrighted if it passes a creativity criterion. To my knowlege, the phone book is the only thing to fail that criterion to date. That's the really key thing to take away from the case... the creativity criterion is low, low, low. Airline fares require considerably more creativity then setting phone numbers. I'd expect the collection to be copyrightable, especially in the current environment, where I'd bet even the phone book decision cou
      • Copyright, that's what.

        Copyright has nothing to do with it.

        They're using data, not copyrighted material.

        The circumstances are not exactly the same

        Actually, the circumstances are not remotely the same. You're talking about copyrighted material, and data.

        the law is basically the same.

        No, it isn't. Copyright cannot be applied to facts. Pricing is a fact, therefore it's not subject to copyright.

        You can copyright the format of the data, but not the data itself. Since the screen-scaper is extracti

      • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:37PM (#5507212) Homepage Journal
        Yeah, without copyright protection, what incentive does American Airlines have to ... um .. have prices? (Recycled joke, got me a 5 funny once, I think.)

        What you wrote actually makes sense, since you're talking about the creative act of writing articles. But this story is about prices.

        Pricing information isn't copyrightable. And it shouldn't be, either. It's totally outside the scope of copyright's purpose. Using copyright to inhibit the market's knowledge of prices, is just that: an attempt to subvert the market. It shouldn't be tolerated, except IN SOVIET RUSSIA.

    • Re:Dude, it's their own damn fault... (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Such as when I make a book available to the public and someone posts a pdf of it, in entirety? Your statement is so profoundly fallacious that I want to throttle you.

      The question is whether this material can be copyrighted in the first place. The Supreme Court has previously stated that unoriginal composition, such as the numbers in a phone book, can not be copyrighted. Similarly, merely copying the information contained on the airline's website should be permissable, so long as they don't copy the site's
    • If you are making information available to the public, what right do you have to be angry when someone, *gasp* uses that information?

      What right do you have? Dude, ever heard of "copy" right?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Texas court decision? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hayzeus ( 596826 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:09PM (#5506977) Homepage
    A Texas court has granted American Airlines an injunction against Farechaser

    The article also fails to mention that Farechaser was sentenced to death by lethal injection in the same decision...

  • Legal implications? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grammaticaster ( 657410 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:10PM (#5506993)
    Fortunately, American isn't basing their case on the idea that their prices are their "intellectual property," but instead are claiming that Farechase was trespassing on their chattel. I wonder if the decision on this could effect cases involving DoS attacks?

  • Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aridhol ( 112307 ) <ka_lac@hotmail.com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:11PM (#5506995) Homepage Journal
    OK, Was going to Ask Slashdot this, but since it's already sorta on topic...

    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.

    • If its criminal law, which it might be under the DMCA, an employer can't force you to do it. It's a basic employment right. Just like your employer can't fire you because you refuse to dump toxic chemicals.

      Civil though, I have no idea...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Informative)

      by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:18PM (#5507065)
      ianal; Court cases have held in the past that if the information is held on a public site, it is public, despite any agreement to the contrary. That information if under copyright, still is held by those restrictions (and rights).

      If the information is in a restricted site, (must register to access) Then it is not public, and the agreements are generally held in more cases. If anything courts have been leaning against screen scraping, even on 'public' sites.

      findlaw or the cornell law site likely has information regarding this. There's also been past /. articles.

      It's of questionable ethics, but I also don't see how you're company will be able to sell something that people can get for free elsewhere. (And if it is not free, the courts are much less likely to side in your company's favor)

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Funny)

      by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:18PM (#5507066) Homepage
      Does anybody know where I can read any case law on screen scraping? Aside from the current article, that is.

      You've come to the right place, pardner. While none of us really _is_ a lawyer, each of us is more than willing to pretend.

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:20PM (#5507082) Homepage Journal
      if it is un-ethical to you, then why does the legality matter?

      You could send an anonymous letter to your companies lawyers, boards of directors, and CEO.

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DonkeyJimmy ( 599788 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:21PM (#5507088)
      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.

      well, if you like your job, don't leave the company, just refuse to do it (make it clear that you are not doing it no matter what). They may not fire you just to avoid the embarassment, and if they do, you may have grounds to sue if you want (assuming it turns out to be illegal). My guess is they'll hire someone else to do that and you'll not have to touch it, but keep you on for everything else.

      I was in a similar situation once, except they were just demanding that I work 60+ hrs a week. I refused and they gave me a severance package I wouldn't have gotten had I quit.

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:22PM (#5507100) Homepage
      It sounds like you already know everything you need to know. Now you simply need to summon the courage of your beliefs.

      You may be fired because of your beliefs. At that point, you just have to decide which is more valuable: your beliefs or your jobs (hint: your beliefs are). On the other hand, your boss may simply be having a weak moment in his own beliefs. You ought to try to talk to him about this, and not in a self-righteous way. Try to make the case that you can't build a successful company [enron.com] or a successful life [whitehouse.gov] without character. Your company and your own bank account might prosper in the short run, but eventually the way the universe works catches up to you...even if it's not before you die.

      At any rate, it sounds like you've got the right tickets to begin with. Good luck.
      • At that point, you just have to decide which is more valuable: your beliefs or your jobs (hint: your beliefs are).

        You beliefs are only more important if you are wealthy enough to be able to be jobless. Only wealthy people can afford to be idealistic.

        • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:4, Insightful)

          by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:53PM (#5507322) Homepage
          Nope, but that's what I used to believe. The truth is that one's principles require sacrifices sometimes. What you're saying is that there are no beliefs worth sacrifices, vis a vis, wealthy people are not required to make sacrifices for their beliefs. QED.

          I think upon consideration you'll discover that's not what you believe either.

    • Re:Screenscrapers and the Law (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hal_9000@!!!@ ( 152225 ) <slashdot@not-real.org> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:23PM (#5507114) Homepage Journal
      IANAL!

      It sounds like your company wants to break not just the terms of service, but possibly copyright laws.

      As a rule, your employer is barred from forcing you to break the law. If they fire you from refusing in good will to break the law, you can sue them for not only back wages but punitive damages. A great article on this subject by Eben Morgan in Linux Journal called "My Boss Made Me Install Warez" should help with the specific details, some of what I said is probably wrong.

      Obviously, you should seek counsel or at least tell your employer you intend to. They may decide to back down.

      Once again, I am not a lawyer.

    • Case law -- eBay v. Bidder's Edge (Score:5, Informative)

      by BenLev ( 533649 ) <trachtenberg.aya@yale@edu> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:34PM (#5507183) Homepage
      I suggest you read eBay v. Bidder's Edge (Court citation: 100 F.Supp.2d 1058).

      In Bidder's Edge, the federal court granted eBay an injunction preventing Bidder's Edge from harvesting information from eBay's website for the purpose of using it on the Bidder's Edge site.

      IANAL (but I will be in a couple years), so don't expect legal advice from me.

      I think the Bidder's Edge case was decided on a weird basis (eBay has a right to protect its servers from harm), rather than the reasons you'd expect (eBay's data shouldn't be jacked by competitors and used to hurt eBay's business). Nonetheless, I expect other courts would rule the same way on a similar case.

      Note: in this case, eBay has specifically told Bidder's Edge not to take the data.

    • You can't be an EMPLOYEE of a company, doing engineering work, and be expected to worry about legal situations, too.

      Unless they want you to do something criminal (i.e., lie, cook the books, cause harm), it's not your job to worry about Patent, Copyright, Trademark, or Licencing issues. Just do what they asked you to do, and let your Legal Department worry about the legal problems. (You may want to take the time to VERBALLY give legal a heads-up so they can look into it. After that, you're done.)

    • Maybe the easiest thing to do is ask your boss to detail in writing (and then sign) a directive that would implement your screen scraping work.

      I am guessing that so far he has asked you to do this out of the corner of his mouth so he is not responsible. If you force him to commit a paper trail to the endeavor, he might suddenly grow similar ethics;-) Never underestimate the power of a signature in the business world.

    • Tread softly (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 )

      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.

      My advice here is make sure you have a new job lined up. I "took a stand" about 14 months ago, ended up being pushed out, and just got a new job a few days ago. Moral of the story? Have a fallback position, or a big bank account.

      See, they can't fire you for refusing to break the law, but "you're not a team player" situations like this can lead to people getting fired for forgetting to refil

    • Our company gave up its internal call center ops. Another company bought it lock, stock, and server.
      They also made an offer to all the current phone people for continued employment. Not all accepted.

      Now...we (I) had written a personnel database to manage the phone peoples schedules, hiring, firing. This included name, address, phone, SSAN, paygrade, etc, etc. The new company also bought this.

      I get a phone call from the IT VP "Send so and so a copy (incl design, etc) of the personnel program. Includin
    • 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".

      Well, he is not wrong in asking you to do this. There is a difference between doing something that is 'not legal'- ie something the business can get sued for, and something that is 'illegal', ie he cannot ask you to rob a liquor store.

      First, you need to get some CYA. Tell him you will do it, but he has to make his boss awa

  • As much as I love them, this is is one of those cases where they can't tell if they're coming or going. Maybe they'll write an Amicus Curae for both sides, and confuse the shit out of the judge.

    And for the record, I sent in my annual EFF cheque last month :P
    • "Your honor, since we support the right of Farechaser to repackage the information that American Airlines publicly distributes on their site, we respectfully request that you lay upon American Airlines the full smackdown of the law."

      "Your honor, since we cannot support the practices of Farechaser in refusing the right to repackage information on their site, we respectfully request that you lay upon Farechaser the full smackdown of the law."

  • Screen scraping - OK. Reselling - not OK (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:13PM (#5507016) Homepage
    Let's set aside the usual polemics here -- what's at issue isn't your right to screen-scrape information. If that's drawn into question, then you have the absurd (but logically similar) conclusion that using Lynx is somehow theft.
    What's at issue is if you are breaking the law by re-selling what you have scraped, and thus depriving the original information creator of some right.

    Now go ahead and mod me "-1: Where's the fun in that?"
    • I don't see a problem with this if credit is given to the original source.
      Say you venture down to a library which is full of public information on various topics. While you are there you 'scrap' some information out of books and then present in in your own format (say a written report) and give credit in the report to the sources of information.
      Now why can't you sell your report?
      You used publicly available information to create a new work which I think you should be entitled to sell.

    • No screen scraping is part of the issue.

      American Airlines is claiming that since screen scraping is a violation of the terms of their website that anyone who visits the website for that purpose is in some sense trespassing.

      Of course the reason that they are upset is because the information is being resold, but in addition to that issue AA is also trying to argue that the act of screen scraping is itself illegal (since it violates the terms which you presumably agree to in order to use their site).
    • If it's legal to scrape it, it's legal to re-sell it. Copyright violations do not hinge on commercial intent (though that makes it worse).
  • I hate how companies think that just by placing something in their website's terms and conditions, it is law.

    What's next, are they gonna sue google for caching their pages?

  • Public Information (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peatbakke ( 52079 ) <peat AT peat DOT org> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:13PM (#5507018) Homepage
    I don't get why "screen scraping" can be illegal. It's publicly published information. It's not illegal for me to surf competitor's websites or browse their brochures for price points.

    I suppose this is just another untested area of the law, and a company (especially a public company) is obligated to protect itself as far as the law allows. If it's not specifically against the law, the company can make whatever restrictions on it's published information it wants -- it's called copyright. :)

    But, in the end, I think it would be better for everyone if screen scraping is protected legally. Freedom of information, baby!
    • I don't get why "screen scraping" can be illegal. It's publicly published information.

      Books are publicly published, but you're still not allowed to post its contents on a website, or otherwise republish the copyrighted material.

      • Yes, but is a price copyright-able? Can I get a copyright on $211.72?
      • I can understand the issue taken with republishing content, but screen scraping is just gathering information. So long as the scraper isn't falsifying information to get access, there shouldn't be any problems ...

        • Re:Public Information (Score:2, Interesting)

          by murdocj ( 543661 )
          The issue isn't necessarily gathering the information, but what is done after the "gathering" phase.

          For example, I worked for a company that had searchable online databases. We noticed that some people were clearly walking their way thru a database. In other words, they weren't searching to satisfy some query, they were downloading our database, presumably to resell.

          We didn't take legal action, we just blocked those people who looked like they were mining.
    • The reason that screen-scraping is problematic is because major companies want to be on the web and have visitors. To get visitors, put useful content on the website. What useful content? Well, for airlines it's flight informations and fares. Of course, the airlines would not dream of putting the entire database out for public consumption, so they try to control the access. But a robot can be used to copy out the database.

      I must say I hate hypocrisy - such a rank stench ("do what I say, not what I do").
      • The reason that screen-scraping is problematic is because major companies want to be on the web and have visitors.

        By that logic, it should be illegal to refuse to give your wallet to me when I threaten to shoot you if you don't. I want it, after all, and that's the extent of your logic.

        Moron.

        • Re:Public Information (Score:5, Funny)

          by chriso11 ( 254041 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:57PM (#5507812) Journal
          Perhaps you could detail in a logical sequence how you came to that statement from my original statement.

          So far you have:

          1) The reason that screen-scraping is problematic is because major companies want to be on the web and have visitors.

          2) ??????

          3) ??????

          4) ??????

          5) it should be illegal to refuse to give your wallet to me when I threaten to shoot you if you don't.

    • I don't get it.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:47PM (#5507288) Homepage
      It's THEFT of information when you use other people's work whether you pay for it directly (subscription) or indirectly (viewing ads) for your own purposes.

      It's untested on-line but stealing and reselling/distributing things as your own which aren't your own has always been illegal. It's just that the copyright owner tends to not care. But that's THEIR decision. NOT YOURS. I don't get why this isn't a cut and dry case.

      Imagine taking a College Times article and publishing it without permission in your paper under your name. You'd be sued faster than you can blink even though the paper can be picked up for free.

      Oh that's right, it's different in this case because it's ON THE INTERNET!

      Ben
    • It's amazing what companies put in their terms and conditions.

      BOL.com, says in it's members agreement, that you may not re-sell anyhting you buy from them!

      I mean.... WTF?
      People play God, when they write EULAs and the like.

      I told BOL, I wanted clarification on this term, and they wrote back addressing something else I'd written in my email, and ignoring my main point (a favourite tactic of people who know they're not on the level.)

      I wrote back stating that I was considering reporting them to the Off

  • Next thing you know... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OECD ( 639690 )

    ...they'll try to stop you from describing sports events. [nhl.com]

  • Interesting reading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:16PM (#5507041)
    Farechase's conduct has forced American to attempt self help. American time and resources have been dedicated to creating and implementing technological barriers in an attempt to block unauthorized users of Farechase software from accessing the AA.com computer system. Such actions by American to block have been circumvented by Farechase's intentional inclusion in its software of a "masking" feature by which the software disguises its identity so that American is unable to determine who is gaining access without authorization thereby preventing American from blocking all unauthorized access by the Farechase software.

    A little insight into an inter-corporate IT skirmish. I suppose the "masking" involved spoofing the client header as some version of IE. Anyone got inside dirt on this?
    • They probably also spoof the page that they claim that they're coming from. Otherwise the standard methods to stop deep-linking would work.

      I assume that American has blocked all of Farechase's IP address blocks? It should be possible to detect the behaviour of Farechase's software, and block more IPs on the fly. There still should be a technical solution to this without requiring all the legal huff'n'puff.

  • Well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bvardi ( 620485 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:17PM (#5507044)
    When somebody starts doing something like this, while saying "we don't want anyone doing this to US" you have to look at the morality of their actions a little bit more closely than the usual "If it's on the web it's free info for everyone" mentality. (At the least it's an example of a company trying to set a double standard, which is part of the whole mess of how laws apply to the internet in general - can anyone think of a software company who wants to stop spam, but at the same time maintain their own right to issue spam for example? Generally if they have to click on an agreement, clearly written and stated, before viewing the fares... I would say they are bound by a reasonable set of terms and conditions. If the page is accessible without having to do that, then reasonably they wouldn't be bound. (But of course, IANAL)

  • A fundamental distinction (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DohDamit ( 549317 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:18PM (#5507062) Homepage Journal
    There is a fundamental distinction between programmatically scraping someone else's site and posting it as your own and an individual drawing down the website via a browser: fair use.

    Provided fair use conditions are posted, I don't see where the scraper has a leg to stand on. If you are a competitor, you have different rules, as your intention and the actions that follow your intentions separate you from a normal consumer. To illustrate, it is fair use for me to go to the library and photocopy an article out of a journal and use it as source material for a paper. It is NOT fair use for me to photocopy the article and put it in my own magazine, publishing it as if it was mine, copyright and all.

    That being said, I would be very interested in an informed reply from a lawyer that specializes in these matters.

    • Re:A fundamental distinction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fgb ( 62123 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:29PM (#5507157)
      But are things like airfares copyrightable? I could understand it if they took the whole web page and posted it as their own, then there is definite copyright infringement. But just taking raw numbers off the page? What if a person went to the page, wrote down all the fares and then created a page using those fares. Would that still be infringement? What's the difference if a piece of software does the web surfing?
    • Not directly relevant to this case, but in the UK there exists a compilation copyright in a database, so that a complete database (or substantial part thereof) can be copyrighted even if all the individual items contained in the database are in the public domain. So regular web browsing is perfectly legitimate, but scraping the entire database into your own database is not.
    • Provided fair use conditions are posted, I don't see where the scraper has a leg to stand on.

      Fair use conditions don't have to be posted. They are implicitly granted to the user by copyright law, not explicitly by the copyright holder.

      IANAL, but common sense tells me that quoting one airfare from a website falls under fare use, but taking an entire table of data and republishing it with your own copyright statement on it does not.
  • And therefore protectible?
  • It's obviously not legal to steal content(articles) from other sites due to copyrights, but do fares/prices fall into the category of copyrightable material?

    If you recall an article about Fatwallet getting in trouble for posting prices obtained from other sources [slashdot.org], it was determined that prices were copyrightable. AA has a good arguement based on that precedent.

  • Innovation may be hampered (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PineHall ( 206441 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:42PM (#5507242)
    Jon Udell created a bookmarklet called LibraryLookup [infoworld.com] to take the URL of the page you are on and pull off the ISBN and check your local library for the book. It can be used at places like Amazon.com. It is a very creative idea of using different websites to create the useful application. Now one would hate to see applications like this be outlawed. Maybe the difference is that the use is personal (fair use) and not "commerical".

  • Froogle? (Score:3)

    by rcw-work ( 30090 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:44PM (#5507265)
    If American Airlines wins this case, what happens to froogle.google.com [google.com]?

    • Re:Froogle? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:51PM (#5507308) Homepage
      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

  • FareChase T&Cs (Score:3, Funny)

    by nm42 ( 310685 ) <nemesis_42 AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:48PM (#5507293)
    Part of the Terms stated You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure.

    Does posting the link on Slashdot count?

  • Scrapper Load (Score:5, Informative)

    by pdrome4robert ( 532173 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:53PM (#5507327)
    This goes along with the article on pricing [slashdot.org]. In industries where pricing is heavily competitive (e.g. airlines, rental cars, computer equipment) pricing information is constantly shopped. The companies can't ask each other for rates because it is banned by by anti price fixing laws. So they shop competitors' prices on information services, some even have shopbots to do the work. Sabre, the largest travel booking network in North America, which is a closed network, has blocked some paying customers due to excessive shopping. They block shopping because automated shopbots elevate CPU and network usage. These shopbots can't tell when rates have changed, so they continuously hit Sabre. Wonder how hard Farechase was hitting AA.com?

  • Block their scraping servers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:54PM (#5507332)
    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.

  • Screen scraping and privacy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @06:59PM (#5507382) Journal
    There is a connection between screen scraping and privacy arguments.

    Many here are posting "What's wrong with screen scraping? The information is there, I can get it, what's the problem?"

    By the same token, many decry things like Amazon.com selling their address just because "they have it".

    Information is information. If you have the "right" to scrape whatever you want and distribute it however you want, then companies have the right to distribute your personal information to whomever they want, under whatever circumstances they want.

    I prefer to live in the world where control over information on the societal level is still allowed; no concept of privacy can exist without it. Not letting people screen scrape isn't even something I'd consider a "price".

    To be a bit more theoretical, there is value in information transfer.

    This is a summary of a much longer and more complete argument, but it should get a lot of the point across. I won't be defending this on a point-by-point basis in replies as a result.
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      Information is information. If you have the "right" to scrape whatever you want and distribute it however you want, then companies have the right to distribute your personal information to whomever they want, under whatever circumstances they want.

      Bzzz, sorry, no. The difference is this: American Airlines put the information out there, in the public. I agree that if I start renting billboards and posting my address in 1,000,000 pt font on them, then I cannot cry foul if someone g

    • Handy to say, I won't give you the full argument, so I won't bother defending my concept. I'll have to remember that in the future as a complete and utter cop out to I can't present an idea, or defend it. (This is me baiting you into a reply...:-).

      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 selli

  • Hehe (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lspd ( 566786 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:15PM (#5507495) Journal

    Nice to see that they don't bother with stupid techie nonsense like a robots.txt [aa.com] file.

  • Is AOL's .art format legal? class action question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sirshannon ( 616247 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:16PM (#5507508) Homepage Journal
    when an AOL user visits a web site, they do not get the site as the site owner intended. Instead, AOL scrapes the information, converts all images to it's own .art format (often downgrading/optimizing these images too much) and then sends the new version of the site to the user. AOL charges users, this is screenscraping, and they fuck up the images in my gallery WAY beyond the call of duty.

    I think a class action lawsuit is in order.

  • web aggregation and circumventing TOS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonbrewer ( 11894 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:29PM (#5507610) Homepage
    At the 2001 MIT IT Conference there was a paper presented entitled "Surviving and Thriving in the New World of Web Aggregators." [mit.edu] One of the interesting bits was on MaxMiles, an ecorp that keeps track of frequent flier miles for its customers. MaxMiles gets around restrictive terms of service of airline sites by acquiring a limited "power of attorney" from its customers before going out and screen-scraping on their behalf.

    From reading the injunction, it seems that FareChaser sells its screen-scraping services to corporations, and I have no idea if they have some "power of attorney" agreement between themselves and their customers. Perhaps they should hire some sharper lawyers? :-)

  • TERMS AND CONDITIONS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:30PM (#5507618) Homepage
    TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS COMMENT: YOU MUST AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE READING THIS SLASHDOT COMMENT. Copying this comment is prohibited. Thinking about this comment is prohibited. Once you have begun reading this comment, you must leave at least one window of your browser open at this comment for the rest of Time. Prohibited circumvention measures include, but are not limited to, scrolling up or down, closing the browser window, or restarting your computer. All readers whose browser does not stay open to this comment for the rest of Time will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You attest that you will be fully responsible for this obligation regardless of any outside forces that may inhibit your ability to carry out this obligation, including but not limited to unstable Microsoft software, power outages, plagues of locusts, or the Apocalypse. Reading this comment while not under the influence of alcohol is prohibited. You may not tell your friends about this comment. Telling anyone that this comment was funny is prohibited. Moderating it "Funny" is prohibited, and offenders will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Reading this comment while sitting in front of a computer is prohibited. All violators of this comment are required by law to pay the specified fine of $10,000 to xenon@@microsoftsucks.org using PayPal. This EULA is considered a part of this comment and is the intellectual property of the owner. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    NO WARRANTY: THIS COMMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND IF YOU DON'T LIEK THE SPEELING YOU HAVE TO PAY ANOTHER $10,000 FINE TO ME.

    --

    They can't force customers not to tell their friends about the prices, so how the hell do they have a right to stop anyone from relaying that information automatically? This kind of nonsense reminds me of software EULAS: You can't see the license before you buy it, but you must agree to the license to use the software and you can't return the software if you don't like the license because there aren't any stores in the world that accept returns on opened software. They're esssentially extorting rights from you without giving you any choice other than to throw away the software you just paid $$$ for. Posting something on a website is equivalent to posting a comment on slashdot, which is equivalent to yelling it out in public. You can't have a website listing prices or goods and have a website EULA prohibiting other sites from parroting it (xxxxxxxx company is selling xxxxxx for $xxx) any more than you can yell something out on the street and then force others to not tell anyone what you just said (or else get sued) by then dictating a verbal EULA for whatever you just yelled out.

  • EFF not "involved", supports Farechase (Score:5, Informative)

    by wendy ( 42400 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @07:51PM (#5507772) Homepage
    To clarify EFF's position, we're not involved in the case at this point. We do strongly support Farechase's right to access a publicly available website and repost uncopyrightable facts gathered from it.

    We may get involved with the case as it proceeds, but for the moment, we've just posted a copy of the injunction for reference.

  • It's about controlling the distribution channel... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ ( 559379 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @10:17PM (#5508538) Journal
    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.

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