Fair enough, one should be able to machine read APIs that power a public web page without fear of repercussions. But that's not a public API that Uber was tapp

Fair enough, one should be able to machine read APIs that power a public web page without fear of repercussions. But that's not a public API that Uber was tapping into. It was a private API that requires an agreement to be signed in order to access it. Uber signed and then violated the agreement, by providing fake data through the APIs. At the moment that the agreement was broken, their access to the API become illegal.