> It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think ot

> It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? That question kind of misses the point. This was a US House hearing. The right question, in the context of such a hearing, is whether it should be legal. The other thing to keep in mind is that this was the action of a company with considerable market power. There's not much that's off limits in principle once it turns into an antitrust case. Having said that: > it just looks like a bad business model seems about right to me. No other companies had done this, and that might be because of the difficulty of monetizing numbers. Few people are going to pay for the information, but it's ultimately just a number. Consumers are better off the faster they get the number they're looking for.