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https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/legal-information.jsp https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/legal-infor... "Unless otherwise noted,

by cbtacy 5y ago

https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/legal-information.jsp https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/legal-infor... "Unless otherwise noted, all information, AAdvantage® account information, articles, data, images, passwords, Personal Identification Numbers ("PINs"), screens, text, user names, Web pages, or other materials (collectively "Content") appearing on the Site are the exclusive property of American Airlines Group, Inc., or American Airlines, Inc., or their subsidiaries and affiliates" "You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. Nothing on the Site shall be construed to confer any grant or license of any intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, by implication, or otherwise." Seems pretty cut-and-dry to me.

whatshisface 5y ago
It is cut and dry what they want, but the question is, do the terms give them merely the right to terminate your account... or to sue you?
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  They have the standard boilerplate: " American Airlines also reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion to deny you access to the Site at any time. " "You agree that this Agreement is made and entered into in Tarrant County, Texas. You agree that Texas law governs this Agreement's interpretation and/or any dispute arising from your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site, without regard to conflicts of law principles. Any lawsuit brought by you related to your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site must be brought in the state or federal courts of Tarrant County, Texas. You agree and understand that you will not bring against American Airlines Group, Inc., American Airlines, Inc., or any of its affiliated entities, agents, directors, employees, and/or officers any class action lawsuit related to your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site."
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    If I understand correctly, the enforceability of these TOS just added to the bottom of the page is uncertain. After all, I wasn’t forced to read and agree to the TOS on AA’s website like I am for say, Twitter or Facebook.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Rd6n6 5y ago
    Those click-through terms being ubiquitous removes 99% of peoples rights to the legal system, which seems a bit fishy
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I don't see how that gives AA the right to sue.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      It is actually the right of petition enumerated in the first amendment which gives AA the right to sue.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Fair enough. I guess I meant a good case.
- mbesto 5y ago
  The question is sue you for what? How do the quantify the damages? It would be an interesting law suit because if AA wins, then it means they are deliberately admitting that customers who regularly track their points causes financial harm to AA.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    It obviously causes them harm. The points are often redeemed at a discount to their regular tickets... which are often loss leaders for their points business. Most airlines lose money on every ticket, and make it up in their rewards programs. Only to lose money again on redemption. They really only make money on some of the inefficiencies.. Easy to follow source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4
    - mbesto 5y ago
      Right, I know this to be true. But it's one thing for someone to infer that it causes harm, but it's another thing if they legally say this is the case.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    It reminds me of card counting - it's just playing the game, but in a way that's qualitatively different from typical play. Just like card counting, the house doesn't like people who win too much.
pdabbadabba 5y ago
But just because AA says so on their website does not make it so. Is there any evidence that they actually agreed to the TOS you linked? That they even read or were presented with a copy of it? And even if they agreed to the terms, what is the appropriate remedy for breaching the agreement?
- Rd6n6 5y ago
  Also, are click through agreements really binding? Imagine if the terms said “by visiting, you agree to pay us $100,000 in 12 months”
  - cjsawyer 5y ago
    There are worse things to accidentally agree to :) https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/gamestation-we-own-your-soul/1/ https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/gamestation-we-own-your-...
Dig1t 5y ago
I mean, is that legally possible to do? If they make information freely available on their website how are they legally able to control how that information is used? That seems kind of ridiculous to me.
samschooler 5y ago
Its going to be similar to this suit [0] with Linkedin which they lost. The only difference is the data is behind an auth wall which linkedin's content wasn't. [0]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-scraps-linkedin-data-scraping-decision https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-scra...
- noitpmeder 5y ago
  I thought the fact that LinkedIn's content was _not_ behind a paywall was the main point. E.g. it's fine to scrape whatever they did from LinkedIn because it was public to all.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Buge 5y ago
Not all information is copyrightable. Just because there's a copyright notice doesn't mean there's actually a copyright.
gjs278 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 5y ago
Putting something on the site does not establish a legal right. I can make a site saying anybody who looks at it owes me a million dollars, that wouldn't mean they actually do. And I'm not sure my information stored at AA account is actually an exclusive property of AA. At the minimum, it's not cut-and-dry at all, and probably depends on current legislation and caselaw.
tantalor 5y ago
> You may not ... use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes That's not what the app was doing: > The app ... had been ‘screen scraping’ accounts for members So it wasn't "public or commercial", it was for people who had accounts to view/manage their account details. Same as Plaid or Mint for banks, or (more generally) any old web browser for literally any website.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  It was absolutely "for commercial purposes" for The Points Guy.
  - maxmorlocke 5y ago
    And where did TPG enter into a commercial relationship or affirmatively agree to these terms?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      When they started shilling AA's cards on their site for referrals, I suspect. https://thepointsguy.com/card-hub/citi-aadvantage-executive-world-elite-mastercard/ https://thepointsguy.com/card-hub/citi-aadvantage-executive-...
  - tantalor 5y ago
    I would take "for commercial purposes" to mean aggregating the data for wholesale, or offering some kind of analytics service across users. Whereas showing ads in the same client where the user is also viewing their own data is incidental. The purpose is to provide a useful intermediary service, and the ads help pay for that service, in much the same way a search engine can reproduce data from websites and show ads at the same time.
Hokusai 5y ago
"Whoever reads this message agrees to transfer 10% of their wealth to Doctors Without Borders at most 5 laboral days after the reading" It could be nice, but it's unenforceable.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. [emphasis mine] Seems like any web browser by a for-profit company would immediately be in breach.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Especially if you accessed that site over a VPN.
- tzs 5y ago
  > Seems like any web browser by a for-profit company would immediately be in breach A web browser cannot be in breach, because a web browser is not a legal entity capable of being a party to an agreement. The entity in breach would be the person using the browser, if they were using it in a way that was against the TOS. BTW, that TOS is ambiguous. I see two ways it can be parsed. First, > You may not (copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or (otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes)) I.e., "otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes" is one item in the list of prohibited things. Second, > You may not (copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site) (for public or commercial purposes) I.e., "otherwise use the Site" is one of the list items, and "for public or commercial purposes" modifies the whole list? If it is the latter it is saying you can do what you want if it is not for public or commercial purposes. If it is the former, it is saying you may not do any of the explicitly listed things, and you can't do anything not listed if you are doing that thing for public or commercial purposes. You can only do things that are not explicitly listed and then only if they are private and non-commercial. I'd guess they meant the latter, because under the former it is hard to see any way to use the site at all without violating the TOS. If that is the case, they should have written it as "You may not for public or commercial purposes <list of things>". On the other hand, it would't actually be all that surprising for a big company to write a TOS that technically prohibits their users from actually using the site, so who knows?
nacs 5y ago
Just because it's written into an EULA, doesn't make it law.
ethbr0 5y ago
The relevant word is "you". In this case, TPG (who provided an app) is not "you". That would instead be the AAdvantage (AA's reward program) member, who agreed to the TOS originally, and who provided their login information to the TPG app so that it can scrape information about rewards etc. So... the lawsuit from AA's side seems pretty bizarre, if the facts as presented in this article are true. If AA wanted to stop this, presumably they should sue their own rewards members who use the TPG app. But obviously that won't happen. So fundamentally, this seems a case of whether the toolmaker is liable for an individual using their tool in a TOS-violating way. Which seems pretty insane, if AA wins. If I pull open Chrome developer tools after logging into a website that requires me not to inspect its source, why would Google be liable? --- And as a side note, "Because privacy and security" is quickly becoming the corporate anti-interoperability equivalent of "Think of the children." The default should be that scraping is allowed. If companies actually care about privacy and security, then they can offer an API and encourage access through it. But limiting scraping and not offering API access (or intentionally crippling it) is bullshit.
maxmorlocke 5y ago
Disclaimer: Founder of a company in the travel space that relies heavily on scraping. What's interesting here is that there's conflicting precedent... and fundamentally that is what matters. hiQ vs LinkedIn is a great example of accessing data via a scraper that potentially violates the Terms of Services agreement, but found that Microsoft/LinkedIn violated antitrust laws. EF Cultural Travel vs Explorica is another example favoring scrapers. Against that, you have Facebook vs Power.com. Speaking personally, I'd like for clear and explicit rules about what is kosher to scrape and what isn't. Ticket bots are clearly problematic and deserve to burn in hell. Overly aggressive scrapers that incur load shouldn't get a free ride, but stuff like this that is initiated at the client's request and accessing solely the client's data.... I personally believe this should be fair use and would like to see that show up in the law somewhere.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  A fair test would be that if you are able to delegate manually retrieving the information to a friend or colleague, you should be allowed to delegate it to a machine.
  - hnburnsy 5y ago
    Good question! Can I give limited power of attorney to a third party to retrieve and my frequent flyer account information?
cracrecry 5y ago
They can say whatever they want. It is a completely different thing whenever that is legal or not. I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that does not make it legal. There are always fair use clauses that copyright law accepts. That data about a customer is the exclusive property of a company is not really true. In some way it is actually the property of the customer.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  > I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that > they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that > does not make it legal. True, but there isn't a long standing practice of binding people to the terms and conditions of a service regardless of fastidiousness on the part of the user (whether that's warranted / reasonable or not).
ACow_Adonis 5y ago
If I hang a book on a public street and put on the first page "if you read from this book you owe me money and if you use the information contained within I will sue you because it's all mine", it's not at all cut and dried. indeed I think a lot of people would note it sounds like bullshit. And additional observation is that they're claiming ownership and exclusive rights to things over things which: a) as broken and dystopian as our intellectual property laws are, it's not immediately apparent you can claim exclusive ownership of. Can you claim property rights on a pin number? on your customer's name? on your customer's phone number? is data even ownable? b) as above, even if you could, it's not apparent that the airline is the one with the greatest claim to that ownership. Does the airline own my name if I fly with them? c) the issue with screen scraping may just be scale, automation and commercial value, and it's not apparent you can just wilfully ban competitors from that because you say so. Indeed, is it a violation if an individual uses the information within without screen scraping? cause a lot of those exclusions and terms would seem like they restrict the use of the website and the information for its actual intended purpose on an individual level, screen scraping or not. d) what are we doing when we read a website but biological screen scraping?
datastoat 5y ago
When I scrape, I attach a header that says roughly “By responding to this request, the provider allows me to use the response for my own personal use; and accepts that this overrides any terms stated on the web page.” Cut and dried? A lawyer friend told me, informally, that if it went to court a younger judge would throw out my “contract” because it’s silly, but a more senior judge might well take the view that both contracts, my version and that of the web site, are equally silly, and both fall short of the “meeting of minds” standard.
mattm 5y ago
So my data like my name, address and birthday are exclusive property of American Airlines? I view them as more of a steward of my data. They have permission from me to use it but the ownership should lie with the individual.
decebalus1 5y ago
> "You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. Nothing on the Site shall be construed to confer any grant or license of any intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, by implication, or otherwise." > Seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. EULA for my hn comments: If you're reading this, you must grant me 'Droit du seigneur' and name your firstborn 'decebalus1'
diebeforei485 5y ago
If everything written in a contract is always enforceable, the entire field of contract law would not exist.
tzs 5y ago
Not so fast. Who is "you"? If I'm understanding the situation correctly (which I may not be) it is AA rewards members who are using TPG's app to access the site. These people give the TPG app their AA login information so it can login to their AA account to get their information. Arguably it is these AA rewards members who are scraping the site. TPG just supplied the tool those members are using. It would then be the AA rewards members who are the ones who have a contract with the site, not TPG.
matt_heimer 5y ago
The more relevant sections are a little further down: Your account information is owned by and proprietary to American Airlines. While you may access your account information through the Site, you may not give access to your account to any person or entity other than a member of your household or a person that you directly supervise as part of your career or employment. You may not give access to your account to any third party on-line service, including, but not limited to any mileage management service, mileage tracking service, or mileage aggregation service. You must access your account information directly through the Site and not through a third party Website, including but not limited to any mileage management service, mileage tracking service, or mileage aggregation service. You also violate this Agreement if you enable an AAdvantage member to access account information without visiting the Site.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  So can't share with grown children or business manager or lawyer.

by cbtacy 5y ago

whatshisface 5y ago

It is cut and dry what they want, but the question is, do the terms give them merely the right to terminate your account... or to sue you?

lp0_on_fire 5y ago
They have the standard boilerplate: " American Airlines also reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion to deny you access to the Site at any time. " "You agree that this Agreement is made and entered into in Tarrant County, Texas. You agree that Texas law governs this Agreement's interpretation and/or any dispute arising from your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site, without regard to conflicts of law principles. Any lawsuit brought by you related to your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site must be brought in the state or federal courts of Tarrant County, Texas. You agree and understand that you will not bring against American Airlines Group, Inc., American Airlines, Inc., or any of its affiliated entities, agents, directors, employees, and/or officers any class action lawsuit related to your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site."
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  If I understand correctly, the enforceability of these TOS just added to the bottom of the page is uncertain. After all, I wasn’t forced to read and agree to the TOS on AA’s website like I am for say, Twitter or Facebook.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Rd6n6 5y ago
  Those click-through terms being ubiquitous removes 99% of peoples rights to the legal system, which seems a bit fishy
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I don't see how that gives AA the right to sue.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    It is actually the right of petition enumerated in the first amendment which gives AA the right to sue.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Fair enough. I guess I meant a good case.
mbesto 5y ago
The question is sue you for what? How do the quantify the damages? It would be an interesting law suit because if AA wins, then it means they are deliberately admitting that customers who regularly track their points causes financial harm to AA.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  It obviously causes them harm. The points are often redeemed at a discount to their regular tickets... which are often loss leaders for their points business. Most airlines lose money on every ticket, and make it up in their rewards programs. Only to lose money again on redemption. They really only make money on some of the inefficiencies.. Easy to follow source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4
  - mbesto 5y ago
    Right, I know this to be true. But it's one thing for someone to infer that it causes harm, but it's another thing if they legally say this is the case.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  It reminds me of card counting - it's just playing the game, but in a way that's qualitatively different from typical play. Just like card counting, the house doesn't like people who win too much.

pdabbadabba 5y ago

But just because AA says so on their website does not make it so. Is there any evidence that they actually agreed to the TOS you linked? That they even read or were presented with a copy of it? And even if they agreed to the terms, what is the appropriate remedy for breaching the agreement?

Rd6n6 5y ago
Also, are click through agreements really binding? Imagine if the terms said “by visiting, you agree to pay us $100,000 in 12 months”
- cjsawyer 5y ago
  There are worse things to accidentally agree to :) https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/gamestation-we-own-your-soul/1/ https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/gamestation-we-own-your-...

Dig1t 5y ago

I mean, is that legally possible to do? If they make information freely available on their website how are they legally able to control how that information is used? That seems kind of ridiculous to me.

samschooler 5y ago

Its going to be similar to this suit [0] with Linkedin which they lost. The only difference is the data is behind an auth wall which linkedin's content wasn't. [0]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-scraps-linkedin-data-scraping-decision https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-scra...

noitpmeder 5y ago
I thought the fact that LinkedIn's content was _not_ behind a paywall was the main point. E.g. it's fine to scrape whatever they did from LinkedIn because it was public to all.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Buge 5y ago

Not all information is copyrightable. Just because there's a copyright notice doesn't mean there's actually a copyright.

gjs278 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

smsm42 5y ago

Putting something on the site does not establish a legal right. I can make a site saying anybody who looks at it owes me a million dollars, that wouldn't mean they actually do. And I'm not sure my information stored at AA account is actually an exclusive property of AA. At the minimum, it's not cut-and-dry at all, and probably depends on current legislation and caselaw.

tantalor 5y ago

> You may not ... use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes That's not what the app was doing: > The app ... had been ‘screen scraping’ accounts for members So it wasn't "public or commercial", it was for people who had accounts to view/manage their account details. Same as Plaid or Mint for banks, or (more generally) any old web browser for literally any website.

ceejayoz 5y ago
It was absolutely "for commercial purposes" for The Points Guy.
- maxmorlocke 5y ago
  And where did TPG enter into a commercial relationship or affirmatively agree to these terms?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    When they started shilling AA's cards on their site for referrals, I suspect. https://thepointsguy.com/card-hub/citi-aadvantage-executive-world-elite-mastercard/ https://thepointsguy.com/card-hub/citi-aadvantage-executive-...
- tantalor 5y ago
  I would take "for commercial purposes" to mean aggregating the data for wholesale, or offering some kind of analytics service across users. Whereas showing ads in the same client where the user is also viewing their own data is incidental. The purpose is to provide a useful intermediary service, and the ads help pay for that service, in much the same way a search engine can reproduce data from websites and show ads at the same time.

Hokusai 5y ago

"Whoever reads this message agrees to transfer 10% of their wealth to Doctors Without Borders at most 5 laboral days after the reading" It could be nice, but it's unenforceable.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. [emphasis mine] Seems like any web browser by a for-profit company would immediately be in breach.

vineyardmike 5y ago
Especially if you accessed that site over a VPN.
tzs 5y ago
> Seems like any web browser by a for-profit company would immediately be in breach A web browser cannot be in breach, because a web browser is not a legal entity capable of being a party to an agreement. The entity in breach would be the person using the browser, if they were using it in a way that was against the TOS. BTW, that TOS is ambiguous. I see two ways it can be parsed. First, > You may not (copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or (otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes)) I.e., "otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes" is one item in the list of prohibited things. Second, > You may not (copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site) (for public or commercial purposes) I.e., "otherwise use the Site" is one of the list items, and "for public or commercial purposes" modifies the whole list? If it is the latter it is saying you can do what you want if it is not for public or commercial purposes. If it is the former, it is saying you may not do any of the explicitly listed things, and you can't do anything not listed if you are doing that thing for public or commercial purposes. You can only do things that are not explicitly listed and then only if they are private and non-commercial. I'd guess they meant the latter, because under the former it is hard to see any way to use the site at all without violating the TOS. If that is the case, they should have written it as "You may not for public or commercial purposes <list of things>". On the other hand, it would't actually be all that surprising for a big company to write a TOS that technically prohibits their users from actually using the site, so who knows?

nacs 5y ago

Just because it's written into an EULA, doesn't make it law.

ethbr0 5y ago

The relevant word is "you". In this case, TPG (who provided an app) is not "you". That would instead be the AAdvantage (AA's reward program) member, who agreed to the TOS originally, and who provided their login information to the TPG app so that it can scrape information about rewards etc. So... the lawsuit from AA's side seems pretty bizarre, if the facts as presented in this article are true. If AA wanted to stop this, presumably they should sue their own rewards members who use the TPG app. But obviously that won't happen. So fundamentally, this seems a case of whether the toolmaker is liable for an individual using their tool in a TOS-violating way. Which seems pretty insane, if AA wins. If I pull open Chrome developer tools after logging into a website that requires me not to inspect its source, why would Google be liable? --- And as a side note, "Because privacy and security" is quickly becoming the corporate anti-interoperability equivalent of "Think of the children." The default should be that scraping is allowed. If companies actually care about privacy and security, then they can offer an API and encourage access through it. But limiting scraping and not offering API access (or intentionally crippling it) is bullshit.

maxmorlocke 5y ago

Disclaimer: Founder of a company in the travel space that relies heavily on scraping. What's interesting here is that there's conflicting precedent... and fundamentally that is what matters. hiQ vs LinkedIn is a great example of accessing data via a scraper that potentially violates the Terms of Services agreement, but found that Microsoft/LinkedIn violated antitrust laws. EF Cultural Travel vs Explorica is another example favoring scrapers. Against that, you have Facebook vs Power.com. Speaking personally, I'd like for clear and explicit rules about what is kosher to scrape and what isn't. Ticket bots are clearly problematic and deserve to burn in hell. Overly aggressive scrapers that incur load shouldn't get a free ride, but stuff like this that is initiated at the client's request and accessing solely the client's data.... I personally believe this should be fair use and would like to see that show up in the law somewhere.

Nextgrid 5y ago
A fair test would be that if you are able to delegate manually retrieving the information to a friend or colleague, you should be allowed to delegate it to a machine.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  Good question! Can I give limited power of attorney to a third party to retrieve and my frequent flyer account information?

cracrecry 5y ago

They can say whatever they want. It is a completely different thing whenever that is legal or not. I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that does not make it legal. There are always fair use clauses that copyright law accepts. That data about a customer is the exclusive property of a company is not really true. In some way it is actually the property of the customer.

captainredbeard 5y ago
> I can say in a written agreement with my workers that they are my slaves, or that > they can not work anywhere else ever. They can even accept those terms, but that > does not make it legal. True, but there isn't a long standing practice of binding people to the terms and conditions of a service regardless of fastidiousness on the part of the user (whether that's warranted / reasonable or not).

ACow_Adonis 5y ago

If I hang a book on a public street and put on the first page "if you read from this book you owe me money and if you use the information contained within I will sue you because it's all mine", it's not at all cut and dried. indeed I think a lot of people would note it sounds like bullshit. And additional observation is that they're claiming ownership and exclusive rights to things over things which: a) as broken and dystopian as our intellectual property laws are, it's not immediately apparent you can claim exclusive ownership of. Can you claim property rights on a pin number? on your customer's name? on your customer's phone number? is data even ownable? b) as above, even if you could, it's not apparent that the airline is the one with the greatest claim to that ownership. Does the airline own my name if I fly with them? c) the issue with screen scraping may just be scale, automation and commercial value, and it's not apparent you can just wilfully ban competitors from that because you say so. Indeed, is it a violation if an individual uses the information within without screen scraping? cause a lot of those exclusions and terms would seem like they restrict the use of the website and the information for its actual intended purpose on an individual level, screen scraping or not. d) what are we doing when we read a website but biological screen scraping?

datastoat 5y ago

When I scrape, I attach a header that says roughly “By responding to this request, the provider allows me to use the response for my own personal use; and accepts that this overrides any terms stated on the web page.” Cut and dried? A lawyer friend told me, informally, that if it went to court a younger judge would throw out my “contract” because it’s silly, but a more senior judge might well take the view that both contracts, my version and that of the web site, are equally silly, and both fall short of the “meeting of minds” standard.

mattm 5y ago

So my data like my name, address and birthday are exclusive property of American Airlines? I view them as more of a steward of my data. They have permission from me to use it but the ownership should lie with the individual.

decebalus1 5y ago

> "You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. Nothing on the Site shall be construed to confer any grant or license of any intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, by implication, or otherwise." > Seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. EULA for my hn comments: If you're reading this, you must grant me 'Droit du seigneur' and name your firstborn 'decebalus1'

diebeforei485 5y ago

If everything written in a contract is always enforceable, the entire field of contract law would not exist.

tzs 5y ago

Not so fast. Who is "you"? If I'm understanding the situation correctly (which I may not be) it is AA rewards members who are using TPG's app to access the site. These people give the TPG app their AA login information so it can login to their AA account to get their information. Arguably it is these AA rewards members who are scraping the site. TPG just supplied the tool those members are using. It would then be the AA rewards members who are the ones who have a contract with the site, not TPG.

matt_heimer 5y ago

The more relevant sections are a little further down: Your account information is owned by and proprietary to American Airlines. While you may access your account information through the Site, you may not give access to your account to any person or entity other than a member of your household or a person that you directly supervise as part of your career or employment. You may not give access to your account to any third party on-line service, including, but not limited to any mileage management service, mileage tracking service, or mileage aggregation service. You must access your account information directly through the Site and not through a third party Website, including but not limited to any mileage management service, mileage tracking service, or mileage aggregation service. You also violate this Agreement if you enable an AAdvantage member to access account information without visiting the Site.

hnburnsy 5y ago
So can't share with grown children or business manager or lawyer.