4 ms·

I love HN articles about going down the rabbit hole. This one did not disappoint. At the end, though, I started to wonder about legal issues with altering downl

I love HN articles about going down the rabbit hole. This one did not disappoint. At the end, though, I started to wonder about legal issues with altering downloaded code behavior. Cybersecurity laws are so clumsily written that the kind of alterations to Booking.com code described here seem likely to fall afoul of one or more such laws not to mention the site terms of usage. Opinions?

asnyder 4y ago
Personally, don't see how modifying anything on the client matters. Actual site and service is a series of authenticated API calls that trigger actions on their server side. None of those meaningful things are modified, only the client layer/ dressing so to speak.
- hodgesrm 4y ago
  This seems corrrect though it made me curious. I've skimmed the Booking ToS and can't find anything that expressly forbids altering the site appearance to make it render differently. The closest is perhaps Section A14. Intellectual Rights. [0] So either Booking.com have thought about this and don't care, or they have not thought of it. Given that they do expressly prohibit monitoring/scraping/crawling for commercial purposes I would guess it's the former. They've limited liability in a way that any loss is limited to the amount paid and also do not offer indemnification, which further limits their exposure. (Reading legal documents is my personal rabbit hole.) [0] https://www.booking.com/content/terms.html#nov2021_terms_all_ipr_subheading https://www.booking.com/content/terms.html#nov2021_terms_all...
netsharc 4y ago
Who'd be sued? The people who use booking.com with this extension? It'd be a genius (/s) move for a service to sue their customers, ensuring they'll never return. IANAL, but I imagine a sleazy lawyer from the company could attempt to sue the users for altering a "copyrighted work", although it probably doesn't apply if the derivative work isn't for public consumption. Also it would mean defacing a book would be illegal.
philsnow 4y ago
This extension is ~roughly the same as a user style sheet.

asnyder 4y ago

Personally, don't see how modifying anything on the client matters. Actual site and service is a series of authenticated API calls that trigger actions on their server side. None of those meaningful things are modified, only the client layer/ dressing so to speak.

hodgesrm 4y ago
This seems corrrect though it made me curious. I've skimmed the Booking ToS and can't find anything that expressly forbids altering the site appearance to make it render differently. The closest is perhaps Section A14. Intellectual Rights. [0] So either Booking.com have thought about this and don't care, or they have not thought of it. Given that they do expressly prohibit monitoring/scraping/crawling for commercial purposes I would guess it's the former. They've limited liability in a way that any loss is limited to the amount paid and also do not offer indemnification, which further limits their exposure. (Reading legal documents is my personal rabbit hole.) [0] https://www.booking.com/content/terms.html#nov2021_terms_all_ipr_subheading https://www.booking.com/content/terms.html#nov2021_terms_all...

netsharc 4y ago

Who'd be sued? The people who use booking.com with this extension? It'd be a genius (/s) move for a service to sue their customers, ensuring they'll never return. IANAL, but I imagine a sleazy lawyer from the company could attempt to sue the users for altering a "copyrighted work", although it probably doesn't apply if the derivative work isn't for public consumption. Also it would mean defacing a book would be illegal.

philsnow 4y ago

This extension is ~roughly the same as a user style sheet.