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> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to

> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing or other service aspects, 3. Add your own profit. I don't think this sets any precedent against scraping on its own. (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel would also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.)

silexia 2y ago
Why does anyone still do business in Delaware after the ridiculous court judgement against Elon and now this?
mschuster91 2y ago
> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?! Side note: Where is a service where I can just enter from/to which city/airport I want to fly (or in Europe also rail), what luggage and passengers I carry, and it spits me out the cheapest price offered for the route and sells me the ticket(s) without having to create individual accounts, spread payment info around and try to fight myself through a shitton of dark patterns, broken English and constantly changing UIs? I know this shit is possible, travel agents live and breathe for that stuff, but I'd like to do that myself instead of getting upselled by the travel agent. Rail and flight should be dumb pipes.
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  To answer side question: try skiplagged.com
- com 2y ago
  Just for rail, I quite like trainline.com. It tries to hide the madness that is very poor national/private rail service and their ticketing regimes, but really there’s only so much you can do, so often I get two or more tickets for legs of travel, some of which change as I remain on the same train?!?
  - ytwySXpMbS 2y ago
    I use Railboard, exactly like trainline but without the booking fee as it's made by national rail
    - com 2y ago
      Just a quick follow up, I haven’t been able to find Railboard pricing in the UK that is more than 1p cheaper than Trainline, so I’ll probably stick with the latter, which also offers pan-European ticketing, which is fairly important to me.
    - com 2y ago
      Thanks for that! Unfortunately UK only? Do you know of similar no-fee apps for pan-European travel?
- arghwhat 2y ago
  > Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. This lawsuit is not about ryanair's pricing model, so that the company engages in bad practices is irrelevant to the court decision. What matters is that booking.com wants to earn money on selling ryanair tickets while evading using reseller agreements by using the site as if they were a private customer (likely also against the terms of service), with supposedly some bad side-effects like ryanair being unable to communicate with the customer (which could be bad if they wanted to e.g. give you a notice about the flight during the sales process). You will have to sue ryanair specifically about their pricing to get a decision on that, which of course first requires ensuring that it is unlawful or unfair business conduct within your jurisdiction (which it might not be). > bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?! They are not your useragent, they are acting as a reseller: You buy a product from them which they acquire elsewhere, taking a profit in the process. If they were in fact entirely transparent in the process, merely allowing you to purchase the product at the best available price directly (e.g., a plugin to find deals/discounts, VPN to get it from the cheapest region, etc.), then the case would have been hard or impossible for ryanair to make.
amelius 2y ago
> (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel would also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.) How difficult would it be to destroy Booking.com's entire businessmodel or at least their grip on the market?
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Destroying their business model is impossible, because both customers and hotels want it. Destroying their grip on the market (I assume you mean accommodation and not flights) would be by offering a better service.
- gumby 2y ago
  > Booking.com's … grip on the market? Do they have a significant grip on the market? I’ve never used them, but for all I know they sell a majority of plane tickets. Then again I haven’t used Ryanair either. The reputations of Ryanair, Spirit etc are sufficient for me to avoid them. But in booking.com’s case I barely even know it exists.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    They’re bigger in Europe
    - bboygravity 2y ago
      And (South East) Asia
      - dgellow 2y ago
        Under the brand name Agoda if I remember correctly
    - ghaff 2y ago
      That's probably true. I've never used them in the US but they seem to often be the site of choice in Europe and Asia (and, based on one recent experience in Europe, can have inventory that can't be accessed any other way). That said, you also have to take direct bookings into account which is most of what I (at any rate) do.
SoftTalker 2y ago
We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.
- darknavi 2y ago
  A good video on the history of the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc
- ryanisnan 2y ago
  According to a recent video by 74gear, airline prices have for the past many-years been heavily subsidized by credit card deals airlines sell. Apparently this part of the biz is taking a bit of a nosedive, and he expects airline prices to skyrocket to compensate for the loss in revenue.
- snowpid 2y ago
  Very good example for American centrism. Esspecially as Ryan Air is only operates in Europe.
- smus 2y ago
  nowadays air travel is completely unregulated, famously
- arghwhat 2y ago
  And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel reached a point some years before covid where some providers played with the thought of having tickets be free - the main source of income for the airlines was in duty-free on either end of the journey anyway, so more travelers meant more revenue even if their tickets were zero. Disallowing discriminatory and unfair business practices is not the same as having the government set travel prices.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

silexia 2y ago

Why does anyone still do business in Delaware after the ridiculous court judgement against Elon and now this?

mschuster91 2y ago

> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?! Side note: Where is a service where I can just enter from/to which city/airport I want to fly (or in Europe also rail), what luggage and passengers I carry, and it spits me out the cheapest price offered for the route and sells me the ticket(s) without having to create individual accounts, spread payment info around and try to fight myself through a shitton of dark patterns, broken English and constantly changing UIs? I know this shit is possible, travel agents live and breathe for that stuff, but I'd like to do that myself instead of getting upselled by the travel agent. Rail and flight should be dumb pipes.

dudeinjapan 2y ago
To answer side question: try skiplagged.com
com 2y ago
Just for rail, I quite like trainline.com. It tries to hide the madness that is very poor national/private rail service and their ticketing regimes, but really there’s only so much you can do, so often I get two or more tickets for legs of travel, some of which change as I remain on the same train?!?
- ytwySXpMbS 2y ago
  I use Railboard, exactly like trainline but without the booking fee as it's made by national rail
  - com 2y ago
    Just a quick follow up, I haven’t been able to find Railboard pricing in the UK that is more than 1p cheaper than Trainline, so I’ll probably stick with the latter, which also offers pan-European ticketing, which is fairly important to me.
  - com 2y ago
    Thanks for that! Unfortunately UK only? Do you know of similar no-fee apps for pan-European travel?
arghwhat 2y ago
> Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. This lawsuit is not about ryanair's pricing model, so that the company engages in bad practices is irrelevant to the court decision. What matters is that booking.com wants to earn money on selling ryanair tickets while evading using reseller agreements by using the site as if they were a private customer (likely also against the terms of service), with supposedly some bad side-effects like ryanair being unable to communicate with the customer (which could be bad if they wanted to e.g. give you a notice about the flight during the sales process). You will have to sue ryanair specifically about their pricing to get a decision on that, which of course first requires ensuring that it is unlawful or unfair business conduct within your jurisdiction (which it might not be). > bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?! They are not your useragent, they are acting as a reseller: You buy a product from them which they acquire elsewhere, taking a profit in the process. If they were in fact entirely transparent in the process, merely allowing you to purchase the product at the best available price directly (e.g., a plugin to find deals/discounts, VPN to get it from the cheapest region, etc.), then the case would have been hard or impossible for ryanair to make.

amelius 2y ago

> (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel would also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.) How difficult would it be to destroy Booking.com's entire businessmodel or at least their grip on the market?

carlosjobim 2y ago
Destroying their business model is impossible, because both customers and hotels want it. Destroying their grip on the market (I assume you mean accommodation and not flights) would be by offering a better service.
gumby 2y ago
> Booking.com's … grip on the market? Do they have a significant grip on the market? I’ve never used them, but for all I know they sell a majority of plane tickets. Then again I haven’t used Ryanair either. The reputations of Ryanair, Spirit etc are sufficient for me to avoid them. But in booking.com’s case I barely even know it exists.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  They’re bigger in Europe
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    And (South East) Asia
    - dgellow 2y ago
      Under the brand name Agoda if I remember correctly
  - ghaff 2y ago
    That's probably true. I've never used them in the US but they seem to often be the site of choice in Europe and Asia (and, based on one recent experience in Europe, can have inventory that can't be accessed any other way). That said, you also have to take direct bookings into account which is most of what I (at any rate) do.

SoftTalker 2y ago

We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.

darknavi 2y ago
A good video on the history of the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc
ryanisnan 2y ago
According to a recent video by 74gear, airline prices have for the past many-years been heavily subsidized by credit card deals airlines sell. Apparently this part of the biz is taking a bit of a nosedive, and he expects airline prices to skyrocket to compensate for the loss in revenue.
snowpid 2y ago
Very good example for American centrism. Esspecially as Ryan Air is only operates in Europe.
smus 2y ago
nowadays air travel is completely unregulated, famously
arghwhat 2y ago
And you still regulate it, just differently. The implied conclusion that regulation makes things expensive is wrong, and comparing the air travel market over half a century ago with the market today, and crediting a change made in 1978 for the difference doesn’t make sense. EU air travel is quite regulated with e.g. consumer rights for cash compensation, hotel and food service in case of delay, and yet air travel reached a point some years before covid where some providers played with the thought of having tickets be free - the main source of income for the airlines was in duty-free on either end of the journey anyway, so more travelers meant more revenue even if their tickets were zero. Disallowing discriminatory and unfair business practices is not the same as having the government set travel prices.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]