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There are two obvious issues, as I see it. #1 is whether someone's liable for poking around inside the Kayak app in the way the author of the post did. #2 is wh
by declan 12y ago
There are two obvious issues, as I see it. #1 is whether someone's liable for poking around inside the Kayak app in the way the author of the post did. #2 is whether it's legal to "open-source" the API by disclosing this information, once obtained.
My quick take is that #1 likely violates Kayak's terms of use for the app, its web site, or both. The TOU for the website has a host of prohibitions, including don't "bypass or circumvent other measures employed to prevent or limit access to Our Website," no deep-linking (such as a link to the API endpoint), and as a catchall also prohibits all inappropriate-as-defined-by-Kayak activity. I haven't read the app TOU, but it would be standard practice to prohibit reverse engineering of the app itself.
So we don't really need to reach point #2, which raises some 1A issues the first doesn't. (Note I'm excluding DMCA and CFAA issues because Kayak isn't our sue-happy friends at the MPAA or RIAA.)
As a practical matter, though, the author of the linked post, Shubhro Saha, appears to be an undergrad, so is probably judgment-proof and not the most likely target of litigation.
- moyix 12y agoJust to add to this: the relevant case law seems to be Bowers v. Baystate Technologies [1], which held that EULA clauses prohibiting reverse engineering are enforceable. I personally think this is a terrible decision, since it also prevents a lot of good uses of reverse engineering (see some examples, like fighting censorship and diagnosing software vulnerabilities, in a recent paper of mine [2]). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Baystate_Technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Baystate_Technologies [2] https://mice.cs.columbia.edu/getTechreport.php?techreportID=1588&disposition=inline&format=pdf https://mice.cs.columbia.edu/getTechreport.php?techreportID=...