[dstaten]

"The problem I see with their argument is that they are making this information public."

I love this idea! However, I think that unfortunately this argument doesn't hold up, and wouldn't in court. The information is available via their site, but that does not make it public.

[fjabre]

Says who? Them? Right.

If the info is on the web it's available to be consumed by humans or robots in a polite manner.

Data wants to be free.

Them trying to enforce their terms is another matter. Maybe it would hold up in court. Stupider things have. I mean they should start telling us how to breathe air next. Because ya know if it's in your terms then it must be legally binding.

[amorphid]

> The information is available via their site, but that does not make it public.

Could one offer fair information if there's no reference to Southwest? Is having a website full of listings like "flightno: 123, flight_datetime: 2018-03-04-1045, price: 234.56, price_datetime: 2017-11-15-1130" something Southwest could successfully block?

[AnimalMuppet]

If you got the info by scraping Southwest's site, I don't think it will matter if you present it without reference to Southwest. You're in trouble for how you got it, not how you present it.

[oh_sigh]

If the information is available to any member of the public that requests it with no conditions at all, why is the information not considered public?

[dstaten]

> with no conditions at all

There are conditions on their site, and most sites.

Separately, if this information was public, then Google would have already incorporated it into its flight price notifications feature.

But again, fun idea. It's a good example of something individuals could create for themselves, and Southwest would likely never notice.

[verall]

But it doesn't make it available with "no conditions at all", their robots.txt implies the condition that you aren't scraping it with a bot.

[oh_sigh]

So there would be a material difference between me using the data when a bot scrapes it, versus a human doing it?