[skissane]

> Booking.com wants to charge you for the service, and if they're not part of the transaction they'd have to get money out-of-band

I think you misunderstand what I meant. To be more specific: if the ruling says that automated booking via screen scraping is illegal – what's to stop Booking.com hiring warm bodies in low cost countries, replacing their fully automated solution with a semi-automated solution to dodge the ruling, and continuing to charge their customers for that service?

[arghwhat]

The ruling does not say anything about screen scraping or automation, and the verdict also holds if warm bodies in low cost countries were used.

What was ruled was that:

1. That Booking.com "intentionally directed, encouraged or induced Etraveli to access the myRyanair portion of Ryanair's website without authorization"

2. That "Etraveli recklessly caused Damage to a protected computer by way of such access to the myRyanair portion of Ryanair's website without authorization"

3. That "Etraveli caused both Damage to a protected computer and Loss by way of such access to the myRyanair portion of Ryanair's website without authorization"

4. That booking.com "knowingly and with intent to defraud, directed, encouraged, or induced a third party to access the myRyanair portion of Ryanair's website without authorization and by means of such conduct furthered the intended fraud and obtained something of value for booking.com"

5. That "the object of the fraud and the thing of value obtained by Booking.com [was] only the use of the myRyanair portion of Ryanir's website"