[unethical_ban]

I can understand, particularly with the branding, that they would want you to stop making people think that is an official site.

Imagine the scraper breaks for 24 hours and in that time, several WHs shut down due to a natural disaster. Someone looks at this site, decides to travel in their car, and gets electrocuted by a downed power line. They sue WH because they were relying on that information, and by goodness it looked official.

WH was aware of the site, and if they don't tell you to stop, then are they complicit in the person being fooled into trusting it and thinking it's a first-party site?

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I think the site itself should have been allowed to stay up, had the style been changed to clearly be unofficial and had sufficient disclaimers. It sounds to me like their legal department is scared shitless of the implications of people actually relying on the Waffle House Index to make life and death decisions.

[spogbiper]

yes i think their public replies that "this information is incorrect" was an attempt to avoid liability for exactly the reason you mention. it likely had nothing to do with whether the information was accurate

[AStonesThrow]

Or more realistically, stale website lists N stores as "Closed" while they are open; customers (C) decide not to patronize "Closed" stores; stores have now lost N * C * $X business based on misinformation distributed by a domain squatter.

Or, employees begin to rely on domain squatter's map, argue with supervisor over whether they need to come into work, and N employees lost their jobs because of a third-party misinformation site.