Also, perhaps more on topic, I do wonder at the underlying technology/connectivity used to collect the information from the tools mentioned here. Most airlines and all GDS's do attempt to keep up with unprofitable traffic that they get sent to their systems. All GDS's and airlines make money (generally) only when someone actually books travel in the system. Use of the system to do only search activities and then have bookings take place elsewhere (e.g. search GDS-book Airline web site) puts the GDS's in a position of having expensive resources consumed for no financial purpose. Activity like this can take place under the radar on a small scale, but this kind of tool either needs to spread itself out over several intermediaries, or will eventually be discovered and turned off. I have no idea if this concept is in part why these systems are not available all the time. It is certainly possible that the actual amount of traffic generated by these tools is small enough that it will not be noticed, however.
Again, I didn't read all the previous threads, so I apologize if this point is addressed previously.