Wasn't the case on the POSTs I was looking at in wireshark, but in that case then I apologise, and then wonder why the whackamole sources can't just block KVSTool.

Which brings up an interesting observation, a web browser is not a web browser anymore if it is generating its own unique http post requests that are not otherwise available in the accessible http source when accessing the site. At which point you are not passively browsing, you are actively generating server requests.

Such was the case with our Russian fare friends with the "TARIFF" modification in the post string that does not exist anywhere on their website.

But to answer your question, the browser http header can be filled with whatever you want. Could be nothing or could be "User-Agent: KVS 7.5 (Scrapping your sh!t)". The sites have no idea about KVS because the web requests are coming from your computer (IP) and with your unique session information (cookies) at times with your credentials (login id, password). But you do hit on a good point, automatic agents such as this are supposed to follow the robot.txt rules.

I'm guessing if someone was able to put together the evidence for flight stats that the heavy traffic without ad image opening was due to solely to KVS Tool and not a widespread user group (as what it would appear from their server end with all the IPs) then maybe they would reconsider their business decision.

Except KVS Tool isn't a web robot (which crawls web sites without human intervention). It doesn't do anything at all until a user clicks the "search" button.

Nonsense. You are taking the response from the websites and extracting data from it, discarding the site's markup and displaying only the desired data in your own format. That is the very definition of web scraping. Granted, this only occurs every time a user hits the search button, unlike plenty of other scraping applications that collect far more data in a more automated/repetitive fashion. But it is most certainly scraping nonetheless.

KVS can protest all he wants but this is at best a grey area of law. There have been quite a number of screen scraping legal cases over the last few years. Some are detailed here. Note that in every one of the airline-data-related cases the :rolleyes:ffending party agreed to stop or was forced to do so. KVS knows this, which is why he hides. It's harder to be served a cease and desist order when nobody knows where you are.

This is semantics. The robots don't crawl until someone instructs them to following your logic. KVS is performing multiple user actions per search and dozens in the case of "power search" with the click of one button. One could call it a glorified macro, but the end result it the same, one human click is doing well above and beyond with http requests regarding what one human click could do otherwise.

Winner. Potential legal ramifications if it is ever admitted publicly, so it won't be. Which results in canned / spotty responses to the softballs and blatantly ignoring the hardballs.

What is really genius about the who operation is that you(!) are the guilty party because it is coming from your IP with your webrequests (as compared to EF or other bloggers apps). The win-win is it doesn't require hosting and bandwidth.

A User Agent string is chosen by the the creator(s) of a web browser, taking into consideration compatibility and other factors, described in the previously-linked article.

Users, who are actively web browsing are "actively generating [web] server requests", by definition.

Indeed, so far no robots have applied for a KVS Tool Membership, so we do believe that all current KVS Tool users are, in fact, humans.

From http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard:
One could also call it Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, Scriptify, etc., but this won't turn a browser into a scraper, or a human into a robot.

Actually, that is the very definition of a web browser, which renders the HTML markup in accordance with its technical capabilities (e.g. graphical or text-only), installed extensions (e.g. ......., NoScript) and user preferences (e.g. images/style sheets/fonts/colors).

A web browser does not "collect" any data -- it renders the web page from the HTML format and displays it in a human-readable form (as described above).

The current Engine does not support time input, so that field is currently not being displayed to avoid confusion.

Regular Availability is currently accessible via the KVS Tool Mobile Companion.

Excellent point evasion.

Web browsers are generating requests made available by the sites they are browsing (clicking on links). My point is KVS was generating post requests that were not available to any user browsing p0soshok. Clearly generating custom post requests is something a web browser can't do by definition, because it is browsing what is available, not constructing custom requests of which it should have no knowledge of based on available public information on the website / html - this is a program.

Those are not browsers. Those are scripts/applications that can be used to scrape, amongst other things, which is identical to what KVS is doing.

I am rather disappointed with KVS Tools.

I just renew my Diamond for another year. And there is no warning that I will not get the same services that I have enjoyed for the past 3 years!!!

My requirement is very simple, I just need to check flight availability and timetable. This is the main reason I DO pay for the service.

Now I cannot do this anymore. Well, KVS may argue that I can do it via mobile apps, but this is very hard to read and use.

Should I know that I can no longer get the information needed, why I need to spend USD75 for it.

It seems to me all along the information provided were not from the legitimate sources but I was made to believe that it was, hence I need to pay for it....

I think the pages from the last days (or week(s)?) are all about one topic, whether its an appropiate business model (or not) from the creator of KVS to "scrape" / send specific http requests / transform the user inputs into http code / or whatever you want to call it into code and get the exact responses from certain free data providers.
Most users here have realized that it might be a grey area and that by a legal standpoint its not so easy to answer. Unless we have a lawyer here among the FT folks its more like "I'm saying this, you are saying that" back and forth.

In short,
I think we can end the debate whether its legitimite or not how KVS gets the data, users clearly stated their points here and KVS responded, so unless someone wants to press charges, we are good :D

But @KVS, let me be clear, if it is the case (I'm not saying it is) you are creating a product that allows users to break the terms and conditions of web / data / ... providers you MUST inform the users that they are breaking the law by using your tool, otherwise you are breaking the law!

We have quite a few, working in many different fields and jurisdictions. But there's no reason to expect any of them to bring their professional expertise to this thread.

Did he? Where?

Many products allow me to break the law or circumvent commercial T&Cs. We all own equipment that could be used to break into homes or cause bodily harm.

What's pernicious about the KVS 'tool' is that it does dodgy things behind the scenes without its paying customers knowing (unless they follow this thread, or other similar discussions).

Is anyone else getting basically useless fare information? When I search it does show a bunch of fares, but it doesn't show the fare bases. You have to click on one randomly and look up the fare rules, after which it'll display the fare code. In other words, it's impossible to know what kind of fare you're looking at before clicking on it, but in two searches (one Canada - Mexico, one Canada - Germany) all it shows were Y fares anyway.

I am Diamond however availibility i am una to search....