mgcsinc

You seem to misunderstand both the technology and the law. Definitely the law. I'll leave it at that.

As for "precedent," I have absolutely no idea what you're rambling about, but it has no connection to anything resembling a legal principle.

exerda

I have had two off-peak dates & routes to which I applied GPUs & RPUs a couple of months back. Normally, I would then go in and set up EF alerts for the flights--in fact, I had them for these--but obviously, I can't do so any longer.

Suspiciously, both flights now show F0/A0/etc. but are wide open in Y.

I would almost put money on the fact that those flights have been R>0 at some point during the time I've been waitlisted... but my upgrades haven't cleared.

rosesplus

Ah yes but now you can see how UA has improved the process. Before you knew UA was trying to screw you, now you acknowledge that there is a small possibility they may not have. UA views this as yet another enhancement to their program.....

Syzygies

At some point I learned from this board how to construct direct links to United "flight status", well into the future:

This has been invaluable to me; I generate a private web page showing my upcoming flight schedule with links to each flight status.

I wish that it were as easy to construct a direct link, searching for a one-way ticket with travel details corresponding to an upcoming flight. I'd add these links to my calendar, as a way of easily checking on R capacity. It's really not the same, wading in using United's clumsy interface. So, as noted, we don't do it often enough.

In the same vein, I wish that I could construct "timetable" requests of the same form. One discovers far better routings by combining timetable data into spreadsheet pages, sorted by time arriving/leaving various connecting airports. Often, out of hundreds of possible combinations, one routing will jump out of this data as a trip one would actually wish on a family member as a robust combination for winter travel. It is simply not possible to comprehend all of this information at once in the form that United presents it. In fact, United goes out of its way to lead me to the flight combinations they want me to choose, often entirely leaving out award availability in an attempt to guide us away from choosing those flights.

If United is leaving us to fend for ourselves, we need to exchange specific information like this: How does one construct these URLs?

BayAreaPilot

All modern web browsers block pop-ups by default. Doesn't matter what was intended. Good luck finding an "actual web browser" by your definition.

Syzygies

Well, I can answer my own question. The request is via multipart form data, not a constructed URL. This puts simplifying this process beyond the reach of more people. However, one absolutely does not need to be a programmer, or to already understand the http: protocol, to "bookmark" this. One can use a scriptable browser such as Fake (for OS X) that lays bare as a visual video game the sequence of steps in constructing such a request, exactly as one fills out the form by hand. Then one can search for a single flight on a single day, manually with a single click. Change the date, click again. One cannot schedule unattended execution or loops without being a programmer, which is just as well. For United to object to the above would invite lawsuits under the "Americans with Disabilities Act." The above is within the ordinary range of assistive technologies, not a hack. And United should offer this single click (like a saved FlyerTalk query), not fight it.

Whitfield Diffie, a founder of public key cryptography, gives truly spectacular lectures on the history of information, as governments and other institutions attempt to control its flow, and peoples attempt to free its flow. Our struggles with United as their best customers is this issue in the small.

So how is it that we've heard the promise of robot assistants our whole lives, and yet aside from floor discs bumping into furniture as they attempt to vacuum, such assistants have not become a reality? They will, soon enough.

One of our clearest needs is for autonomous, intelligent virtual agents representing our interests online, individually in ways indistinguishable from our manual behavior. When only some outliers have these tools, United will have effective countermeasures. When the wealthier half of the populace takes such tools for granted, United will self-destruct if it resists these virtual assistants, and it will have lost the war it is now waging with us.

This is not a fantasy; most of us will still be flying when this is the norm. FlyerTalk is a primitive tool in this vein, scraping globally rather than acting separately in each of our interests. More generally, Google is a primitive tool in this vein, scraping globally rather than acting separately in each of our interests. One need only look at the market cap of Google to realize that there's money in this, and better money in doing this intelligently and individually for each of us.

Aereo: Watch live TV online is an interesting legal example. It surely enjoys some economies of scale in acting on behalf of many of us, but it effectively pretends to act individually for each of us. One literally rents a tiny (really tiny) antenna somewhere in the outer boroughs, and for this reason Aereo won its legal battles to act as our individual agents.

Meanwhile, even as a fairly amateur programmer I can construct far better information displays for personal use than United offers. They allow me to make more informed purchase decisions. It is baffling that United attempts to fight people like me rather than hire people like me. (I'm personally not available.) One can only conclude that United's business model involves obstructing the flow of useful information to consumers.

(Duh!)

If I were CEO, United's web site would be a massive fire hydrant anyone could scrape to their heart's content. I'd call that free advertising.

mgcsinc

Aereo's legal battle is ongoing.

Xyzzy

That's just it -- you can do it for your personal use and UA wouldn't care. In this case, EF was doing it for commercial use -- and prfiting by reselling UA's data.

pete4212

As noted before, there are other websites doing the exact same thing EF was, also for commercial profit. If it was truly about screen scraping then UA would have gone after them as well.

Xyzzy

We've been through this. Some sites generate more traffic than others and UA is happy about nne of them.

pete4212

As I have already mentioned, that doesn't make sense, if they wanted them all to stop, they would/could take actions to do it. Since UA Insider hasn't clarified, it sounds like UA's issues went beyond screen scraping.

mgcsinc

Ah yes, I believe you referred to this as "precedent." In your world, UA must act against all screen scrapers equally, regardless of whether the scraping is client-side or server-side, big or small, etc.

As I said, that idea is utterly devoid of logic.

FlyWorld

I think the issue is that EF exposed a series of lies, including lies about how the wait-list works or doesn't work, and made it easier for people to clear into R space instead of being "in the dark" while they languish on the wait-list and TOD/HODs are peddled to everyone else.

EF also made it easy to see other lies, like lies about better award saver or upgrade space availability for elites vs. non-elites and also made it easier to do searches and find R or saver space.

When all these capabilities are stripped away from us, we're less able to upgrade and less able to find flights with saver space and have to work a lot harder to see which of their claims, in general, are true or false.

If there was a strategic motivation, I think it was along these lines.

star_world

Couldn't people find these "lies" by using the *identical* data that UA makes available on their website? Can you find any evidence of them, or were you entirely dependent on EF? What exactly are these "lies" anyway?

Kacee

I think Mitch is referring to the "enhanced premium cabin award availability for elites" lie.

(Though I do not subscribe to the conspiracy theory of why EF was cut off.)