Re:Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft ...
by ddalex on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @04:58AM
(#14191838)
Fair enough, one should be able to machine read APIs that power a public web page without fear of repercussions.
But that's not a public API that Uber was tapping into. It was a private API that requires an agreement to be signed in order to access it. Uber signed and then violated the agreement, by providing fake data through the APIs.
At the moment that the agreement was broken, their access to the API become illegal.
I agree. The implicit context is that it is in-bounds to investigate your competitors through their public-facing offerings, even if they try to stop you. You don't have to stop competing just because they say please. Through an accident of law (the CFAA was enacted before it was possible to get home internet service), Lyft was able to make this illegal. Lyft is trying to block public information from getting into their competitor's hands. IMO, that's the anti-competitive activity here.