Blog homeGood discussion last night at the Travolution question time about screen scraping. Yeah I know many people are not that excited by this discussion - but you are not a travel technology provider. Others just want the discussion to end so they can continue “breaking the law” without having to feel too guilty about it.
Anyway, part of the discussion last night was based around what us technology providers should be doing. I would much prefer to use the example of “sending spam email” rather than screen scraping. I believe the ethics are similar and by steering away from discussing screen scraping perhaps we can steer the conversation away from Ryanair specific issues.
The three choices that a technology provider has:
#1 Provide functionality that enables our customers (travel companies) to do what they like - including breaking the law or act in a way that is negative towards other suppliers (who may, actually, also be clients)
#2 Provide the functionality, but ask your clients (travel companies) to sign a legal disclaimer saying that any legal issues are nothing to do with them. Apparently this is the route that a number of UK based travel technology based companies have taken (There are technology companies who now openly admit facilitating screen scraping on behalf of their clients)
#3 Refuse to provide the functionality - this is my view. For example with spam email - the maximum number of people you can send an email to within my tour operator reservation system is 4 email addresses (at a time) - but you can export your entire customer database (with various filters etc) and import the email addresses into a 3rd party system for email spamming - should you really feel the need!
What interests me is that if a technology provider takes option #2 then the technology company knows that what they are doing is wrong - but facilitates their clients to break the law anyway. Some companies apparently believe that you should do whatever your client asks (if they are paying enough). I don’t.
Then people wonder why I believe that ABTA should have some standards for their travel company members. In the UK they are the official industry regulators and in a situation where technology companies are policing their clients (ineffectively) and there is mass transgression of the law - who else but ABTA would have any clout to bring this under control?
I am going to shut up on this now (for the moment). Sorry for boring people with it over the last couple of months.
(The legal position isn’t completely clear - but is clear enough for the purposes of the points I am making in this post. Go and hire a lawyer if you need real advice)
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