- Published: October 4, 2022
- Updated: October 4, 2022
- University / College: University of Pittsburgh
- Language: English
- Downloads: 29
In order to decide how to proceed with your business idea, you must familiarize yourself with business law in general and the Bidder’s Edge/E-Bay suit in particular. Bidder’s Edge had a similar idea to yours –they used their servers to connect to E-Bay in order to compare prices on certain items. It doesn’t appear to be much different than what millions of consumers do every day, but there is a singular difference: Bidder’s Edge did not access the E-Bay site in the way in which it was intended. Rather than viewing and bidding on items, the only purpose was to view prices and share them with customers on a different website, thus making a profit from E-Bay’s technology and work. Traditional trespass to personal property involves an intrusion to another person’s property.
This is what Bidder’s Edge was doing by invading the E-Bay site in order to gather information. While they had the right to the information for the purposes of making a purchase, they did not have the right to advertise those prices on their website. The definition of trespass to personal property differs a bit from the definition of trespass to computer services, whose definition is as follows: “ Knowingly and without permission provides or assists in providing a means of accessing a computer, computer system, or computer network…” Your idea for a dating website is good, but you need to make sure to avoid illegal activity.
Rather than comparing information about the dating websites using information gathered from those websites, you would be better off turning the site into a public forum that your customers could access for a fee. Current or former customers of dating websites could post information about their experiences for free, while customers seeking the information could pay a fee to find out which dating websites are effective and therefore worth the cost. Customers would benefit more from others’ experiences than they would from a simple price comparison.
Works Cited:(2004 May). Statutes by state — computer trespass. Retrieved January 15, 2009, from Online security Web site: http://www. iprotect. com/Community_Forum/statutes-states-ctr-2. php
