
Fixed (YC S14) Parking Ticket Service Gets Blocked in San Francisco, Oakland and LA - bandhunt
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/fixed-the-app-that-fixes-your-parking-tickets-gets-blocked-in-san-francisco-oakland-l-a/
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malchow
It doesn't seem that Fixed was doing anything that contravenes the law.

We still are a nation of laws, and not of men. One would think that, in the
interest of justice, governments couldn't ban an automatic appeals system like
Fixed. People do have the right to an appeal.

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minimaxir
The whole sidestepping-the-CAPTCHA-on-a-government-website is a rather gray
area in terms of legality.

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malchow
Possibly, although if you were to think about the purpose of a CAPTCHA,
wouldn't it run roughly like this:

 _To ensure that a given submission is the affirmative action of an individual
human being._

And, if an individual human being stuck with a $100 parking ticket has asked
Fixed to send an appeal on his behalf, and Fixed has a script that fulfills
the CAPTCHA, and Fixed never does this without being hired and paid by a
unique individual, then I don't think the purpose of the CAPTCHA is being
violated at all.

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compsciphd
why not just provide their mobile app the ability to submit things directly?

Just need a basic scriptable browser interface (i.e. a scriptable httpclient),
this might change day to day (but no different if all server side). If one
could just have a sufficient api (what to GET, what to post, what state needs
to be saved, how to get user to enter captcha....) one should be able to keep
the instructions updated on the server side and have it always be submitted
from the phone.

