united-states copyright criminal-law intellectual-property
is reverse engineering undocumented API legal in the U.S
<p>I've reverse engineered a Taobao APP's undocumented API to make a helper program, (in case you don't know what Taobao APP is, it's like amazon or ebay), this API allows the APP to place bids and make purchases.</p>
<p>Some products on Taobao APP need the user to place order very quickly (often there is a specific time that the product will be open for order.), if you can place your order before others you will get a better price. I'm sure it works the same way as ebay bid sniping.</p>
<p>My program with the API can allow users to login to Taobao account and place orders automatically, the end user can specify what product they want to order and the program will read the product's start time (public information) and a timer within the program will start a countdown, at the end of the countdown the order is placed automatically. (normally the end user will have to login to Taobao APP and click on the Buy Now button to complete the order, but that will be too slow).</p>
<p>After the order is successfully placed (yes it can be unsuccessful if others front run), the end user can then proceed to Taobao APP and complete the payment.</p>
<p>Suppose Taobao is an American company and operating in the U.S, and I created such a program, would this be illegal under the U.S law?</p>
<p>(the API contains a Key and a secret, together they can cryptographically sign a piece of information to verify that the information is not tempered with during data transit, if it's been tempered with the information will not go through.)</p>
<p>Thanks for your time.</p>
