Should you let people scrape data from your site or offer a web service API instead? This is one of the classic arguments for offering an API: to get better control over how your data is accessed and who gets access. A recent news story about Flybe, Europe's largest independent regional airline carrier, demonstrates a case where this was the main driver for creating an API. For Flybe, having third party service and applications access their booking engine is very important to them, but they want to make it more structured and reliable.
