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Site Says 'Go Away!'; Federal Court Says No
CaptainEbo writes "Michael Snow was the webmaster of Stop Corporate Extortion, a private support group website for 'individuals who have been, are being, or will be sued by any Corporate entity.' In order to access his site, users were required to register a username and password, and agree to a statement saying they were not associated with DirecTV, Inc. Several defendants in suits brought by DirecTV would discuss their cases on Snow's site. When DirecTV's employees and lawyers ignored Snow's user agreement and accessed his site anyway, Snow sued, claiming they violated the Stored Communications Act (SCA) by accessing his site without authorization. In an unanimous opinion, the Eleventh Circuit rejected Snow's suit."
Where does this leave things like EULAs?
It seems more and more like we have a double standard when it comes to "computer trespass" laws. People can be threatened with prosecution for downloading files which a company mistakenly posts on a public webserver, yet when it comes to a citizen and their own personal site they have no mechanism to keep people out.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Well, interesting story. There once was this website called ThePirateBay.org, that had a whole lot of things readily accessable to the general public, but uh ... not so popular with los federales. In fact, they claim that many people accessed their stored communications without authorization!
Seriously though, this seems so vaguely worded that I think it's almost useless as a precedent. "Readily accessible" is pretty subjective to a given individuals knowledge (I happen to find whois queries readily accessible, but I don't think everyone wouuld), and what people feel like using at that time, in that place.
They lied, they cheated, they broke and entered in the digital sphere. Let's just hope Mr. Snow doesn't get counter-sued if they happened to fall through a skylight and break their leg on the trip through.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
You really can't expect someone to sit there and interview everyone who wants to become a member of this sort of thing... it just isn't really possible. Just imagine if there was some guy who had to sit there and interview each new member of slashdot. No way would that ever work.
What makes something readily accessible to the general public? According to the article they didn't even give an example (apart from that "hint" which I just went over). That is just way too vague.
Where does this leave things like EULAs?
... that is, if you are a big powerful rich corp, then the courts will happily uphold your EULA but if you are a small-time nobody, then your EULA doesn't mean jack squat and the courts will trod all over it. Nothing has changed.
And no, I'm not intentionally being cynical... I'm just simply being observant of the way things really work.
I know you can't extrapolate from online laws to real-world ones, but...
On Snow's site, any member of the general public could access the site by merely registering with a username and password and clicking on the words "I Agree to these terms." Such an easily surmountable barrier to access is, according to the court, insufficient to make a site not "readily acessible to the general public."
If I own some land, and don't want people trespassing to pick berries but have no problem with them hiking across it, I can put up signs to that effect. If they come to pick berries, I can kick them out for trespassing. Were online standards applied to this law, even putting up a short fence wouldn't be sufficient to allow me to enforce my signs; I'd need 15-foot concrete barriers and hired guides to chaperone all visitors.
Hypocrisy is the first thing that comes to mind here.
The closest physical manifestation of this situation is for a man to walk into a private meeting room such as a boardroom, then use the information he heard for personal gain.
Or someone wandering into a Lawyers office and listening in on a Lawyer-Client conversation and using that information against the client.
Its truly frightening that the US legal system supports such gross violation of privacy, so long as it is perpetrated by a company, not a person.
Can't we all just get along
This isn't a double standard by any means. It's what many call the "American standard".
This man's first offense was not being a corporation. His second was daring to question the actions of corporations.
The standards are quite clearly set. Individuals are not allowed to take a stance against corporations or their actions. Corporate greed trumps all. It's very evident how the system works.
What he *should* have done was create a blacklist of IPs known to belong to DirectTV and any business partners they may have had.
It occurs that after an initial setup using existing 'No *PAA blacklists' the process could have been automated fairly easily by scanning his web logs for uncool IPs.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Now that those "Acceptable Use Policies" don't mean anything, I no longer have to bother reading them before clicking the checkbox... No more losing sleep worrying about getting sued when I write scripts that blatantly violate the AUPs either.
Last time I checked, the idea behind creating a "corporation" was to give it a legal title as a person, hense the root of the word... Slightly astounded at how this court could fail to grasp not only the law but common sense and english vocabulary.
Hah! Just kidding, I don't really expect the courts to go by morality or, god forbid, simple logic. All those little corporate trolls on here that seem to snipe at me from time to time, you may now go ahead and explain to me how judges and courts are somehow restricted by the nuance of law, and cannot find any way at all to rule in favor of ethical good.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
During the registration process, if he had a checkbox that asked whether the user has read and agreed to the terms and conditions. If the user doesn't check the box, the registration process would ask that they read the T&C's and stop there. The user would have to specifically check the box to agree to the T&C's.
Or perhaps a checkbox stating that they are not from DirectTV or associated with DirectTV. Once again, the user would have to actively state that they are not from DirectTV.
Just thinking outloud . . .
Is by far one of my favorite blogs. A blog that actually has people who know what they talking about giving analysis on important subjects. Are there more blogs like this?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Whatever happened to freedom of association? A private entity---i.e., anything that is *not* the government---should be able to discriminate on any basis it chooses.
Even if you agree with the legality of civil rights laws, the employees of a particular company are not a protected group under that legislation.
[ home ]
The SCA isn't applicable here. He should have brought a civil suit citing breach of contract. That's just standard licensing/contract law.
Ironicly enough, the user/pass they used to acces his site was:
bugmenot/bugmenot
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
...or up for sale? Accessing the site gives a banner "click here to buy this domain" in a nice little frame, followed by no page found.
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
Seems to me like he is discriminating against Direct TV personel. Could I create a website that says no "blacks" can enter? NO! Could I be sued if I did? YES! He should not be able to create a website saying no Direct TV personel and they have every right to counter-sue in my opinion.
I can't help but wonder what kind of precedent this sets for activities like spamming. Essentially the courts are saying if it is easy to do, even if clearly not the desire of those seeking privacy to not be invaded by you -- go ahead anyway. Lots of cool things are unworkable on the internet because people don't respect clearly posted guidelines for activities, this is just one more ruling making it harder for online communities to self-govern.
Sadly if the ruling went the other way, I could see bad outcomes as well. Still Direct TV seems more than a little slimy in ignoring the request. Perhaps their anti-social behavior should be more widely disseminated -- say by some well read online community of some sort, perhaps one that provides news to the technically inclined or what the general public calls geeks.
Letter To Iran
The ruling makes no mention of EULAs or contracts. I think this would have been a far more interesting case had Snow argued that viewing the website was a breach of contract rather than attempt to apply some anti-hacking law someplace that it doesn't belong.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
This makes me want to vomit with rage!!!
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
What is so hard about that? If I don't want some people from a certain organization accessing my site - I simply deny them access. They think my server is down or doesn't exist, leave, and don't come back.
Bah - lawsuit, he just wanted some attention.
Would I really want the headache of dealing with an organization like this? I don't think so.
It's bad enough I'm running Windows.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
What does this do for harmless port scanning/light hacking? If someone has NO passwords on a port, is everything therein fair game?
Is this a license to hack? It's not tresspassing if there are no 'serious' barriers, and borrowing a username/password is ok!
W00t!
Does this mean I as a man can now go into woman's bathrooms and showers and such? There is just a sign! There is no real screening process! Woot!
And if the Supremes uphold the 11th Circuit, then every SCA conviction so far should be overturned pronto!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Seems to me that this sets a precedent for those who access "hidden" files on a web site by chopping off the end of the URL, or by deep-linking to files, bypassing the gateway pages put up by the authors.
I remember going to one site and chopping off the filename from the URL, only to see a default page in RED with BIG LETTERS saying "WARNING! We have your IP address - further attempts to gain unauthorized access to this site will be logged and reported to the authorities."
I just chuckled and fired them off a Yahoo! Mail message telling them that they were "authorizing access" by the very act of putting their files on an unsecured web server!
It's missing a brown envelope sticking out of her packet pocket...
It was obviously invalid since it was vague. Imagine if he wrote "by entering this website you certify that you are NOT a nigger". That would be obviously invalid. I cannot see any difference between excluding negro or telling away DirectTV employees. Both restriction targets well defined groups of people that form a minority in the society.
Otherwise, nobody forces people to sign up to DirecTV service. If they dislike the conditions, there are other competing service providers, since USA is a market economy. If people decide to sign up, they should obey the contract. If you do not pay in time, pirate the protected content, hack the smartcard, etc. then DirecTV will sue you of course. You should not make websites about that and pose like Joan of Arc. That's ridiculous.
bid $50,000 for that piece of toast on eBay, either.
Maybe the way to get around all this is have a lengthy contract that a registrant has to sign off onto. Putting in a clause that falsifying any statements or misrepresenting yourself is an act of perjury (or whatever the equivalent is) and then having a paypal button. The registrant has to send $0.01 so there is a monetary transaction to back up the contract. Furthermore, absolving oneselves of any SLA-type agreement for the forum should be pretty water tight in a contract law case. Then he could sue. IANAL, thoughts?
because the directv personnel made a copy of the pages, copyrighted to the respective owners and license is only granted by the usage policy.
Each poster can get them for $150,000 statutory damages and get a five year jail term for the individual doing this.
After all, the reason why you need a license for software you bought is because you need to copy it to disk (despite PS2/XBox games not needing to be copied, so who is doing the copying?).
Also, try to register this alongside that bloke done for trespass on a wireless network beause the AP was set to defaults. No contract was not enough to get them in the clear.
The site owner also lost financially because they had to pay for bandwidth (excessive usage is capped regularly for personal users).
Why not go after them for plain old fraud? They made use of his services under false pretenses. How could he possibly lose on that?
IANAL, but could this also be wire fraud?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
so...since there's no screening process, does that mean that I (a guy) can just go hang out in the women's bathroom?
if not, then what would have happened if Snow had put this agreement up as a EULA in more fancy legalese and claimed for violation of contract?
* lon3st4r *
This sums up my feelings...
--
Written By:Russell Nelson
On June 2, 2006 03:15 AM
Wow. That's an interesting decision. So if I post my land against hunters, and hunters trespass anyway, I can't exclude hunters because my land was public because hunters trespassed while claiming that they weren't hunters? They were never authorized. Even if I was unable to identify them on casual examination, THEY knew they were hunters, and THEY knew their use of my land was unauthorized. The law is fully capable of taking one's internal knowledge into account -- that's why manslaughter and murder are different crimes.
Sheesh. Idiots.
--
> So if I post my land against hunters
You can't. In most countries with a rule of law, like Europe, you (person or company) can only own the land (the horizontal surface of dirt) and the buildings, but nothing over or under surface. If you find anything buried deeper than 1 meters, it is the property of the state, be it Lucy the australopithecus or the treasure of Attila the Hun. You can only claim the finder's reward (15-30% usually).
Similarly hunting rights are with the country and you must tolerate hunting associations in exchange for a law-defined yearly fee. If you dislike that, you need to convince the court those flying bullets endanger your kids or hurt your sleep really bad.
(Trees are a different issue, they are usually owned by the land-owner, but you can't cut them down at will without a permit. You certainly don't own the wabbits and the wildboars, although hogs own some people every year.)
This was a private person working against corporations, and it was shot down. When the corporations with their army of lawyers and legal fud wants to persuit this against people, expect it to be fully enforcable. They will have no problems what so ever.
Ok, so I don't know that, but I'm pretty sure that's how it will turn out.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Forget EULAs - they are contract law and completely different to the SCA. The real question posed by this is do PEA loopholes still work? Free party organisers often make people sign up to be "members" on the door or register on a website. Thus, when the cops show up, they can claim its merely a private members-only party just like the noisy house party down the road you didn't bust. Any lawyers care to comment?
If this is a contract, why couldn't a site that did not want certain companies to access it state so in the countract clearly specifying that if you do so in violation of this agreement you agree to pay say 5 Billion dollars for each individual offense (http hit). And then take them to court for the money they owe. While this would not achieve the intended purpose of baring one from legaly entering a site, it should give a protection if the amounts set are unreasonable for those companies to pay and place them and or individuals in jepardy of loosing all they have when violating the agreement. Make sure this part of the statement is in the largest possible letters upfront of the agreement. (It would be fun to see this go to court though, although legal system that it is, they prolly would through it out unless you were from Redmond or some other large muscle.)
The GNU General Public License grants recipients of a product various rights, but (as in this case) they don't give any considerations in return. Also (as in this case) nobody "screens the registrants before granting access".
If it's legal to access the Stop Corporate Extortion Website while apparantly breaking its terms of use and copyright, would it also be legal to use GPL'd software while breaking its terms? What's the significant difference, if any?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
There've been already a few people sent to jail for "hacking" because they gained access to sites they were not supposed to get access to by claiming to be someone else (or, in this case, not being someone specific).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Click-through for access to allow pubilc the access to x-rated websites "if you are an adult and porn is not illegal in your juristiction" (like anywhere south of the mason-dixon line)? Seems like the same logic should apply here.
The copyright/patent holder grants to the bearer full and unlimited rights, including rights to use, copy, distribute, modify, reverse engineer, and disassemble this product. This agreement supercedes any and all others, implicit or explicit. By clicking on the button, you accept these terms.
...then hold that paper over the top of whatever license terms are displayed on the screen and click the button. Problem solved.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Every time you go to a website and don't read the 10 pages of fine print, you would risk committing a federal offense.
People, this is not a contract issue. If it were, he would probably have won.
He was trying to use the biggest weapon available and he screwed up, because he does not use anything to keep people out.
The court made the only interpretation of the statute that would be reasonable.
guess that means DirecTV's agreement to not let you unscramble their systems is invalid - oh yeah, that's right, they have lawyers so they can legally uphold their agreements with their users... this is lame. Score another one for the facists. Heil Bush.
I hate to tell you but this is also the case if you find gold or oil on your property in the US. (although it may not be the govt who owns it) You would have to check your specific titling/deed for the property, but most of them specifically exclude "mineral rights".
I am sure that the prevalance this sort of thing varies from one locality to another, but the concept is the same wherever. The mineral rights do not necessarily go with the ownership of the surface of the land.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Instead of trying to come up with analogies that, if you're lucky, only half of /. readers will agree with, and each of the other half providing what they think is a better analogy, repeat ad nauseum...let's just cut to the chase, as it applies to this topic.
The man said, this is private property, and if you're in *this* group of people, you're not allowed to enter.
Create all the analogies and argue all the finer points of the laws regarding trespassing you want, some of those that were in *this* group of people entered anyway, and as such violated the webmasters rules of access.
All that talk of "screening" and "self-screening" is just a bunch of bullshit spewed out to justify a ruling that creates yet another loophole in a law that shouldn't even be necessary to begin with. You're either allowed in, or you aren't.
A person of average morals and a sense of decency will not go where he's obviously not wanted. The rest should be held accountable for their actions.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Then court should also think this is totally stupid and shouldn't protect porn sites from liability, if that is the case. After all, it's only click away from kids to access porn. I can hear that "for the Children" antic coming up.
Some judges need a lesson on how internet works. Probably most judges think internet runs on some magnetic tapes and flashing light bulbs with occational "beep.. beep" noise.
pr0n for everyone!
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Anyone know who made this quote?
Money talks and bullshit walks
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
They're only for the rich and wealthy, the mega-conglomerates. The little guy gets no protection.
So why should we care....
In Finland, wherever you erect a house is considered completely private property, but if you own forest beyond your back yard, you can't prevent people from using it.
This makes perfect sense, as the only other alternative would be for the government to own all forests, to prevent crazy landowners from destroying everyone else's enjoyment.
How can you even remotely consider that a landowner actually OWNS that land if he does not have the simple right of preventing others from taking its resources without permission? Berries on MY land are MY berries, if you take them, you are stealing MY berries. What you have described is simple, homeowners have 0 property rights.
In practice, it means you can't start posting stupid signs telling people what they're allowed to do. Just like that website couldn't...
Yet its ok for other land owners to post stupid signs telling me how to use their land? Example: the government is a fairly large landowner, and streets are riddled with signs telling me to stop, slow down, no left turn, one way, do not enter.
Again all that you have demonstrated is that in Finland, landowners have 0 rights, their is actually no reason to own or take care of or protect property in Finland.
So, If I were still under 18, and I went to a free porn site that prompts me to verify that I am indeed 18, then I would not be legally bound to tell the truth? And if I lie, then aqire access to the site and my parents were to decide to sue the website operators for providing me with such content, how would the courts rule?
I'm sure a lawyer could chirp up with details, but a few years ago the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the police needed to get a search warrant to examine the contents of a tent. They ruled that tents were temporary domiciles, same as hotel rooms, and entitled to the same protection.(*) His closure of the tent, like closing your hotel room door, indicated that uninvited visitors were unwelcome. That includes police sans warrant.
Is a zipped tent, or a locked convertable with the top down, any practical limitation? Of course not, but neither is a window to a man with a rock. But legally it's the intent that mattered in that case.
In the parent case, I have a mixed mind on the decision. I understand the reasoning, but I also understand that "freedom of association" protects the right of a group to exclude unwanted persons (primarily police) just as much as it means that a group can get together for peaceful purposes.
(*) The old Dragnet series had a horrible scene where the cops searched an apartment under the authority granted by the landlord. Uh, no. Odd, iirc my ugrad business law class made it clear that only the occupants can consent to a search. (Details undoubtably differ by state.) Residental rental contracts universally provide access exemptions, but in every one of my leases it's been immediate if there's a critical problem that requires immediate action (e.g., burst pipe or smoke), and after 24 hours if there's a legitimate business need (e.g., to perform city-mandated annual inspection of the smoke alarm). Otherwise, keep out. The landlord can unlock the door for a search warrant, but can no more open the door to the police for an unwarranted search than he can open the door for my "visiting brother" who's dropped by to pick up my "unwanted" computer.
On the other hand there have been cases of residents suing their landlord after they discovered hidden cameras installed by their landlord... and losing. That's not the same as a government agent, of course, but it highlights the need to check with a local lawyer if there's a question.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
... But if you RTNFSentence:
"We agree with the district court that Snow's complaint
fails to state a cause of action for which relief can be granted, but on a different
ground: Snow's complaint fails to allege, as the SCA requires, that the website was
configured to not be readily accessible by the general public."
This (and the rest of the decision) seems to say nothing about whether the district court's original grounds were valid or not.
He sued under the wrong statute. He used the Stored Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC 2701-11. He should have used 18 U.S.C. 1030 (the hacking law) instead, which prohibits access to any computer in "excess" of your authorization. A statement that "employees or agents of DTV are not authorized and are expressly forbidden to access the contents of this computer system" would make access by them a violation of 18 USC 1030.
He also had wire fraud claims (false signups), trespass, fraud, etc., he could have brought.
He use the SCPA because it has statutory damages... all the other things he could have brought require you to prove actual damages (the amount of money you lost because of the other person's actions).
I'd say that, de facto, we already do. I.e., you can't get blood from a turnip, but you can sure get blood from a..., well I don't think I want to finish that analogy. Anyways, my point is that juries routinely hand out fairly large settlements against companies (McDonald's coffee, anyone?), and companies with more financial resources are those companies that will actually have the wherewithal to pay.
On the other hand, even if a jury awarded you a $10 million dollar suit against me, well, good luck with you - or, more importantly for your point, your lawyer - collecting it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So does this mean that sites that have you "certify" that you are 18 or older are basically not really covering themselves?
If the site owner presented an emphasized statement.. Like "I certify that I have no association whatsoever with Direc... my nickname, e-mail, and unique password entered below constitute my digital signature."
Emphasizing and specifically separating the statement from all other agreements. And required registrants to type in text like "AGREE" by hand; so it wasn't just click to agree.
Maybe there's still such a thing as fraud, and people certifying to a false statement are still misrepresenting themselves...
The criteria of effective means of control as a requirement to receive judgement against unauthorized users to register and use a site above and beyond their allowed access seems like a new one -- bad hackers could enjoy this; now suddenly hacking isn't hacking, unless the site was secure to begin with?
And what about the cases where people have been prosecuted for sending e-mail on the basis of unauthorized access to otherwise publicly accessible mail servers?
As someone mentioned, just clicking a button won't protect you. But if they go through the process of signing up for an account, then they have to accept the terms of the site as a product and should be protected by law.
Can't they at least go after the DirecTV-affiliated persons who stated that they were not affiliated with DirecTV for perjury? Or, since it wasn't under oath, some sort of breach of contract? At the very least, lying? In any case, even if they cannot be prosecuted, I think it is likely that any evidence they procured through the site will be thrown out of a court of law because it was obtained by illegal or at least immoral means. On another note: Strange that it's illegal to double park but it's not illegal to lie.
It's disgusting, but I heard a radio ad for a service which allows individuals to incorporate for no reason other than to gain the legal benefits of being a corporation. That's right, you pay fewer taxes if you're legally a one-man corporation than if you're legally an individual.
Slashdotters, join me in spamming thousands of one-man corporations!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The legal argument is that the user agreement implicitly denies authorization and they gained access through fraud.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Could he have gotten around all of this by making his signup and "application" to join a private community? Seems like an easy way to avoid all this mess and it also seems more solid from a legal defense standpoint.
An application does not imply acceptance. Just that you WANT to join. It does not mean the site has to accept you.
Actually, in several countries you couldn't even do that. In Finland, wherever you erect a house is considered completely private property, but if you own forest beyond your back yard, you can't prevent people from using it.
"
That concept does exist in the United States (there's a Roman law concept called the public trust doctrine that carried to common law.) In basically all states (particularly California) the beach beyond the high tide line is public property and freely accessible, regardless as to who owns in it. (Essentially, that's the part of the beach with wet sand.)
That's not to say that this issue is clearly settled (even in California where there's a lot of litigation) or universal (my Ohio, for instance, seems to push the public area of the beach beyond the high tide line to the water...so you can walk along the 312 miles of Ohio coastline without issue...as long as you are always standing in water, which is a tougher standard than always being on the wet sand.)
If you think about how Californians prize the beach and their cultural attitudes to it, simply transfer that passion to Finland and their forests.
We have the Bush administration being as clear as cars' windows parked on lover's lane and now the courts are being more shifty than JFK's magic bullet?
What for?
A goodnight kiss takes the queen but protects the king's life.
It has nothing to do with being a corporation. It has everything to do with having money. Corporations simply tend to have more of it.
The law is extremely complicated. If you can afford good lawyers, you can raise enough doubt to defend yourself against most anything. If you don't, you and your public defender will probably just plead to a reduced charge to save everyone time and money.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best way for us to live, but if you're gonna be a cynical coward, you should atleast define the situation properly.
EFF actually stepped into this case to help DirecTV with this suit.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Snow_v_DirecTV/
IANAL - But the issue appears to me that Snow didn't adequatley make his website private because he allowed the public to gain access in a self-registering manner. The question becomes how would you then make it private - is that simply a screening process so after a user registers there is then an approval?
From EFF:
"The lower court had rightly dismissed the case, but for the wrong reasons. It held that the "Stored Communications Act" portion of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 did not protect websites at all, even if they were configured to be private. It reached this privacy-destroying decision because DirecTV's lawyers had failed to make the better argument: that web sites are protected by the Stored Communications Act (or "SCA"), except when they are configured to be readily accessible to the general public."
So...If I read this right, this should nicely apply to the "click here to access our free wireless" pages, right?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Seems to me that the authors of the various comments and such still hold copyright claims on thier "work". In the same way that people get sued for using limewire to suck down movies that they have no rights to couldn't somone of these people sure DirectTV for copyright infringement via browser?
In most legal jurisdictions you are required to have license to engage in sexual intercourse, but are forbidden to contract it.
KFG
Temperature of 180 degrees F isn't unusual for coffee. The recommended brewing temperature is 199 degrees. After brewing, you don't typically wait for the coffee to cool, you serve immediatelly after. It is up to the coffee drinker to determine when it has cooled down sufficiently to drink by sipping, and sipping the 199 degree coffee will not cause you to burn yourself, because you'll realize it's too hot way before you actually take it in.
I've burned myself before by spilling extremely hot coffee on me (yes, of the temperatures described above). There's no way it'd cost $47k for medical expenses. There's no way that you'd even require a doctor's care unless we're talking about continuously pouring the coffee on the same location. You'd expect her reflexes to take over, and she'd jump out of the way as soon as she starts to get burned.
Now, I think a lot of these new tort reforms are really ill conceived and end up stopping people who have legitimate cases from suing. However, you don't need to defend that crappy lawsuit in order to hold that belief.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
... Put up a "If you are a cop, government official, company official, etc... You can't not be here, must leave, and you can't do anything to me" disclaimer on my WARZE site and expect it to be a legally binding EULA?
Next you will be telling me my "this is totally legit, you must delete what you download within 24 hours" legal disclaimer is not real or legal as well...
'electronic bulletin boards are not "in electronic storage," and, thus, are not protected by the SCA.'
... Oh, but I guess databases somehow don't count as "electronic storage", either..??
Uh, so, are they in some kind of as-yet-undiscovered electronic void, or something? What else would you call a bunch of PHP/ASP scripts sitting on a web server? That's pretty fucking "electronic", and I think a computer's hard drive is generally accepted to be "storage", too. Maybe even electronic storage.
Seriously, files/scripts/databases on a website are 100% in electronic storage. There is absolutely NOTHING about that description that doesn't apply.
In fact, even if they somehow arbitrarily didn't consider files on a website to be "in electronic storage", which appears to be what has happened, there's also the fact that essentially all forums store their posts in a database such as MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, etc.
IANAL, I am an MPA and know a teenie bit about the law because I'm always having to hunt down the supreme/court ruling and see if it's general or specific, etc.
This is a technicality ruling imho, because it focuses mainly on the how/what was argued and avoids the main issue. In reality, what you've pointed out is the ultimate argument -- there may be other ones that win the case, but your argument is the one that touches on a serious unavoidable challenge.
Basically, this case is about freedom of association and and freedom to speak with those you choose to associate with -- free from harassment and with complete control over who can be involved. Some here have quoted rules about private clubs, but this isn't a private club as far as I know (membership fees?). IF, this site didn't involve significant $$ AND the cost of doing extra-special-screening are a barrier to protecting freedom of association and private speech, THEN this case would probably be overturned if argued from that perspective. In this case, the lawyer could easily stab himself depending on the size of the user base and the specificity of the issue -- a justice would want to know why they couldn't do more-- could they have called and verified in this case or even required simple email approval/screening? If not, a simple ruling that the barriers of cost were too high, without declaring what those cost levels should be. If so, then they'd be screwed unless the corporation spammed them.
Take a look that this link http://attrition.org/security/advisory/AusCERT/SA- 93.03.Suggested.Login.Banner take specific notice of the advice regarding the use of the word "Welcome" near the bottom.
The DirecTV employees DID have authorization - they were given valid usernames and passwords to access the site.
DirecTV employees may have FRAUDULENTLY OBTAINED the authorization, but they were none-the-less authorized. Snow should be suing them, or encouraging his local DA to prosecute them, for fraud (obtaining access to his system through deception).
paintball
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
you were warned :)