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ToS Violations No Longer a Crime (On Their Own)
nonprofiteer writes "The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act previously made 'unauthorized access to a computer system' a crime — meant to apply to hackers, it also criminalized violations of a website's ToS or of a workplace's computer policies. The law is being changed to make the crime a felony rather than a misdemeanor, which led some to worry about the potential for its abuse. However, Senators Franken and Grassley added an amendment (PDF) to exempt violations of ToS and employer policies from the lists of felony activity. w00t for common sense."
Dont cheer franken, he should be against the whole damn thing. TOS violations a felony? What complete idiot can stand by any part of that bill? So now I can make a TOS for my website or my home and declare laws that are not laws of the land and they become felonies...
Oh wait, this is only for the rich and the corperations... Must be a fucking republican law.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And that's related to this bill about criminal law how?
A misdemeanor is still a crime, just a less serious crime. The amendment exempts ToS violations from being felonies, but does not stop them from being misdemeanors, then they are still crimes.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I thought the original Startrek was in the future. How do you know what will happen with the laws in the future?
Sony got to Franken. I hope the sellout enjoys his new free PS3.
Adding an amendment does not mean it's been passed and is in effect. If this were true, then we would have gotten rid of the patriot act, withdrawn from foreign deployment, made smoking illegal, beefed up the patriot act, and given every person in america free tacos and jailtime. Here is the current status: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/bills/112/s1151
....However, Senators Franken and Grassley added an amendment (PDF) to exempt violations of ToS and employer policies from the lists of felony activity. w00t for common sense.
Excellent. This really made me blink and re-read many times to ensure the post and all of the articles referenced were actually what I thought I read.
Hopefully this will prevent scare-suit tactics from large companies that aren't "making enough money this quarter". :)
I'm referencing activities from the past, not trollin'.
1. Register commonly mis-spelled domain names. 2. Make ToS "Any access to this website is prohibited." 3. Report all website accesses to the authorities. 4. Invest in new prison construction. 4. PROFIT.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I use the "Modify Headers" FF extension to add the following to all my browser requests:
X-Terms-Of-Service: By responding to this request, you agree to place no restrictions on the requesting user's use of the data you send, and that no subsequent terms of service may modify this provision.
This is only a proposed change to the law -- the law itself hasn't changed yet. So, the title is wrong.
I don't understand why they added these amendments. If we're going to maintain a proper police state, we need to make as many of our citizen's actions illegal as possible. This makes it easier for our brave and glorious men and women in uniform to keep the peace and protect our precious homeland from all those who would threaten it, or disagree with it, or who just look funny.
Proverbs 21:19
The law needs hard guidelines on what constitutes abuse. There are a slew of lawsuits (more where that came from, folks) that leverage the law as basically meaning "we didn't authorize your use of our system even if the system is publicly available."
Is breaking into someones computer really worth smacking someone with all the disenfranchisement things that permanently bar someone from voting, welfare, jury duty, owning a gun, various licenses, and international travel. At absolute worst the crime is an invasion of privacy and/or vandalism.
Oh wait, this is only for the rich and the corperations... Must be a fucking republican law.
Yes! Although, the Democrats can be just as guilty on occasion of putting corporate interests before their constituents.
Let's not let them completely off the hook ...
Gradually "upgrading" everything in the book to felony is not what I'd call thoughtfully working to improve society. The result is quite the opposite as everything that you might do wrong will eventually criminalise you for life.
Why is trespassing a felony? It isn't in real life. The actions AFTER the intrusion are what should determine the severity.
Patents, ToS, and the like, are partnered systems. Unless both parties accept it, it's lip-service and only held up by what legal mechanisms are in place, which are then backed by physical authorities. They can brandish legal documents till they're blue in the face, but if I don't want to accept it, I don't have to. There may be repurcussions to this, possibly fines and jail time depending on the scenario, but I am in no way REQUIRED BY LAW, to accept it. In the event that law is enacted that I be REQUIRED, I deem said law authoritarian, and it is within my liberty to reject and protest said authority.
Do politicians, and corporations really expect us to live under the guise that we really have anything left to lose to them? Liberty and freedom are all we have here folks.
"...to exempt violations of ToS and employer policies from the lists of felony activity."
is not?
And that's related to this bill about criminal law how?
I'm not sure.
Can you get away with putting a sign outside your store saying "no competitors allowed", and then sue for trespassing? The closest I've ever seen is places saying "no commercial customers" (usually when they're selling below cost and don't want their competitor to use them as a supplier). Never heard of anyone actually trying to enforce that rule, though.
So does this mean I can use iTunes to control a nuclear power plant now?
This submission and/or the story is a troll. The referenced act only applies to a restricted set of systems. Roughly speaking it applies to non-public government systems and financial/bank computers. It does not apply to typical websites, nor does it apply to typical workplaces. But don't take my word for it, read the law http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html
...have a lengthy discussion about the concept of unconscionability?
An unenforced law is still something to be ridiculed and laughed at.
Every day just about everyone with any sort of server experiences "intrusions" which, if successfull, would result in significant harm to the server. Every day the administrators for these servers shrug it off and say it is just part of the Internet today. What this means is that we have people trying to do harm but in one way or another being blocked from doing it.
Every once in a while some server fails to block one of these and we have a real intrusion. Everyone complains but unless there are at least $25,000 in damages (in the US) nothing is going to be done. Oh, but should the damages reach $25,000 the FBI will get involved and bring everything to bear on the misguided child that did this. They and their parents are likely to spend thousands of dollars and a few years of their lives defending against this, probably unsuccessfully.
What this leads to is an entire culture of getting away with stuff and the feeling that anything that can be reached on the Internet is the personal playground for such folks. These aren't mighty hackers, these are misguided children being led down a path by laws that are not being enforced.
Right now, nobody is going to do anything until something major happens. This is like ignoring your child committing minor acts of vandalism and then, when they break more than a couple of windows sending them to jail for life. This is the wrong way to deal with this and will lead to nothing but bigger and bigger problems later on.
It lists 3-4 specific examples where the law should not apply. It's basically an exclusionary amendment. Since we cannot foresee how the internet will evolve, this law could implicitly apply to many new forms of Tos in the future. Who is writing these laws? 5 year olds?
(usually when they're selling below cost and don't want their competitor to use them as a supplier)
Why would they care if their customers are doing that? There's no fiscal reason for do that. You're going to keep the same sales since the competitor still can't sell what they buy from you at your price (figure they'll markup at least 10% to make it worthwhile). You'll still be the cheaper option and you get even more business since they're buying from you.
Any concerns about such behavior should stem from other reasons, like they're not allowed to sell to commercial customers due to the agreement they reached with their supplier.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Do you know what a loss leader is? Stores will sell a popular item slightly below cost so that customers will come to the store for the discount, and while they're there they buy other stuff which the store profits from. The item won't stay on sale below cost for very long. So the competitor can come in, buy your entire supply of them (which will cause your customers to be angry that they came for the discount and it's sold out), then as soon as your sale is over, sell them for the normal retail price.
The average user never sees the ToS for a site.
(usually when they're selling below cost and don't want their competitor to use them as a supplier)
Why would they care if their customers are doing that? There's no fiscal reason for do that.
For a storable good, if I can buy all your stock at below cost, then I can sell it (either immediately while you're out of stock or later when the price rises) at a higher price.
For a storable good, if I can buy all your stock at below cost, then I can sell it (either immediately while you're out of stock or later when the price rises) at a higher price.
Okay. So now you're sitting on all this inventory you're not selling. You now have a reduced cash flow because your money is tied up in these parts that aren't moving. In the mean time the lower priced stores reaps a short term cash flow increase, with no impact on the long term cash flow, while continuing to sell at their current pricing.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I have noticed so many dubious headlines/titles just to rope in more viewers.
look. the CFAA is not 'meant to target hackers'. it is meant to target dissent. the last high profile CFAA case was Thomas Drake, a --whistleblower--.
then there is Bradley Manning, a dozen or so counts under CFAA... for stuff like the collateral murder video and the Reyjkavic 13 email. innocuous information about government abuse,,,, now a felony to even tell a reporter about.
congrats sheep. you get the dictatorship you so richly deserve.
no go back to reading news about the new iPad
CFAA has been used to go after everyone from whistleblowers to people sending hateful messages over facebook.
take 5 minutes and read the wikipedia article
Boy people here have short memories. The most highly-publicized recent prosecution under this law was that of Lori Drew, the woman who impersonated a boy on MySpace to harass an acquaintance of her daughter. After the target committed suicide, Drew was indicated in 2008 by a Federal grand jury in California (where MySpace is located) and charged under the CFAA with one count of criminal conspiracy and three counts of violating the MySpace TOS.
Whatever legal standing terms-of-service might have, they should not have the force of law. Otherwise we're letting private entities determine what acts should be criminalized.
These arguments are great, because they're very believable at first, and yet both get a little iffy (though not necessarily wrong) when you really think about them and apply some common sense.
The ad industry, including big names such as Google and Facebook, disagrees with you. If the site doesn't use ads for its revenue, then you may be right. But if it does use ads, you are in fact providing a service, which the site sells to its customers (the advertisers).
You're right that a human probably isn't reading it. Probably. But then, a human didn't read anything. There probably isn't even a record that I agreed to the terms at all, or if they store that, then there probably isn't there a record of who agreed to the terms.
It gets weirder: there probably isn't a record of what terms were agreed to. My site doesn't have lawyers working with us, so we're a bit sloppy. Sometimes we alter the terms, but we don't keep a record of what terms we offered by datetime. I could construct that from backups, but... Anyway, if you're analogize with a signer whispering, then the analogy also includes the other party wadding up whatever got signed and throwing it away.
(Tangent: I haven't actually seen this in a while, but I remember about a decade or so ago, there was some kind of "Agree" button for downloading something from IBM (might have been an OS/2 update, or something like that, I don't remember). The button was on a form, and the terms were in a textarea on that form, so whatever the user agreed to was explicitly transmitted in the POST request. Whether IBM stored it, I don't know, but I do know that it didn't compare what I agreed to with what they initially offered, before it sent me the file I wanted to download. :-) Maybe that's why I don't ever see terms offered that way, anymore. (*shudder* I just realized... I taunted the Nazgul. And I won.))
Another way to look at it: You don't have to whisper when you're signing a paper contract with a pen, because you have the ability to amend the contract with your pen, and the final contract does get recorded (it's that piece of paper). If these web "contracts" don't have a mechanism to store on the server, whatever the user agreed to, that's hardly the user's problem; it sounds like a super-informal contract mechanism, like oral agreement and handshakes. (That's assuming the user doesn't store what the agreed to.) And while unwritten agreements sealed by handshakes do have some power in court, it's he-said-she-said. If one of the parties (the user) insists they agreed to an amended version of what was initially offered, and the other party admits they don't remember because their computer stupidly fails to keep records of what the final contract was, I think a judge might side with the party who says they remember or has records.
Does that mean that I can file a class action law suit against Sony after agreeing to the PSN terms of service and just be faced with a misdemeanor? (no, I'm not a troll.... this is a serious question)
Okay. So now you're sitting on all this inventory you're not selling. You now have a reduced cash flow because your money is tied up in these parts that aren't moving. In the mean time the lower priced stores reaps a short term cash flow increase, with no impact on the long term cash flow, while continuing to sell at their current pricing.
Really?
Supplier S has a large stock of widgets. It sells them, wholesale, for $1 each (in large lots but who cares).
Retailer A buys some from S at $1/each and advertises them for sale at $.9 each in order to drive traffic to their store.
Now let's say that Retailer B wants to sell some widgets themselves at the normal price of $2. They have a choice to make:
- Option 1 : buy them from S at $1 each. No impact on Retailer A
- Option 2 : buy them from A at $.9 each. This is cheaper for Retailer B and a guaranteed loss for Retailer A, also wasting an expensive ad buy and annoying their customers
Either way, they own the same number and plan to sell them for $2, so we can ignore that as a comparison point.
Still think that selling them to B is a Good Deal for A?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
You have NO CLUE how business works, do you? Its called loss leaders and it REALLY pisses off your potential customers when they get there and find you don't have squat. I will often get older laptops in bulk and sell them for VERY slight profit, now why would I do that? Because the thought of cheap laptops, even older laptops, gets folks through the door where I then get a chance to upsell them and hopefully build a long term business relationship with.
Many of my best long term customers, folks that have spent thousands in my shop buying everything from fixes to upgrades to new boxes, all started out as customers that showed up because they heard I had cheap laptops and they decided they needed a laptop NOW for some reason or another.Take the graphics designer that has probably spent a good $3000 at my shop for example. He was pitching a bid for a VERY lucrative job at the local college and his laptop had bought the farm so he needed one he could hook to a projector and show his works. I sold him an older P4 mobile with RCA and S-Video and he landed the job and has bought all his gear from me ever since. As soon as the bad weather passes I'll be giving his desktop a Win 7 upgrade and doing some software tweaks, another $150 profit for me.
So it all comes down to getting their butts through the door and that is what loss leaders do. most here would laugh at older laptops for $80-$100 but when someone is in a bind or needs a machine NOW and doesn't want to be assraped on price? That is a VERY attractive offer, and helps me to get their butts through the door where I can then sell them everything from upgrades to their existing desktops to new builds. But if someone was to come along and try to buy out my stock constantly that would kill the best way I've found to get butts through the door and while I personally would tell them to fuck right off I can see other businesses limiting customers or saying no commercial sales.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
ToSSing is such a serious issue among the young that it must be made a capital offense!
Good luck getting a jury to under stand a TOS in a fed case much less the courts, jails , and prosecutors to have the time or room to fit all the cases in.
The rest of you, continue with your humdrum ranting.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
how the hell does THAT work?
system admins are legislators, now? gtfo!!!
American politicians are so god-damned stupid and willfully ignorant of even the least technical of computer-related matters.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
hay bob why is the core playing music?