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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."
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.
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 If this were true, then we would have gotten rid of the patriot act, withdrawn from foreign deployment, made smoking illegal, beefed up the patriot act, and given every person in america free tacos and jailtime.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
Franken worked to exempt TOS violations from being a felony...
....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.
Franken might be against the whole damned thing, but in favor of putting in the amendment because he thinks the entire bill will likely pass and he wants to make it suck less.
And the whole point of the amendment is that TOS violations won't be a felony.
I am officially gone from
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.
From the summary above:
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.
Reading is fundamental.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
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
If those politicians had their choice, everybody would be a felon, finger printed and bar coded. They fear the computer and fear makes people do stupid things. And fear they should, ignorance is not bliss on the net.
Why are there never any names associated with these kinds of things? I really want to know who not to vote for just in case they are in my state, then again I don't vote, but my internet posts have the potential to :)
No matter what, we know they will be abused. They always have been, they always will be. The only way to change that is to fundamentally change humans, and I don't see that happening for a very very long time.
The law that mad it a misdemeanor was already on the books. Did Franken vote for it? I rather doubt it, he hasn't been in office all that long, and the act is rather old. When you get elected to a senatorial post you don't get to review all the old laws on the books and call for a revote.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
No, they changed the definition of the crime itself to exclude violations of TOSes and similar. Read the amendment, it's like a whole paragraph of reading.. Or, ya know, just scream and cry that your rights are being violated reflexively.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Actually, upgrading the crime to a felony was an Obama administration directive. Guess he's a Republican, now?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Um. Depends on what computer and the consequences of tampering. That is, after all, the point of the original, existing law that may be being amended here.
Socialist or neocon, they're all the same these days. Just one has more of a "Gimme your wallet bro" kind of socialism and the other is more of a "Papers comrade" type of socialism. Both sides push the same agenda, just they push their own preferred form of socialism a little harder.
"...to exempt violations of ToS and employer policies from the lists of felony activity."
is not?
Well, to be honest it is a well-serving reflex. I'm sure it has a very high hit-rate.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Actually, upgrading the crime to a felony was an Obama administration directive. Guess he's a Republican, now?
Unfortunately, he's been a Republican since his first day in office. :(
With the first link, the chain is forged.
No, they changed the definition of the crime itself to exclude violations of TOSes and similar. Read the amendment, it's like a whole paragraph of reading.. Or, ya know, just scream and cry that your rights are being violated reflexively.
I see nothing in the amendment that completely nixes violation of ToS from any and all lists of criminal activity found in the bill, only from the list of felony activities. Nor did I scream and cry like you believe I did; I posed a question, and expected a reasoned response. There is no legal version of justfinggoogleit.
Or, ya know, just reflexively scream and cry that others just scream and cry about their rights being violated.
Yes, let's do. After all, their only claim to authority was that they were duly elected by the majority in their respective states/districts, and the Constitution.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
I can't stand Organic Laws. They always cost more and have little seeds sticking out of them.
You may want to add in the ones from the democratic corporate whores to, unless you are ignorant and think only one party does the bidding of rich corporations.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Sounds like a plan. Revoke all laws 10-20 years after they are passed, unless they can pass again.
Give the congresscritters something to do, so they can feel useful.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
That's asinine; Republicans and Democrats are both corporate whores, just for different corporations. I do think we should have more sunset provisions though. In fact, laws should default to a four or five year maximum effective time, unless voted for by a super-majority, say 70%.
It says right in the amendment that they are altering the definition of the crime. Since this law is replacing the old law, it will replace the definition in the old law with the new definition. Essentially everything that used to be a misdemeanor will now be a felony, but now with the caveat about TOS and Employment contract violations inserted. Assuming of course that the law gets passed at all; it seems that the whole thing is rather premature, because the bill hasn't even been voted on.
I apologize for the "crying and screaming" comment. For some reason I thought you were the poster from the original comment (who pretty much was crying and screaming).
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
But when making changes that involve that law surely you should introduce the changes you think should be made?
I've been in favor of this as a constitutional amendment for years. No law should stand for more than a generation without a reexamination of content, context, and applicability.
So does this mean I can use iTunes to control a nuclear power plant now?
dems have passed plenty of pro corporate crap too. both parties are pro war, pro big corporations.
He did (well, they did). This law replaces the old law, and they have changed the definition of the crime to include a caveat about TOS and employment contracts. Assuming this law passes, it will not longer be any sort of crime to violate a TOS or employment contract (at least in so far as this law is concerned, if you violate your employment contract by stealing a few hundred grand, I suspect they still arrest you)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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
I've always thought a forced sunset provision for every bill would be a good idea, perhaps with it being made permanent after being passed a number of times. Something like 5 years for the first, 10 for the second, permanent after that. Or whatever. Just the idea of revisiting laws after them being in force for some number of years would greatly improve the whole law making process IMO.
There is little difference between the far left and far right - they both want to force their dogma and agenda down your throat and don't care that 99% of the population disagrees with them. It is hard to believe extremist nutbags get into office, but when you look at their competition it usually was one nutjob at one extreme or another at the other. You'd think we'd then favor a 3rd party, but when you look at them, they are almost all variants of the Green party, which is a bunch of tree hugging hippies and pot smokers (no offense meant if I stereotyped the Greens there - all of the ones I know, and I know a lot, are both of those - pot smoking and neo-hippies, and in the past election I could not find a party that was even close to moderate - there were 2 ultra conservative parties and 5 save the trees and/or smoke something parties [one of which was tobacco - their sole platform was reversing the state ban on smoking in public]). And yes I vote in primaries for both major parties. It's too bad only extremists from both sides vote in primaries aside from me though - and yes, I talk to people in line at the polls, and they are all crazies :(
Why are there never any names associated with these kinds of things? I really want to know who not to vote for just in case they are in my state, then again I don't vote, but my internet posts have the potential to :)
Well, I know reading is hard ... but ... if you had bothered to read THE SUMMARY AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE it attached two names itself ...
Senators Franken and Grassley put their names on it.
The problem is, as you've already pointed out, you don't care enough to vote, just enough to rant on the Internet and expect a different outcome. That makes you insane, as well as stupid. But if you actually cared enough to do something about it, you might pay attention to the news and notice which laws are being passed and who's pushing them ... you see, theres this neat thing about our government, bills don't come into being in front of congress without a name attached to them, its just the way it works, but you're too ignorant/lazy/stupid to even know that apparently.
All in all, I'd wager its probably better that you don't vote. You have so little fucking clue about whats going on that you could not possibly vote in any meaningful or intelligent way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
...have a lengthy discussion about the concept of unconscionability?
Sounds like a plan. Revoke all laws 10-20 years after they are passed, unless they can pass again.
Give the congresscritters something to do, so they can feel useful.
Hasn't been working with the PATRIOT act crap.
It may even be that the sunset provisions are essentially guaranteeing renewal because all the politicians are afraid that if they do not renew the law and some terrorist somewhere pulls off an attack then anyone running for the same office will be able to say that the incumbent let the terrorist kill people by not voting to renew the law.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Unfortunately, it'd take a major overhaul of our justice system to do this in America: We use a common law system, with history back to English common law from before the revolution. This means that a case that happened before America was discovered can be cited as precedent, as long as it hasn't been overruled since.
Countries that use a civil law system would be much more able to pull it off. (But then everything has to be decided by legislature, or on a case-by-case basis. You can't say 'well, last time the court said this.')
'Sensible' is a curse word.
The point is to keep them busy, so they don't feel like they need to write new stupid laws. It's not a complete solution.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Sounds like a plan. Revoke all laws 10-20 years after they are passed, unless they can pass again.
Give the congresscritters something to do, so they can feel useful.
Maybe just something to do for ten minutes every year. That's how long it would take to vote through an omnibus bill renewing all legislation which was to expire that year. Attempts at debate would be sidestepped by invoking whatever rules are necessary (even if it involves misapplication of said rules). And the bill would likely be passed "by acclamation" or on "show of hands" or other means of avoiding documented responsibility by individual legislators.
If you want to get a sunset rule for legislation, it belongs in the constitution with explicit safeguards. For instance, it should emphatically prevent bundling of renewals, so that each and every bill to be renewed would need its own vote, and be accorded at least a token debate if a sufficient (but small) number of legislators so wish. The probable way around that, of course, is that each bill would be either trivially or toxically amended before it expires, thus resetting the clock. By toxic amendment, I mean the usual bundling of chalk and cheese that pollutes many bills in the US Congress (examples), where the debate would be clearly inadequate and concern only the current additions, rather than the stuff being renewed.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.
From across the big lake, all your parties are right wing extremists.
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?
Don't forget the Bull Moose Bull... um... uh... yeah.
I drank what? -- Socrates
There is little difference between the far left and far right...
I can think of one major difference: one of the two essentially does not exist in the United States of America.
5 years for the first pass.
10 years for the second pass.
20 years for the third pass.
50 years for each subsequent pass.
That way, even a law that seems obviously like a good idea can be reevaluated or revised if circumstances change. Suppose for example that we developed the technology to clone a deceased person and copy over the memories from their original brain. That would allow people to perhaps "recover" from being murdered. Would the punishments proscribed by law for murder need to change? Perhaps we would want to consider punishing more severely "murdering someone and destroying their brain" (irrecoverable death) than simply "murdering someone and leaving their brain intact" (recoverable death.) In my opinion that would be an obvious change to the law against murder rather than a separate law, and at the next "checkpoint" the law could be so modified..
The point is to keep them busy, so they don't feel like they need to write new stupid laws. It's not a complete solution.
They'll just cut-n-paste.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You forgot the second sentence in my reply.
Hint: The Boy Who Cried Wolf would be a very different story if there was actually a wolf 95% of the time he sounded the alarm...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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.
You are asking the wrong question. The question should be "Is breaking into someones computer really worth getting smacked...". If the answer is NO, then don't break into someones computer.
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.
It blows me away that people can make such statements. I get your point and all that, but perhaps you should live in Somalia for a while to see just how much you can lose.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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
That'd be more of a reasonable objection if laws didn't get updated and repealed occasionally. Precedent is important in the fair application of law, but it isn't required for every ruling.
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.
First good post in this thread. Yes, most of the laws on our books today should be stricken. We have outrageously stupid laws that simply don't apply anymore, we have outrageously stupid laws that never did apply, we still have racist laws, we have some less stupid laws that have simply outlived their usefulness, and we even have laws that are blatantly unconstitutional.
Yes, laws should age. Around ten years, they should be reviewed, then again at twenty years, and scheduled to be stricken unless they actually contribute to society's health and welfare.
Imagine - a printed copy of US Code or state law that can actually be carried by an individual without straining himself!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
At current number (including all the treaties and other crap within) the world's strongest man couldn't carry it.
Of course that's because our law, thanks to the Republicans, is so fucking byzantine that even the government themselves can't tell us how many federal felonies are possible - let alone state felonies and misdemeanors of all levels.
Here you go: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865
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.
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.
Thanks for the explanation and the apology. Sorry for throwing the comment back at you. :)
Of course that's because our law, thanks to the Republicans, ...
FFS, stop doing this crap! Republicans blame everything on Democrats, and Democrats blame everything on Republicans. They're both to blame! Damn, I'm sick of this rose coloured glasses political polarization you fools keep dragging out.
Here's a couple for you. Democrats got us into VietNam. Republicans got us out of VietNam! On the other side, Republicans got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other side, Obama is keeping us in Afghanistan! Mix in the fact that both Republicans and Democrats voted with the majority in each case. Who's fault is any of it now?
Lose that stupid "us vs. them" crap and start rubbing those two brain cells of yours together already!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
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?