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Amendment: Violation of ToS Should Not Be a Crime
Khyber writes "Three data and security breach notification bills have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, one of which includes an amendment that adds clarity with regards to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. These three bills would require businesses to develop data privacy and security plans, and it would set a federal standard for notifying individuals of breaches of very sensitive personally identifiable information, such as credit card information or medical records. This clarification is welcomed, making the statute more focused towards hackers and identity thieves, instead of consumers that run afoul of ToS or AUPs of websites and service providers."
Kind of obvious, isn't it? Is any other breach of contract a crime?
Considering we're now seeing companies turn around and simply trying to remove your rights by ToS and EULA I'm sure this will work well. See EA, AT&T and Sony.
Om, nomnomnom...
As occurred in TNG, DS9 and especially Enterprise
Not illegal, but they will be haunted by the ghost of Gene Roddenbury
While violations of TOS have ended up in court a bit too much lately, that is the result of overzealous corporations and prosecutors who are kissing their asses.
In general, courts have consistently found that violations of TOS are not criminal... if for no other reason than that would allow corporations (or anybody else for that matter) to write their own law... which is completely ridiculous.
What this bill, with the amendment, does is keep these cases out of court in the first place. Which is A Good Thing.
jury's will have a hard time dealing with ToS or AUPs any ways.
Nice to know that de facto laws will hopefully no longer be written by the unelected lawyers writing TOS.
It's good if they're requiring data privacy plans, but they should also develop some minimal requirements for what those plans say. How many stories to we get every week about someone's EULA claiming they have the right to sell your GPS data, or a corporation taking over another's assets and claiming that it is not held to the privacy agreements that data was collected under?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have a large garden on my property. In order to benefit the community, I have an agreement with a local school where the students can come and pick vegetables to take home and cook for their own dinner. Each student has to agree to language stipulating that the vegetables are for their own use and violating that term will revoke permission to enter the garden and take vegetables. I catch some students taking baskets full of vegetables and giving them to homeless people at the bus depot so I give them a lecture and tell them they are no longer welcome to enter my garden and take vegetables. The next day I catch the same students in my garden filling up baskets of vegetables so I call the cops.
Q: should the students be liable for the crime of trespassing?
FWIW, in the earlier days legislative/regulatory efforts referred to PII (Personally Identifiable Information), with industry generally attempting to limit what would be considered PII. For example, some argued that member IDs and other software GUIDs shouldn't be considered PII *even in cases where the general public could easily perform a simple Internet search on those and actually identify the name, etc of the specific individual to which they were assigned*. Here I see references to SPII (Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information). I believe this is a further attempt to limit what information is sensitive enough to require special handling and reporting. I have seen people argue that a name & email address leaked from an HIV database should be considered SPII but a name & email address leaked from a marketing firm's database shouldn't be considered SPII *even in the case where what was leaked from the marketing firm is a list of names & email addresses for account holders at bank XYZ*.
is it just me or does the summary have nothing to do with the title?
Churchill _was_ staunchly anti-communist (but was still willing to work with the USSR to deal with the Nazis), but here's another famous Churchill-ism:
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Who or what is this "will" that belongs to a jury?
Oh, you meant "juries will...."? Well why didn't you write that?
oops i'm guilty of getting that wrong but by reading this you give up the right to point it out or drop my score.
any chance we could also amend the law so that ToS can be no more than 500 words?
The corporations made it part of doing business the Washington way for their own people to be put in charge of oversight of these laws -- and people in those positions are given 'cushy' permanent 'retire' positions based on their performance in office after they leave office.
Washington has been bought and sold by the corps and most people don't care. It seems like a majority of those who care are also a bit on the loony side or have no power (or both). Anyone who gets power seems to be corrupted by it -- haven't found any good contrary examples yet.
America's political system is corrupt, and growing more so every day. It is hard to see that reversing, though all things must end, though I think the reversal of this will not be pleasant.
my hosting took away software hosting and disallowed "large file hosting". my software got called large file hosting and was flagged after the new ToS, which I wasn't notified about. hosting companies are applying the thumbscrews and shouldn't be allowed to do what they are doing. now my files must reside on $16/mo file hosting amazon s3, which costs more than my $11 regular hosting. I can't afford this. and now I need e-commerce hosting on top of that which costs $25/mo or more.
Democracies have always failed, and always quickly. We do not have a democracy. And I don't mean that in a snide way... it simply isn't. It's a representative Republic.
This commonly held phallacy is rather perplexing to non americans. In fact, the US is a democracy. It is not a direct democracy (where citizens vote on each individual issue) but a representative democracy. Let's try to look it up in a dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy):
a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
(emphasis mine). Of course, if you come up with your own definition of words you can argue just about anything, but making up the language as you go does not help communication.
yea, i also noticed that the people with mad skillz are usually not interested in a position of power, must be some socio-genetic thing and yea, absolute power corrupts absolutely, that's why there is no true democracy to be found anywhere in this world, only the illusion of, overhere we have a particracy , people don't decide laws, they don't even elect people, they vote on parties, and the parties decide who gets the positions. Maybe it's just safer in the shadows and a matter of survival, after all, if you were to be perceived as a threat by those in power, they would feel the need to save themselves ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
This is not a specifically american problem. Crap will always swim on top of the stream, no matter where on earth you are. (It meight rotate clockwise or anticlockwise, though.) In a highly competetive world you need to be greedy for power to accumulate enough of it to make a difference. In other words: you really have to be a bastard.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Now assume that you have a sign that says trespassers will be shot. So you blow one of their heads with a double barrel shotgun, for a few vegetables.
But everything is fine because you had a sign/TOS right?
Maybe it would have been better to let the courts decide what is FAIR if someone stole a lot of your vegetables. As far as I know stealing is still a crime. Enforce the current rules, rather than making new stupid laws. Paying you back and community service maybe...
This way you don't have to clean the blood spatter off your vegies.
Hackers are legitimate users too, and identity theft is already covered by other laws. ToS should be considered moot, superfluous, and inconsequential. And anyway, I do like ham sandwiches.