Violating a Website's Terms of Service Is Not a Crime, Federal Court Rules (eff.org)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @03:30PM from the better-luck-next-time dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Good news out of the Ninth Circuit: the federal court of appeals heeded EFF's advice and rejected an attempt by Oracle to hold a company criminally liable for accessing Oracle's website in a manner it didn't like. The court ruled back in 2012 that merely violating a website's terms of use is not a crime under the federal computer crime statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But some companies, like Oracle, turned to state computer crime statutes -- in this case, California and Nevada -- to enforce their computer use preferences. This decision shores up the good precedent from 2012 and makes clear -- if it wasn't clear already -- that violating a corporate computer use policy is not a crime.

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Re: UA by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 18:46 · Score: 3, Funny

"By having your web server serve me the contents of your website, you are agreeing to my terms of service:
1. You agree to consider your terms of service null and void
2.-... (be creative)
If you do not agree to my terms, then end the connection immediately and do not continue serving any content.
For the avoidance of doubt: you are indicating agreement by maintaining the connection and continuing to serve content"