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Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

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Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#31

Post by civiscolumbusum »

elmigranto wrote: post #15
peterclary wrote: post #3

IANAL, but surely violating Terms of Use is essentially a breach of contract? Making breach of contract a crime would be very foolish indeed.

> surely violating Terms of Use is essentially a breach of contract Is it though? Not a lawyer and my layman's intuition makes it hard to see a connection between ToS and contract. Like, if I type `something.com` in my browser by accident and their ToS is "you owe us $400 for each TCP packet, kindly do provide goverment issued ID". So I have couple of questions: - How is that different from ToS on Facebook? - How mar…

your argument is valid but your tone is missing the point PP made. To reword what he said "there is no way this is criminal law, this needs to be argued as perhaps contract law with 'breach of contract' as the upper limit if it rises to that level"

you proceeded to argue the case the way he said it should be argued, but by quoting PP and challenging, you seem to be arguing with him, when in fact you are agreeing with him.

if you edit your comment, I could even delete mine :)

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#32

Post by unsaltedmd5 »

SCHiM wrote: post #25
unsaltedmd5 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean "abusive" as in "violates the terms of service," then revoking access to the service is the appropriate response. If you mean "abusive" as in hate crime, bullying, stalking and so forth, there are already specific laws covering those things.

Exactly, that's also the most reasonable interpretation of the designation too. 'Terms of Service' literally -> the terms you need to agree with for us to provide you the service. No agreement or no adherence -> no service.

Yes, it's absurd - "terms of service" are not practically any different to the rules of any other establishment or service provider. Breaking the house rules is not breaking the law. It should get you kicked out, not arrested.

To be honest I think all of this stems largely from gross incompetence/ignorance among the people responsible for this sort of legislation.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#33

Post by tuna-piano »

wire9 wrote: post #28
josho wrote: post #27

Going forward we should all have our minor children create accounts for us and be the ones to accept the TOS. Once you realize that is a reasonable workflow you've realized how unenforceable TOS are for everything but corporate contracts where documents are being signed and witnessed.

Something like this worked out in my favor maybe 10 years ago. ChaCha (the search and get live answers site) was just started and wanting some extra pocket money I signed up to be an operator. I was probably 15 at the time, of course I just clicked 'yes I am 18' and ended up being accepted. Well I found a few flaws in their system and started racking up money way faster than should have been allowed. After a few days…

Care to elaborate on the flaw in their system that you exploited? I'm sure I'm not the only one interested.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#34

Post by holtalanm »

Just my opinion, but I think ToS were originally in place to define how a user _should_ use the site, and how the site operators could act in response to violation.

I don't think they should be held as even a contract, much less criminal law.

Truthfully, they are really only there to protect the company by outlining to the user what might get them banned from the site and so on. Oracle is overstepping its authority here imo. It is their own fault they didn't revoke access to the site from that company.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#35

Post by joatmon-snoo »

nihonde wrote: post #14
peterclary wrote: post #3

IANAL, but surely violating Terms of Use is essentially a breach of contract? Making breach of contract a crime would be very foolish indeed.

Even contract formation is dubious, especially in cases of browsewraps.

Also, consideration.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#36

Post by petee »

stubish wrote: post #4

Does anyone know the details of what was being automatically downloaded? I'm aware of several Open Source projects doing this with things like Java, but not if any of them have received cease and desist orders.

The only mentions I can find refer to "support materials" for assisting clients - That could broadly mean everything from documentation to firmware (which they hold on to tightly with cold, dead hands). Rimini's website seems to suggest they were probably accessing everything.

The fact that they were making money off it - and ignored a request to stop - is probably the main difference between this and going after open-source projects. Its essentially taking customers away from Oracle's own support services.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#37

Post by thfuran »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #26
gondo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you prove that i have a fake facebook account? obviously i would have to log-out on my mobile and laptop

If you don't have identification that matches the name of your Facebook account.

There are a whole lot of facebook accounts that I don't have ID to match.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#38

Post by vog »

Here in Germany the law states that ToS are only applicable if they contain "no surprising terms". Which is really nice! Although this doesn't give you permission for everything, it protects you from any "cleverness" of a site's operator. It ensures that indeed almost nobody needs to read ToS. Even lawyers tell you this.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#39

Post by wire9 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #33
wire9 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this worked out in my favor maybe 10 years ago. ChaCha (the search and get live answers site) was just started and wanting some extra pocket money I signed up to be an operator. I was probably 15 at the time, of course I just clicked 'yes I am 18' and ended up being accepted. Well I found a few flaws in their system and started racking up money way faster than should have been allowed. After a few days…

Care to elaborate on the flaw in their system that you exploited? I'm sure I'm not the only one interested.

Sure. This was somewhere around 10 years ago so my memory is slightly fuzzy on all the technical details but heres the gist of it:

As an operator your main interface to their system was a Java desktop application. Basically you sit there waiting for it to go 'ding!', you read the question, and accept if you think you're capable of answering. You would research (they heavily pushed their sources but Google was better about 100% of the time) and then communicate the answer back to the user using the application.

Once it was accepted the application would make an HTTP request to ChaCha's server to basically say 'A question was answered by this user'. This was easily visible using normal tools like Wireshark, etc. For your efforts you would be rewarded some very small amount of money, something like $.02.

I simply wrote a VB.NET application to hit this HTTP endpoint over and over again which would add money to my account without me doing any work. They didn't seem to be doing any verification that I had actually been given questions to answer.

The reason they noticed me was because I left ~8 instances of this program running for like 3 days straight which netted me hundreds of dollars ready to be cashed out, way more than any operator would be even remotely capable of normally given their pay scheme. So I was smart enough to figure this out but dumb enough to get caught almost immediately. And I'm not a lawyer but my guess is that this was considered fraud. Glad my morals eventually straightened out before I got myself in real trouble, honestly this was a decent lesson for 15 year old me.

Re: Violating Terms of Use Isn’t a Crime, EFF Tells Court

#40

Post by xyzzy4 »

thfuran wrote: post #37
xyzzy4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have identification that matches the name of your Facebook account.

There are a whole lot of facebook accounts that I don't have ID to match.

It violates the Facebook ToS to have an account with a name that doesn't match your ID.
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