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Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

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Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#141

Post by pjc50 »

george3383 wrote: post #139
justinjlynn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that young people grew up with stable rules. It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy (thanks to the Software Publishers Association and the friendly local Microsoft rep), this conditioning to get kids (and less…

>It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. Uuuuh that's a dangerous argument. What if we applied it to abortion or homosexuality?

Young people certainly have grown up with anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality propaganda, gradually shaking it off as it was revealed to be made of fear and nonsense.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#142

Post by WillReplyfFood »

kbos87 wrote: post #65
pwaai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy I remember having this discussion with in HS and also at work with people who were convinced pirating a PSX game is same as stealing, while not realizing there is no evidence that suggests a pirated copy means a lost sale (people can't afford it in places like Brasil where they still p…

A pirated copy doesn’t need to equate to a lost sale in order for it to be stealing. You took something of value that was created or owned by someone else. Whether it’s a physical or nonphysical good is completely beside the point.

How dare him aquiring the same opportunitys and destroying the economic protectinon ring you errected around your kids.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#143

Post by twobyfour »

bradleyjg wrote: post #52
danans wrote: post #17

IANAL, but violation of terms of service seems like a breach of contract, not a crime. For that sort of thing there is always the civil court system if the plaintiff feels like their loss due to the violation is high enough to warrant pursuing the legal case. But maybe the actual loss caused by the automated downloads in this case wasn't high enough and they pushed the criminal angle to make some kind of point.

The best analogy seems to be trespass. A store generally allows anyone to come in. Absent any kind of notice you can go into a store and take pictures. But if there is a big prominent sign on the door that says "no photos allowed" and you go in and take a picture, you aren't just subject to being thrown out. You are (depending on some nuances of state law) committing criminal trespass. Likewise, if for whatever reaso…

Of course, trespass laws don't apply directly, but I think that's an excellent analogy and could be an appropriate basis for future laws about web use.

As far as I know, the laws against trespass in the physical world derive from common law. It's a shame we don't have a similar common-sense starting point for computing law; but computing is so new (and to many people so esoteric) that few of us have had a chance to develop something like "common sense" about it.

The result is that the correct analogy for a situation isn't always obvious. For instance, we could go with the ever popular car analogy: Corporate players want their (public facing) servers to be treated under law not as stores open for business but as cars on a dealer's lot that you're welcome to test drive with permission but that it's illegal to just grab and take for a joyride.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#144

Post by HenryBemis »

I keep telling friends/colleagues that the order is:

1) Constitution - for countries that have one,

2a) Laws/Regulations,

2b) Other executive orders

3) Contracts

ToC is simply a contract. Breach of ToC/Contract is not necessarily a breach of law (unless a law is at the same time violated)

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#145

Post by asfdsfggtfd »

Mindwipe wrote: post #135
Endy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, that's still theft. No, that's merely duplication and proliferation of media and information into the public domain; information wants to be free & media calls for an audience. The sole concern at that point would be how you gained access to the media - did you…

> In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home. That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court…

> That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis...).

Yes but they would not charge you with theft. Which includes "the intention to permanently deprive"...

Copying someone's private data is not theft. That doesn't mean that it is morally or legally OK (it's not - it's another crime). It just means that theft is a specific crime based on taking fungible chattel with the intent to not give it back.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#148

Post by andrewaylett »

kbos87 wrote: post #65
pwaai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy I remember having this discussion with in HS and also at work with people who were convinced pirating a PSX game is same as stealing, while not realizing there is no evidence that suggests a pirated copy means a lost sale (people can't afford it in places like Brasil where they still p…

A pirated copy doesn’t need to equate to a lost sale in order for it to be stealing. You took something of value that was created or owned by someone else. Whether it’s a physical or nonphysical good is completely beside the point.

Theft -- in UK law -- is the intentional taking of someone's property with the intent to deprive the owner of it permanently.

That's why there's a specific offence of "Taking Without Owner's Consent" when you steal a car to joyride in (and crash and burn, rather than sell on): otherwise it's too easy to claim you only "borrowed" the car and intended to give it back, at which point it's not a crime any more.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#149

Post by taneq »

busterarm wrote: post #45
justinjlynn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that young people grew up with stable rules. It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy (thanks to the Software Publishers Association and the friendly local Microsoft rep), this conditioning to get kids (and less…

It might be that... I also like to think that young people just don't really understand the full picture of how all of this actually works...they just think they do and that google/SO/wikipedia contains the answers they they don't have to know. Our abstraction layers are that good. You can write code in a framework, ship and make millions and suddenly you're a tech genius! In fairness to them though, when I was start…

It's always been this way (at least, since the start of the 70s, according to my mother). Those who are capable of reading the user manual (or documentation, or stackoverflow, or...) will be regarded with superstitious awe by those who are not.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#150

Post by analognoise »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #145
Mindwipe wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home. That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court…

> That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis... ). Yes but they would not charge you with theft. Which includes "the intention to permanently deprive"... Copying someone's private data is not thef…

So you narrowly redefine theft to not include intellectual property or any non-physical good.

IANAL - but I don't think this would fly in any jurisdiction anywhere. Is this definition specific to a country whose laws I'm not familiar with?

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