Wouldn’t the nature of a vpn make this kind of difficult to enforce?
I'd think they'd block certain well known VPN services IPs, no?
Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But trying to make illegal a way to bypass their security is a really dangerous way and if they win, then many, many, privacy tech would have a problem. IIUC, there was no attempt to "bypass security." Rather, HiQ Labs was scraping unrestricted (i.e., not restricted by user ACLs) portions of Linkedin's web platform. If any random user can access a particular web page, it's (IMHO) publicly available and using automat…
> IP blocks (I'm thinking geo-blocks[0] for sites like Netflix) are sometimes necessary for the site to at least attempt to stay in contractual compliance with the content owners. The entire thing is a farce. There has never been any way to know where an endpoint device is And VPNs are often necessary to prevent the service from detecting it wrong . Suppose I'm currently near an international border and my phone pick…
>The entire thing is a farce. There has never been any way to know where an endpoint device is
A good point. Note that I said:
IP blocks...are sometimes necessary for the site
to at least *attempt to stay in contractual
compliance* with the content owners.
I merely suggested that such geo-blocks could be a result of contractual requirements between the distributors and the content owners.
Personally, I think it's dumb too.
But I'm not a content distributor or content owner. As such, my opinion has no impact on the legal contracts between such entities.
>The obvious solution to all of this is to forget about trying to tie locations to IP addresses, since that has never worked, and just ask the user's device what country it's in. The user can set it to a different one but that's no different than the status quo.
You won't get any argument about that from me.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#63This is a good sensationalist title that could easily be changed to "Will using a VPN become illegal under the CFAA?" and like any such headlines, the answer is "no". Just because one side is making an argument for that interpretation in a civil case means pretty much exactly nothing. What's more, the Supreme Court in recent rulings has started to slap down overly broad interpretations of "hacking" under the CFAA. No…
> Notably, the court recently curtailed the definition of "unauthorized" use in van Buren [1], which to me was a completely and somewhat unexpected ruling. A pedantic point: van Buren decided the interpretation of "exceeds authorized access", not "without authorization". (There is no "unauthorized" in the statute--it says "accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access" as the operative part.)
>A pedantic point: van Buren decided the interpretation of "exceeds authorized access", not "without authorization". (There is no "unauthorized" in the statute--it says "accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access" as the operative part.)
That's an excellent point. And something folks should keep in mind.
That said, I'm not sure how the restrictions in CFAA could apply here, as LinkedIn explicitly grants authorization to everyone by making the web content in question publicly accessible.
What's more, other content on LinkedIn's web platform is not publicly accessible. If LinkedIn wants to make a claim that someone can exceed authorized access, then the content shouldn't be publicly available, as that explicitly allows access by anyone.
I suppose they could make the argument that such automated scraping is some sort of DOS attack based on increased usage of their bandwidth/CPU from such activity, but that's a very different argument, IMHO.
N.B.: IANAL
Edit: Fixed typo
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the point you're trying to make (e.g. making a hyperbolic claim and leaving the onus on the accused to disprove it), but I think if you wanted to avoid downvotes while making the same point, you might have better luck saying something like: > How would you feel if I said " is a pedophile! What are you going to do to fight this? Maybe it's just not something worth pursuing?" And then spend a bit of time e…
Honestly, I really hope that I don't need to explain the logic behind my comment. It should be obvious to anyone willing to spend more than a couple of seconds thinking about it. I would hope that on HN we'd actually try to read and understand the comment we're voting on. Of course I'm being overly optimistic, but I'd prefer to be naive and wrong than cynical and right.
Sure, and as someone who grew up on Something Awful and 4chan I'm not familiar with the concept of hyperbole and sarcasm, but keep in mind that a lot of people on HN speak English as a second language, or just have more trouble picking up on sarcasm in general, and as such it might come off as a legitimate accusation.
I'm not trying to be the tone police, I don't really care, I was just explaining why you might have been downvoted. Take my statements with as large of a grain of salt as you would like.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I really hope that I don't need to explain the logic behind my comment. It should be obvious to anyone willing to spend more than a couple of seconds thinking about it. I would hope that on HN we'd actually try to read and understand the comment we're voting on. Of course I'm being overly optimistic, but I'd prefer to be naive and wrong than cynical and right.
Sure, and as someone who grew up on Something Awful and 4chan I'm not familiar with the concept of hyperbole and sarcasm, but keep in mind that a lot of people on HN speak English as a second language, or just have more trouble picking up on sarcasm in general, and as such it might come off as a legitimate accusation. I'm not trying to be the tone police, I don't really care, I was just explaining why you might have…
English is a third language for me, I would expect that regardless of language everyone can understand the concepts of sarcasm and irony if they're willing to spend any time thinking about what they are reading.
There's literally zero context to suggest that I might be serious in accusing another poster of being a pedophile, even if they were it wouldn't make sense for me to randomly drop that.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#66Good luck with that.
You’d have the largest tech companies in the world fighting it.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#67It's not being talked about because there's no evidence of "new CFAA interpretation" until the court says something like that. It's very common for parties to try and argue all kinds of extreme interpretations of law that might favor their case, with the expectation that it most likely will be refused but hey, it's worth to try; but they are not newsworthy until/unless the court actually considers the argument as val…
This is like when Oracle argued that APIs can be copyrighted. Nobody was scared until the CAFC agreed.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#68Well, in the video of the hearing you posted earlier hiQ's counsel said an IP block is not akin to a password. The court added that IP addresses do not identify people. As such IP blocks ban computers not people. There was also suggestion that the "access control" only relates to the manner of access; people can easily change IP addresses. The court seemed to agree with that argument. hiQ's counsel argued that a "gat…
I think a nice metaphor would be that linkedin banned my car from their property, then I keep coming back in by taxi.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#69Really, this is a post of the video of the hearing (Youtube links are just fine on Hacker News) that is somewhat abusing the "no URL" feature of submissions to dramatically editorialize. That's the reason links in no-URL posts aren't clickable!
The better way to do this would be to write a blog post about your concerns surrounding this hearing, and take your chances submitting that.
What we should do here is make this post the Youtube link itself, and title it "hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation hearing on IP blocks", or something similar, and demote the text of this submission to a comment. Hacker News submissions are community property; the submitter isn't entitled to provide a short editorial for the link to direct the discussion. That's what comments are for.
Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation
#70Well, in the video of the hearing you posted earlier hiQ's counsel said an IP block is not akin to a password. The court added that IP addresses do not identify people. As such IP blocks ban computers not people. There was also suggestion that the "access control" only relates to the manner of access; people can easily change IP addresses. The court seemed to agree with that argument. hiQ's counsel argued that a "gat…
I think a nice metaphor would be that linkedin banned my car from their property, then I keep coming back in by taxi.
I think that's a good metaphor. And that case the taxi or rental car would be the VPN.