Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
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Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#2This could be very troubling for scrapers, as they frequently breach the terms of service. If successfully prosecuted it would encourage and empower sites with content that get scraped to push for criminal charges and win given this precedence.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#3This could be very troubling for scrapers, as they frequently breach the terms of service. If successfully prosecuted it would encourage and empower sites with content that get scraped to push for criminal charges and win given this precedence.
the idea that violating terms of service constitutes "hacking" is very dangerous in general. Get your pay-pal account suspended? you could now potentially be facing federal felony charges.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#4Just FYI, this is often a prosecutorial bargaining tactic for dealing with an uncooperative defendant (based on personal experience, anyway).
That said, I wish articles like this one would quit making the rounds. It's macabre theater and isn't doing aaronsw any favors.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#5EDIT:Make my point more clear
Edited comment:
It seems to me that Federal law is able to be applied to websites created by private individuals or businesses. As long as the ToS has knowingly been broken and the person doing the breaking has benefited materially then he is at risk of federal prosecution. I don't see a lot of comment about reasonable the ToS has to be. This just strikes as being completely irrational.
Original comment:
Riiiigght, so I can put together a website with some strange terms of service and then the FBI will come arrest anyone breaking those terms of service because it is a federal crime.
Just what planet do these guys live on....
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#6Just FYI, this is often a prosecutorial bargaining tactic for dealing with an uncooperative defendant (based on personal experience, anyway). That said, I wish articles like this one would quit making the rounds. It's macabre theater and isn't doing aaronsw any favors.
Is the goal to do aaronsw favors? This is pretty clearly newsworthy.
I think you can ding the reporting for missing important subtleties and lacking context (i.e. the fact that the downloaded material wasn't covered by a JSTOR copyright somehow gets skipped!). But arguing that we should plug our ears to news about a case with clear impact to the community because it might look bad for the defendent is just ... weird.
The point about this being a bargaining tactic makes sense though. They want a plea on something to avoid embarrassment, and it wouldn't surprise me if Aaron was refusing to deal.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#7This is potentially terrible precendent essentially allowing private entities to write federal law.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#8EDIT:Make my point more clear Edited comment: It seems to me that Federal law is able to be applied to websites created by private individuals or businesses. As long as the ToS has knowingly been broken and the person doing the breaking has benefited materially then he is at risk of federal prosecution. I don't see a lot of comment about reasonable the ToS has to be. This just strikes as being completely irrational.…
No, you cannot do that. A prosecutor must demonstrate, first to a grand jury, then to a criminal jury, and simultaneously to a judge, that the accused not only violated the terms of service to a website, but in doing so caused material harm or found material gain, and that they did so knowing that they were violating the terms of the site.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#9This is potentially terrible precendent essentially allowing private entities to write federal law.
Unfortunately, that precedent has been (being) set for some time now.
Re: Aaron Swartz hit with 9 more felony charges in MIT hacking case
#10This is potentially terrible precendent essentially allowing private entities to write federal law.
What?