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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

#31

Post by nothrabannosir »

saurik wrote: post #18
prepend wrote: post #2

This is positive news. It seems like the more liberal approach taken when protocols were written is being challenged more by young users who grew up under more stable rules that accepted terms of service as very strong. When I was growing up you went by what the protocol allowed. If an http response came back you have access, if it prompted for credentials, then you didn’t have access. The mere idea that a web server…

I continue to be shocked that Twitter convinced an entire generation of software developers that you need to obtain something called an "API key"--which can somehow be refused or even revoked once granted--in order to write a client for their protocol. "Back in my day", we just reverse engineered the official client and used whatever algorithm it used to talk to the server and called the war won :/.

It should be illegal for companies like Twitter to forbid this. Users should be free to access their data, and free to use any tool to do so. The revered network effect is anti consumer and it must be broken.

This is the one regulation that could save a nation from FB, Twitter, Instagram and their ilk. Any politician to run on this could shoot somebody in the middle of a crowded street without losing my support.

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

#32

Post by danans »

tinco wrote: post #5
DrScump wrote: post #4

Note that the decision says that violations are not criminal acts, but that doesn't mean that license violations can't result in civil lawsuits and encumbent financial damages.

If you use the website in a way that they would normally ask money for, like circumventing a paywall, is that something they could claim damages as in missed revenue for? I wonder if this ruling makes it legal to scrape for data processing.

Sure, but they are only likely to pursue civil action if competitors scraped in a manner that resulted in meaningful losses, i.e by scraping a competitor's data in violation of the TOS and then selling or representing it as your own.

A few people circumventing paywalls isn't going to register on the legal radar.

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

#33

Post by dragonwriter »

chrisshroba wrote: post #10

Does anybody know how this pertains to data scraping? Like many coders/tinkerers, I've been frustrated that TOS'es often forbid bots from scraping data from many sites. There are lots of ways data can be better visualized or synthesized than is currently done, but terms of service make this impossible (unless you're just doing a small side project you never plan to publish). Does this mean that scraping is acceptable…

> Does this mean that scraping is acceptable now, even if a site's TOS explicitly forbid it?

That...depends. It was a scraping case, but while the appeals court allowed the automated access that the lower court found violated various anti-hacking laws, it also let stand the copyright violation judgement for the actual use of the scraped content.

So, if content is protected by copyright, you don't have a license which covers your use, and no exception to copyright protection applies, that's still going to be a problem for scraping.

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

#35

Post by tzs »

> Oracle sent Rimini a cease and desist letter demanding that it stop using automated scripts, but Oracle didn’t rescind Rimini’s authorization to access the files outright. Rimini still had authorization from Oracle to access the files, but Oracle wanted them to access them manually—which would have seriously slowed down Rimini’s ability to service customers.

So if Oracle had told Rimini outright that they were not allowed to access the files at all, Oracle might have prevailed?

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

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

DrScump wrote: post #4

Note that the decision says that violations are not criminal acts, but that doesn't mean that license violations can't result in civil lawsuits and encumbent financial damages.

> Note that the decision says that violations are not criminal acts

Actually, it says that they don't violate particular California and Nevada state analogs of the federal CFAA; this was, in fact, a civil case under those laws, not a criminal case, though those laws also support criminal prosecution.

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

#37

Post by jejrjntkpou »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #31
saurik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to be shocked that Twitter convinced an entire generation of software developers that you need to obtain something called an "API key"--which can somehow be refused or even revoked once granted--in order to write a client for their protocol. "Back in my day", we just reverse engineered the official client and used whatever algorithm it used to talk to the server and called the war won :/.

It should be illegal for companies like Twitter to forbid this. Users should be free to access their data, and free to use any tool to do so. The revered network effect is anti consumer and it must be broken. This is the one regulation that could save a nation from FB, Twitter, Instagram and their ilk. Any politician to run on this could shoot somebody in the middle of a crowded street without losing my support.

Users are free to access their data so long as they don’t host it on a remote server

How can a user access data if someone else used whatever hack they wanted and brought the whole service down?

IMO you shouldn’t be in the cloud if such things are on your mind

Also IMO the clouds days are numbered for the same reasons, but at a macro view

Once things like Apples A.I. chip are available on a Raspberry Pi device, Google loses

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

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

tzs wrote: post #35

> Oracle sent Rimini a cease and desist letter demanding that it stop using automated scripts, but Oracle didn’t rescind Rimini’s authorization to access the files outright. Rimini still had authorization from Oracle to access the files, but Oracle wanted them to access them manually—which would have seriously slowed down Rimini’s ability to service customers. So if Oracle had told Rimini outright that they were not…

> So if Oracle had told Rimini outright that they were not allowed to access the files at all, Oracle might have prevailed?

Rimini was a maintenance vendor acting on behalf of paid Oracle licensees with paid-for rights to access the files (which apparently are legally exercisable through a third-party vendor), and a vendor of maintenance services that competed with Oracle's first-party maintenance services, so doing so could be legally problematic.

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

#39

Post by pwaai »

YES! This is ecstatic news for those operating under the constant threat of lawsuits from delusional folks who thinks their TOS is the fucking constitution of United States of America.

Linkedin and Craigslist will finally get the competition they've been fending off with scary lawsuits.

I can't wait to see the look on Craig Newman's face when web scrapers all around the world will do what he feared all this time, bring innovation.

This is possibly one of the best things I've read on HN. I'm more curious as who are the people at EFF pulling this off, stroking the legal justice warrior within me....I think this is the part of the law that deeply interests me but I don't know what you call EFF's area of law.

Happy Scraping everybody!

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

#40

Post by pwaai »

justinjlynn wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #2

This is positive news. It seems like the more liberal approach taken when protocols were written is being challenged more by young users who grew up under more stable rules that accepted terms of service as very strong. When I was growing up you went by what the protocol allowed. If an http response came back you have access, if it prompted for credentials, then you didn’t have access. The mere idea that a web server…

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…

> 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 play Sega Genesis).

The level of brainwashing of my generation is appalling, but I'm glad people like us realize the ridiculousness of claims like downloading an mp3 is stealing from an artist (they clearly have no idea how much the industry leeches off the artist in first place).

Also, now that I've monies I ended up buying most of the games I use to play as a kid on a mod chip, and warez sites on Steam and the dreaded Playstation Store.

2018 is off to a good start.

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