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Good news out of the Ninth Circuit: the federal court of appeals heeded EFF's advice and rejected an attempt by Oracle to hold a company criminally liable for accessing Oracle's website in a manner it didn't like. The court ruled back in 2012 that merely violating a website's terms of use is not a crime under the federal computer crime statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But some companies, like Oracle, turned to state computer crime statutes—in this case, California and Nevada—to enforce their computer use preferences.
This decision shores up the good precedent from 2012 and makes clear—if it wasn't clear already—that violating a corporate computer use policy is not a crime.
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Ninth Circuit Doubles Down: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime
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For recreational use only.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Justin Case on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:09PM (4 children)
Read TFA. Didn't read all the linked legalese.
But it seems to me if I put some info on my web site, and I don't want $JOE to get it, then when $JOE comes asking, my web server shouldn't give it to him. If I configure my web server to allow all requests, then I've consented to $JOE's request.
They can apparently distinguish the requests they don't like, otherwise how would they know they are occurring? So don't respond to the unwanted requests.
Is the court saying you must treat all clients equally? Or merely that you can't use the courts to do things you neglected to do in your web server config?
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:44PM
I think its the latter. The courts do not concern themselves with trivialities. De Minimis Non Curat Lex [duhaime.org] and are not about to get involved with evaluating 7 billion versions of terms of service and alleged violations there of.
Its not law, its not even contract law, its just wishful thinking of websites.
This was never an issue until ad-blockers became a thing. (Yes people got turfed for bad behavior on some sites, but nobody won that court case either. And the court now said the sites aren't going to win when going after their patrons.
But bear in mind, that this is the 9th. And the with a 79% reversal rate, there's no reason to believe this will stand. Big business depends on the ability to enforce some rules on their sites and some transgressions by users approach injury to revenue. So expect an appeal. The ruling is probably too broad and Oracle has the money and lawyers to burn.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:46PM (2 children)
After reading the legalese, the answer is bit more subtle: using a website or its contents contrary to the Terms of Use does not constitute criminal activity while it might be grounds for civil action.
The crux of the matter rests on the law being considered (expressly California and Nevada) which make it a crime to access computers (i.e. a website) without authorization, but since you agreed to the Terms of Use, you were therefore authorized and therefore committed no crime; of course the computer owner may sue you for damages, copyright infringement or take other actions against you.
In this particular case, the website was being accessed by the defendant using a valid customer ID, so clearly it was authorized to use the website.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:03PM (1 child)
Exactly.
They had valid access.
They broke house rules. So kick them off, and the matter is finished, there is no recourse to the courts for this.
Now Oracle still won a copyright terms violation portion, but the
penalties were tossed out.
So Rimini must copy software EACH time it provides an approved Oracle patch
to a licensed Oracle customer, and it can't cache the patches for use on multiple
licensed customers. (or at least pretend to do so).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stormreaver on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:17PM
That's one of many reasons my company dropped Oracle and moved to PostgreSQL, which I had been using for many year prior to that. I had actually snuck it into production when nobody was looking, and no one noticed a thing. Then, years later, Management audited our software license usage, which was when I told them about PostgreSQL. Several years after that, Oracle pulled one too many evil stunts, and we booted the whole lot of them.
It's been database nirvana ever since.