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Ninth Circuit Doubles Down: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the clarifying-things dept.

"MrPlow" writes:

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

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.

Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-down-violating-websites-terms-service-not-crime

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:27PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:27PM (#621102)

    If violating a website’s terms of service is not a crime according to federal court, they just legalized hacking into any Internet site?

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:47PM (#621119) Journal

    Hacking is already against the actual LAW.

    Being a jackass once you visit a website via normal means is not against any actual law.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @06:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @06:29PM (#621480)

      This site, if not this author, is certainly filled with excellent examples of the jackass variety of which we speak.

  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 12 2018, @02:30PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 12 2018, @02:30PM (#621383) Journal

    If violating a website’s terms of service is not a crime according to federal court, they just legalized hacking...?

    No, they just legalized-via-decision the actions necessary to look at a web site (have your client download the files from the open server, render them according to your preferences for viewing, etc.).

    Specifically, they made this activity (also colloquially known as "surfing the freaking web") legal even if a company that runs one of the websites has published some onerous, unenforceable "terms and conditions" somewhere.

    I don't see the relation to hacking.