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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.
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Ninth Circuit Doubles Down: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime
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It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @09:50PM
The only problem is one of enforcement. As someone else noted, a restaurant that gives out free bread shouldn't surprised that some people abuse its resources.
There's nothing inherently non-binding about a Terms of Service; it's just not practical to enforce in the case that you outlined, and part of the government has now explicitly stated that you cannot use its CRIMINAL JUSTICE machinery to enforce it either.