Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Thursday April 05 2018, @06:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the anonymous-hanger dept.

Submitted via IRC for fyngyrz

It's no secret that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a mess. Originally written by a confused and panicked Congress in the wake of the 1980s movie War Games, it was supposed to be an "anti-hacking" law, but was written so broadly that it has been used over and over again against any sort of "things that happen on a computer." It has been (not so jokingly) referred to as "the law that sticks," because when someone has done something "icky" using a computer, if no other law is found to be broken, someone can almost always find some weird way to interpret the CFAA to claim it's been violated. The two most problematic parts of the CFAA are the fact that it applies to "unauthorized access" or to "exceeding authorized access" on any "computer... which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communications." In 1986 that may have seemed limited. But, today, that means any computer on the internet. Which means basically any computer.

[...] There is a case happening now, brought by some researchers and journalists, trying to get the CFAA declared unconstitutional for making scraping of the open internet a crime. On Friday, in a little-noticed, but highly-entertaining ruling [pdf], the district court let the case proceed, but also made some important points about the CFAA, making it clear that the law should be narrowly applied (which actually harms the "is this unconstitutional" question, since the more limited the law is, the less likely it's unconstitutional).

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180401/22565539541/court-says-scraping-websites-creating-fake-profiles-can-be-protected-first-amendment.shtml


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:44PM (#662939)

    How stupid are you really? It's OK, you can trust us, we won't put you in a cattle car I swear!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @04:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @04:11PM (#663467)

    He's a paid shill who is struggling to understand the article enough to make his post quota.