21 May 2008

Violate Terms of Service? Go to Prison

The Feds are pursuing a case with an interesting theory: violating the terms of service on a website is fraud. It's an interesting, if troubling, theory. I wonder if anyone who is using the internet as a socializing/information gathering isn't violating the terms of use for some website. I mean, how many of you are following my terms of use as spelled out at the very bottom of this blog page? Some of you people owe me a lot of money.

Anyway, the reaction in both the Tech and Legal communities has not been favorable:

WIRED

Orin Kerr

Concurring Opinions

Geeks are Sexy

Andrew R H Girdwood

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gosh Ken, this ain't nothing.
You probably have seen the wonderfully restrained and well thought-out response to this emergency by the MO legislature:

More here.

After all, the alleged serious criminal act puts many citizens in such clear and immediate danger that decisive action by alert elected officials is called for.

The more general question: How in the world can this accelerating trend of legislative response to anecdotes be reversed? It has done way more harm than good.

Ed Veronda said...

Yes, I did read your terms of use, I think I owe Ken Jr. $40,000. This should be enough to pay for one semester at Harvard law school