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That's also fortunate, because if some country has odd laws (and many do), at least their effects don't spread too much. Politicians and lawyers try their best

That's also fortunate, because if some country has odd laws (and many do), at least their effects don't spread too much. Politicians and lawyers try their best to combat this (with laws as their weapon) through treaties. It's really two-sided coin. On the other hand, average person don't have to to learn about technical stuff. On the other, there is also weird stuff like illegal numbers, battles on encryption, censorship, restrictions on reverse engineering and learning, all the copyright/DRM weirdness, and, on more common level, also a lot of uncertainity about if something's legal or not[1] (because, duh, engineering and lawmaking are completely different worlds and they mismatch heavily). ____ [1] You encounter a computer system. You just can't tell if it's legal to access it or not. And a smart lawyers can make it look both ways - it's not tech (where things are straightforward but harsh), just humans persuading other humans.

rayiner 11y ago
> You encounter a computer system. You just can't tell if it's legal to access it or not. I find this point of view fascinating. Walking down the street, do you have any trouble telling which buildings are legal to access and which are not? I would posit that there is nothing unclear about the law here. In meat-space, the social norm is clear: you go into other peoples' property only if you have business there, you go in through the front door, and once there, you do only what the owner would want you to do. Otherwise, your entry is illegal. Nobody complains that you can't tell just by looking at a building whether going inside is legal or not. Some people resist this clear social norm in cyber-space. They want to posit a "right to tinker" or a "right to explore." It is that resistance that creates uncertainty, not the law.
- sqeaky 11y ago
  > In meat-space, the social norm is clear I think it is only clear most of the time. There are plenty of odd situations. I might ask where the restroom is in a retail store and learn I need to walk through a back storage room to get there. What if I walk into a business an it appears empty, as if the sole proprietor just walked out and forgot to lock it. Where exactly is the dividing line between the park or field and the similar looking lawn. If I am hiking in the woods and I come upon the back of a sign I will walk around to the front. If it says "Tresspassers will be shot" I really start to worry what I just walked through. Cyberspace hasn't had time to work out good samaritan laws or castle doctrine and the only property are purely technical in nature. I mean, do I own the VM on a VPS host or does the VPS host, certainly I own the software on it I wrote and they own the host OS but where is that line? Then IP laws come into play...
  - pw 11y ago
    While the situations you cite are relatively less common, I don't think the social norm in those situations is at all unclear. Walking through the back storage room to find the restroom after asking is fine, but doing so without asking isn't nor using is your bathroom trip to rifle through merchandise. I think it's only us nerds with our low social sensitivity and literal minded-ness would think otherwise.
  - leohutson 11y ago
    Absolutely, "paper" trails through and walking along rivers and beaches bordered by private property are other interesting examples of where the law and "norms" of the situation are often pretty blurry. That's just land, computers are a whole other level of complexity, plus the "norms" are not yet decided.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > Walking down the street, do you have any trouble telling which buildings are legal to access and which are not? Do you expect the same response to hacking your local computer club as hacking the IRS? There are more than one set of social norms on the internet. The "I know it when I see it" test is useless because it does nothing in the cases where you actually need the test to decide anything. There was never any question what happens to someone who hacks the DoD and sells secrets to the Russians -- you don't need any kind of computer-specific laws for that because it's illegal regardless of how you do it. The problem cases are the ones where the argument is over whether permission was implicit vs. absent vs. not required. For example, should it be illegal for a journalist to access internal documents a company published on their website but probably didn't intend to? What if the journalist has to guess the URL? And those seem to be exactly the sort of cases that can be charged only under the CFAA and not any other law. > Some people resist this clear social norm in cyber-space. They want to posit a "right to tinker" or a "right to explore." It is that resistance that creates uncertainty, not the law. A law the relies on social norms adopts the uncertainty inherent in the social norms. In the context of the internet where all cultures are together in the same "space" this gives the law more than the usual amount of uncertainty. Which makes the problem one that is much easier to solve technically than legally. If you in fact prevent unauthorized access using technical means then there is no occasion to resort to legal process or contend with the uncertainty of differing social norms, which is already inherently necessary for extrajurisdictional attackers who aren't subject to legal process regardless. And if the problem can (and for foreign attackers must) be addressed mainly through technical means then the justification for uncertain laws with harsh penalties is significantly eroded, while the cost in terms of chilling effects and potential for abuse is not reduced at all.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  > In meat-space, the social norm is clear Local social norm, in your meat-space neighborhood, sure. Also, norms from the other places, if you've did the research, or if their norms are close enough to what you're used to so your behavior is compliant or at least tolerable (for a foreigner). Still, nerd social awkwardness issues aside, I tend to believe there there are quite different social norms in drastically different meatspace areas. On the Internet it's only worse. You can't even tell which country/jurisdiction the site you plan to visit belongs to (no, addresses from whois may be a continent away from the legal system site ToS mentions). I neither think there are universal laws regarding this (to best of my knowledge, there aren't), nor that you can always know whenever it's legal to click that link you saw someone had posted on IRC or not, or read that link's contents, or save it. (Ever thought that "liking" a post on a social network can be a criminal offense punishable with a few years in jail? In some countries it could be.)

rayiner 11y ago

> You encounter a computer system. You just can't tell if it's legal to access it or not. I find this point of view fascinating. Walking down the street, do you have any trouble telling which buildings are legal to access and which are not? I would posit that there is nothing unclear about the law here. In meat-space, the social norm is clear: you go into other peoples' property only if you have business there, you go in through the front door, and once there, you do only what the owner would want you to do. Otherwise, your entry is illegal. Nobody complains that you can't tell just by looking at a building whether going inside is legal or not. Some people resist this clear social norm in cyber-space. They want to posit a "right to tinker" or a "right to explore." It is that resistance that creates uncertainty, not the law.

sqeaky 11y ago
> In meat-space, the social norm is clear I think it is only clear most of the time. There are plenty of odd situations. I might ask where the restroom is in a retail store and learn I need to walk through a back storage room to get there. What if I walk into a business an it appears empty, as if the sole proprietor just walked out and forgot to lock it. Where exactly is the dividing line between the park or field and the similar looking lawn. If I am hiking in the woods and I come upon the back of a sign I will walk around to the front. If it says "Tresspassers will be shot" I really start to worry what I just walked through. Cyberspace hasn't had time to work out good samaritan laws or castle doctrine and the only property are purely technical in nature. I mean, do I own the VM on a VPS host or does the VPS host, certainly I own the software on it I wrote and they own the host OS but where is that line? Then IP laws come into play...
- pw 11y ago
  While the situations you cite are relatively less common, I don't think the social norm in those situations is at all unclear. Walking through the back storage room to find the restroom after asking is fine, but doing so without asking isn't nor using is your bathroom trip to rifle through merchandise. I think it's only us nerds with our low social sensitivity and literal minded-ness would think otherwise.
- leohutson 11y ago
  Absolutely, "paper" trails through and walking along rivers and beaches bordered by private property are other interesting examples of where the law and "norms" of the situation are often pretty blurry. That's just land, computers are a whole other level of complexity, plus the "norms" are not yet decided.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> Walking down the street, do you have any trouble telling which buildings are legal to access and which are not? Do you expect the same response to hacking your local computer club as hacking the IRS? There are more than one set of social norms on the internet. The "I know it when I see it" test is useless because it does nothing in the cases where you actually need the test to decide anything. There was never any question what happens to someone who hacks the DoD and sells secrets to the Russians -- you don't need any kind of computer-specific laws for that because it's illegal regardless of how you do it. The problem cases are the ones where the argument is over whether permission was implicit vs. absent vs. not required. For example, should it be illegal for a journalist to access internal documents a company published on their website but probably didn't intend to? What if the journalist has to guess the URL? And those seem to be exactly the sort of cases that can be charged only under the CFAA and not any other law. > Some people resist this clear social norm in cyber-space. They want to posit a "right to tinker" or a "right to explore." It is that resistance that creates uncertainty, not the law. A law the relies on social norms adopts the uncertainty inherent in the social norms. In the context of the internet where all cultures are together in the same "space" this gives the law more than the usual amount of uncertainty. Which makes the problem one that is much easier to solve technically than legally. If you in fact prevent unauthorized access using technical means then there is no occasion to resort to legal process or contend with the uncertainty of differing social norms, which is already inherently necessary for extrajurisdictional attackers who aren't subject to legal process regardless. And if the problem can (and for foreign attackers must) be addressed mainly through technical means then the justification for uncertain laws with harsh penalties is significantly eroded, while the cost in terms of chilling effects and potential for abuse is not reduced at all.
drdaeman 11y ago
> In meat-space, the social norm is clear Local social norm, in your meat-space neighborhood, sure. Also, norms from the other places, if you've did the research, or if their norms are close enough to what you're used to so your behavior is compliant or at least tolerable (for a foreigner). Still, nerd social awkwardness issues aside, I tend to believe there there are quite different social norms in drastically different meatspace areas. On the Internet it's only worse. You can't even tell which country/jurisdiction the site you plan to visit belongs to (no, addresses from whois may be a continent away from the legal system site ToS mentions). I neither think there are universal laws regarding this (to best of my knowledge, there aren't), nor that you can always know whenever it's legal to click that link you saw someone had posted on IRC or not, or read that link's contents, or save it. (Ever thought that "liking" a post on a social network can be a criminal offense punishable with a few years in jail? In some countries it could be.)