I read through the EFF brief yesterday (in connection with a related post) and summarized the key points of the legal dispute on this issue here: http://news.yc

I read through the EFF brief yesterday (in connection with a related post) and summarized the key points of the legal dispute on this issue here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320040 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320040. Essentially, the criminal statute prohibits unauthorized access to user data on a network (among other things), a precedent exists by which ConnectU was found to have violated the criminal statute for having scraped user emails (and spammed the users) without their permission and in violation of Facebook's terms of service, and Facebook is now claiming that Power Ventures is similarly violating the statute by accessing user data in violation of its TOS - EFF (filing its brief as a "friend of the court" and not as a party to the dispute) claims that this is absurd given that users own their own information and therefore it cannot be a crime for Power to access it with their permission (even if it is a done in violation of the TOS). FB's position on this does in fact appear to be absurd, and I would strongly suspect the claim will be bounced from the case.