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They could claim copyright over the API key (unlikely) or (more likely) ask a friendly prosecutor to charge you with violating CFAA. You are accessing their sys
by dmitrygr 8y ago
They could claim copyright over the API key (unlikely) or (more likely) ask a friendly prosecutor to charge you with violating CFAA. You are accessing their systems, not in a way they authorized. Enjoy some jail time. Sadly, yes, it has come to this. Eg: https://www.newsweek.com/most-hated-law-internet-and-its-many-problems-cfaa-448567 https://www.newsweek.com/most-hated-law-internet-and-its-man...
- tptacek 8y agoThey don't need a prosecutor; CFAA includes civil causes of action.
- saurik 8y agoThe CFAA has existed since the 80s, and yet I have not heard of it being used successfully to stop all of the work we did in the 90s on third-party clients. Meanwhile, all of the recent stuff I have heard about the CFAA has been that precedent is being set that its super vague provisions can't be used to enforce a mere terms of service. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-down-violating-websites-terms-service-not-crime https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-...
- tptacek 8y agoI think you're reading something into that 9th Circuit decision that isn't there. That decision held that the federal government couldn't use a TOS violation as a predicate for a felony CFAA charge. It did not hold that TOS agreements are unenforceable. Even the EFF isn't saying that TOS contracts are unenforceable --- and here we're not talking about browse-wraps, but on Twitter informing people directly as to their terms, and then having those people deliberately circumvent controls that enforce those controls. For a straightforward counterexample to your argument about TOS enforceability, see 3taps. Or Facebook v. Power Ventures.