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Genuine question: wouldn't this be considered write fraud? Last time I asked this question [0] on a different story [1], the responses I got were that it defin

Genuine question: wouldn't this be considered write fraud? Last time I asked this question [0] on a different story [1], the responses I got were that it definitely is wire fraud, but this is so mind-blowing that I would like to ask again to confirm. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22362682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22362682 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22354357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22354357

dsr_ 7y ago
It's violation of terms of service, and possibly a violation of contract, but it's clearly a civil matter, not a criminal one.
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  What contract? You don't sign a contract when you create a Google account (which is basically what you need to create an API key with access to the free tier)
  - judge2020 7y ago
    These terms[0] are, in general, legally binding (especially as you're a business signing them and not just a person), and it's obvious bad-faith to do this, making any sort of lawsuit hard to fight. While they most likely won't actually take you to court over this, you risk suspension of your main GCP account. > 3.3 Restrictions. > Customer will not, and will not allow third parties under its control to: ... (d) create multiple Applications, Accounts, or Projects to simulate or act as a single Application, Account, or Project (respectively) or otherwise access the Services in a manner intended to avoid incurring Fees or exceed usage limits or quotas; 0: https://cloud.google.com/terms https://cloud.google.com/terms
  - dmoy 7y ago
    Elaborating on above, not all contracts are signed. Not all contracts are even written - some are verbal or implied.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  hmm, not sure, some DA might want to prosecute it as theft of service.
  - graton 7y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... A snippet from the article: A federal court in Washington, DC, has ruled that violating a website's terms of service isn't a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, America's primary anti-hacking law. The lawsuit was initiated by a group of academics and journalists with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      Presumably there are other laws available, e.g. ones related to stealing cable TV service.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      Sometimes my simplest comments get misunderstood the greatest; if someone were to want to take this to a criminal court it would be idiotic to go for violating terms of service as the reason, especially for the link you provide, but as I said in my post someone might want to try this as theft of services. Did you think my use of the word services was somehow related to terms thereof, because no. So to quote wikipedia because it was the first that came up when I googled "Theft of services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services — as opposed to goods — by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider for these services", do you see how someone might argue that changing out the api key could be seen as a form of deception? I am not saying that I would think it right that someone bring this to criminal court (I figured I better put that out there as even the simplest of comments can be misunderstood, so who knows what several paragraphs together might lead to), I am not saying that they would even win, I am not saying anyone who did it would be doing so for the purest of motives. But I am saying it does seem something like theft of services by using deception. on edit: the theft and new api keys refers several ancestors back to this anecdote "Their strategy was to have a pool of API keys attached to new accounts that would take advantage of the Google Maps API free tier, and monitor its usage. As the free tier usage would run out, the system would roll over to a new API key automatically."

dsr_ 7y ago

It's violation of terms of service, and possibly a violation of contract, but it's clearly a civil matter, not a criminal one.

jsjddbbwj 7y ago
What contract? You don't sign a contract when you create a Google account (which is basically what you need to create an API key with access to the free tier)
- judge2020 7y ago
  These terms[0] are, in general, legally binding (especially as you're a business signing them and not just a person), and it's obvious bad-faith to do this, making any sort of lawsuit hard to fight. While they most likely won't actually take you to court over this, you risk suspension of your main GCP account. > 3.3 Restrictions. > Customer will not, and will not allow third parties under its control to: ... (d) create multiple Applications, Accounts, or Projects to simulate or act as a single Application, Account, or Project (respectively) or otherwise access the Services in a manner intended to avoid incurring Fees or exceed usage limits or quotas; 0: https://cloud.google.com/terms https://cloud.google.com/terms
- dmoy 7y ago
  Elaborating on above, not all contracts are signed. Not all contracts are even written - some are verbal or implied.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
hmm, not sure, some DA might want to prosecute it as theft of service.
- graton 7y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... A snippet from the article: A federal court in Washington, DC, has ruled that violating a website's terms of service isn't a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, America's primary anti-hacking law. The lawsuit was initiated by a group of academics and journalists with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Presumably there are other laws available, e.g. ones related to stealing cable TV service.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    Sometimes my simplest comments get misunderstood the greatest; if someone were to want to take this to a criminal court it would be idiotic to go for violating terms of service as the reason, especially for the link you provide, but as I said in my post someone might want to try this as theft of services. Did you think my use of the word services was somehow related to terms thereof, because no. So to quote wikipedia because it was the first that came up when I googled "Theft of services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services — as opposed to goods — by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider for these services", do you see how someone might argue that changing out the api key could be seen as a form of deception? I am not saying that I would think it right that someone bring this to criminal court (I figured I better put that out there as even the simplest of comments can be misunderstood, so who knows what several paragraphs together might lead to), I am not saying that they would even win, I am not saying anyone who did it would be doing so for the purest of motives. But I am saying it does seem something like theft of services by using deception. on edit: the theft and new api keys refers several ancestors back to this anecdote "Their strategy was to have a pool of API keys attached to new accounts that would take advantage of the Google Maps API free tier, and monitor its usage. As the free tier usage would run out, the system would roll over to a new API key automatically."