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Civil and criminal law are distinct for a reason. In criminal law the consequences for your wrongs are much more dire-- you face the power of the state against
by nullc 5y ago
Civil and criminal law are distinct for a reason. In criminal law the consequences for your wrongs are much more dire-- you face the power of the state against you and you can be denied your freedom.
Triggering the CFAA on policy violations creates a general tool to convert civil matters into not just a crime, but a relatively serious one! It essentially lets system operators write private law with criminal enforcement without the oversight of the public.
To give a silly example: Your landlord prohibits you from painting your walls. Their payments website has some terms of US that makes it a CFAA violation to use their site with painted walls. Suddenly what otherwise might be a lawsuit over the $500 cost to repaint is a state funded attack where you face ten years in prison.
It's clearly wrong to use the CFAA that way in the silly example, but it's no less wrong in less silly cases. Saying the CFAA can't be used to create private criminal law doesn't mean that policy violations can't be prosecuted-- but it means they should be prosecuted under other laws (with intentionally matched terms and penalties) or as civil matters.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoActual hacking into a network with intent should be on the order of breaking-and-entering, not robbing a bank, murder, or committing acts of terrorism. Hacking to rob a bank should be the same as robbing a bank. Hacking to intentionally poison a water supply is something like terrorism. Cracking, gnireenigne copy-protection, copying a publicly-/privately-available archive of information, etc. should be "speeding tickets" not 50 years in pound-me-in-the-ass federal pen. Hacking should be seen as an amoral means to commit another act, not a specific criminal, malicious activity in-and-of-itself.