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So... not necessarily. 1. So that case was about the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). So at most it would say that ignoring the robots.txt does not violat
by jrochkind1 5y ago
So... not necessarily.
1. So that case was about the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). So at most it would say that ignoring the robots.txt does not violate the CFAA -- a law that makes some things felonies as "hacking", basically. I agree that ignoring the robots.txt (say if you are Archive Team? [1]) should not be considered a criminal "hacking" felony.
But there can still be other reasons ignoring the robots.txt is against a law -- or cause for a civil tort action. (Most copyright violation is a civil tort action for instance, the CFAA is, again, a law that establishes some felonies with many years of jail time, intended to punish "hackers"). The decision in that case said nothing about anything except the CFAA.
For instance, taking copyrighted content from the public web and re-selling is probably still going to put you in various kinds of legal trouble -- just not a CFAA violation. It's possible ignoring a robots.txt could put you in other kinds of criminal or civil trouble, depending on the particular circumstances -- just not a CFAA violation. It would be interesting to research what other possible liability there might be. If for instance you caused harm to the site by ignoring the robots.txt (say, an accidental or intentional DOS), I bet there'd at least be cause for civil tort.
2. Even so, even under that case, if that specific case didn't involve a robots.txt (did it?), it's always possible the presence of a robots.txt would result in a differnet outcome. My sense is probably not though, that Supreme Court decision referenced by the ninth circuit on remand -- probably does mean ignoring a robots.txt is not a violation of the CFAA. (And again, I say, PHEW, that would have been terrible if it were -- if say someone trying to archive MySpace before it went away could be put in prison for a couple decades for disrespecting the robots.txt).
[1] https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ https://wiki.archiveteam.org/
- henryfjordan 5y agoThat case isn't even decided yet, the court only ruled on a preliminary injunction so there's still quite a bit of case left to go before any final decisions are made. For now it's only "likely" that HiQ will prevail (though that means it's pretty likely). In this case Linkedin sent HiQ a cease and desist letter before they sued and claimed that letter revoked access for the purpose of the CFAA, so not quite the same as a robots.txt but legally it's probably close enough. If anything it's stronger because HiQ can't claim they didn't see it.
- jrochkind1 5y agoGood point, thank you, yet another reason it may not mean that! The 2020 Supreme Court decision in Van Buren v. United States that the Ninth Circuit said they were relying on has been decided though, and does seem pretty pertinent and a (welcome, thank god) nail in the coffin of CFAA overreach. https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa-ruling/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa... (Although now that I actually look at THAT case... damn! I think that's a WAY better CFAA case than a lot of them! I guess it took a police officer being the defendent to get the currently pro-police Supreme Court to actually say CFAA prosecution was going too far, okeydoke). But yeah, nothing is for sure... almost ever with the law. But it does seem to be moving in a direction...