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That's just because google is a corporate person who is more equal than a human person. Human persons, at least in the USA, get charged under the CFAA 1030 law
by superkuh 3y ago
That's just because google is a corporate person who is more equal than a human person. Human persons, at least in the USA, get charged under the CFAA 1030 law if they're using non-browser tools to access the public website of someone with power and/if they happen to rock the boat (like weev w/wget).
That's not to say that I disagree. In most cases robots.txt is not legally binding. It only becomes a legal danger to not follow it when the person running the site has power and can buy a DA to indict you.
- rafark 3y agoIf a tool can access a url, does that not make it a browser?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoNot under any but most narrow of meanings, i.e. "can follow URLs / can talk HTTP". By itself, it's not a browser to users, it's not a browser to software developers, and it's definitely not a browser to lawyers and judges.
- rafark 3y agoIs there a legal definition of a web browser though? I think it’s an interesting topic.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> like weev w/wget Speaking of this and other cases of trying to punish someone for every iteration of a for loop - I wonder if the result would be the same if the accused drove actual browser to click stuff in a for loop, vs. using curl directly. I imagine the same, but then... ... what if they paid N people some token amount of money, to have each of those people do one step of the loop and send them the result? Does executing a for loop entirely on in part on the human substrate instead of in silico is seen as abuse under CFAA? (I have a feeling that it might not be - there's lots of jobs online and offline that involve one company paying lots of people some money for gathering information from their competitors, in a way the latter very much don't like.)