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The federal charges are with respect to unlawful access to JSTOR's computers, not MIT's computers. Furthermore, Aaron didn't have to "spoof" anything. JSTOR t
by andylei 14y ago
The federal charges are with respect to unlawful access to JSTOR's computers, not MIT's computers. Furthermore, Aaron didn't have to "spoof" anything. JSTOR tried to ban him from their computers for activities against their terms of service. Orin Kerr's argument is that attempting to circumvent those bans to gain property is wire fraud, which there is a federal law against. So the actually the state is a party.
- jasonzemos 14y agoIt seems the problem with interpreting wire fraud with his cited precedent comes down to an IP address versus an identity. The cited case contained two employees with specific usernames to denote their identities. When one uses the other's identity it's an impersonation -- or a false pretense. This case contains publicly available IP addresses and network-wide access and with that comes access to JSTOR. Rotating the IP to gain continued access might be immoral or tortious conduct at best, but as long as he didn't impersonate another user (possibly by spoofing an active IP address even) the court wouldn't be right in interpreting with the cited precedent. If the court decided this way: Say my dhcp-obtained cable IP becomes banned from JSTOR, when it changes and I simply check if I can access JSTOR again, I'd be in violation. Furthermore, a reasonable person wouldn't know that an IP address could be an identity similar to a username and that changing it would be a crime.