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For all I know it's a stunt by the vending machine company to make people addicted. Free stuff for 1 week, then people have to start paying. Actually Telenor i

For all I know it's a stunt by the vending machine company to make people addicted. Free stuff for 1 week, then people have to start paying. Actually Telenor in Norway recently sold a few hundred tablets for 1,- kr a piece 16 cents US, and this without a contract. First they said, no, no, no, it was a mistake in our computer system, but they ended up having to sell them anyway because they would have such a hard time proving that every one of the customers knew well and right that there must be a mistake. Anyway special case scenarios would never be covered by your server saying 200 OK. However, day to day scenarios would. If your server gives people access to a file, and the user has no reason to believe the server is making a mistake. Then the 200 OK holds. It's like walking into an unlocked building. Many buildings are supposed to be unlocked and people walk in and out as they please. If you put up a big sign saying public library, then you can't go to the police and say someone broke in when you made no attempt to hinder them, then 200 OK holds. The server is giving the file away. Yes, I asked for it. But unless it's a very limited special case where I seriously went out of my way to trick the server (like a scam artist would in real life), then you can't put a little note under the doormat saying thief.

mpyne 14y ago
> Actually Telenor in Norway recently sold a few hundred tablets for 1,- kr a piece 16 cents US, and this without a contract. First they said, no, no, no, it was a mistake in our computer system, but they ended up having to sell them anyway because they would have such a hard time proving that every one of the customers knew well and right that there must be a mistake. In this example the customers paid the listed price, did they not? It was for exactly this argument that I spelled out "price clearly listed" in my original argument. I also chose a vending machine knowing full well that whatever someone says will be a personal choice. No legal system would waste its time on someone "stealing" $1.25 from a vending machine that gave you the soda. It's a moral question, not a legal one. If someone accidentally sets themselves up to be taken advantage of, would you take advantage of them if no one is watching? All of these hacktivists like to talk about how evil and immoral the government, the business, etc. are. So I ask what would they do in a situation with nothing on the line but their integrity. If they would take the soda then who are they to ride in on their high horse? If they would not take the soda, then why is it still OK to tromp through a website knowing that you're not supposed to be there, just because the sysadmin is an idiot? I'm not even saying there's one and only one right answer, but if there's one thing I hate it's hypocrisy, and I think this is true of most people. I don't think that people mean to be hypocritical either. But if we don't critically examine why we think something is right or wrong then do we really have a sense of morality or are we simply doing what we feel is right?
- meric 14y ago
  But you don't know you're not supposed to be there, you must have at least visited their site first, clicked their terms of service, before you can find out. Terms of service are typically very long documents and are time consuming to read. Do you read terms of service of every site you go to, to make sure you are permitted to be on that site?
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  This is an interesting analogy. Let's see where it goes. So we've got this vending machine. Suppose the door is broken; it won't close. As a result, if you insert money, the machine credits you with having paid but the money falls out onto the floor instead of being held securely inside the machine. So, can we justify having a law against "unauthorized access to a vending machine"? Let's see what we get based on what someone does. Scenario A: Defendant takes a soda without paying for it. Defendant is going to argue that this isn't unauthorized access; maybe the prosecutor can argue that it is, but that doesn't even matter. What you're doing is stealing. That's what you should be prosecuted for. There is no call for a law against "unauthorized access" in order to prosecute in this case, what is needed is a law against taking what isn't yours. This scenario occurs in any case for which "unauthorized access" occurs in furtherance of anything which is actually wrong -- the wrong thing should already be illegal and have appropriate penalties for that conduct so there is no benefit in such cases of a separate prohibition on unauthorized access. Scenario B: You want a soda but the machine won't take your money because the door won't close. So you open up the machine, put a $5 bill in the cash store and take your change and your soda. Here you aren't stealing anything; you've paid the asking price. Great, we've discovered a scenario where the prohibition on unauthorized access actually does something instead of being totally redundant -- you're not authorized to open up the vending machine, so even though you didn't steal anything or do anything to harm anyone, you still accessed it without authorization. So is this the scenario where we want to impose criminal liability? I don't think so. A law prohibiting that conduct is rubbish. You want laws to prohibit doing bad things, not to prohibit doing good things that are unanticipated.

mpyne 14y ago

> Actually Telenor in Norway recently sold a few hundred tablets for 1,- kr a piece 16 cents US, and this without a contract. First they said, no, no, no, it was a mistake in our computer system, but they ended up having to sell them anyway because they would have such a hard time proving that every one of the customers knew well and right that there must be a mistake. In this example the customers paid the listed price, did they not? It was for exactly this argument that I spelled out "price clearly listed" in my original argument. I also chose a vending machine knowing full well that whatever someone says will be a personal choice. No legal system would waste its time on someone "stealing" $1.25 from a vending machine that gave you the soda. It's a moral question, not a legal one. If someone accidentally sets themselves up to be taken advantage of, would you take advantage of them if no one is watching? All of these hacktivists like to talk about how evil and immoral the government, the business, etc. are. So I ask what would they do in a situation with nothing on the line but their integrity. If they would take the soda then who are they to ride in on their high horse? If they would not take the soda, then why is it still OK to tromp through a website knowing that you're not supposed to be there, just because the sysadmin is an idiot? I'm not even saying there's one and only one right answer, but if there's one thing I hate it's hypocrisy, and I think this is true of most people. I don't think that people mean to be hypocritical either. But if we don't critically examine why we think something is right or wrong then do we really have a sense of morality or are we simply doing what we feel is right?

meric 14y ago
But you don't know you're not supposed to be there, you must have at least visited their site first, clicked their terms of service, before you can find out. Terms of service are typically very long documents and are time consuming to read. Do you read terms of service of every site you go to, to make sure you are permitted to be on that site?
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
This is an interesting analogy. Let's see where it goes. So we've got this vending machine. Suppose the door is broken; it won't close. As a result, if you insert money, the machine credits you with having paid but the money falls out onto the floor instead of being held securely inside the machine. So, can we justify having a law against "unauthorized access to a vending machine"? Let's see what we get based on what someone does. Scenario A: Defendant takes a soda without paying for it. Defendant is going to argue that this isn't unauthorized access; maybe the prosecutor can argue that it is, but that doesn't even matter. What you're doing is stealing. That's what you should be prosecuted for. There is no call for a law against "unauthorized access" in order to prosecute in this case, what is needed is a law against taking what isn't yours. This scenario occurs in any case for which "unauthorized access" occurs in furtherance of anything which is actually wrong -- the wrong thing should already be illegal and have appropriate penalties for that conduct so there is no benefit in such cases of a separate prohibition on unauthorized access. Scenario B: You want a soda but the machine won't take your money because the door won't close. So you open up the machine, put a $5 bill in the cash store and take your change and your soda. Here you aren't stealing anything; you've paid the asking price. Great, we've discovered a scenario where the prohibition on unauthorized access actually does something instead of being totally redundant -- you're not authorized to open up the vending machine, so even though you didn't steal anything or do anything to harm anyone, you still accessed it without authorization. So is this the scenario where we want to impose criminal liability? I don't think so. A law prohibiting that conduct is rubbish. You want laws to prohibit doing bad things, not to prohibit doing good things that are unanticipated.