[masswerk]

Please note that this wasn't related to some lawyer actions, but the Metropolitan Police's Computer Crime Unit acting on the basis of suspected offence under the Computer Misuse Act. The offensive act occurred while the browser was used for making a donation at a tsunami related website of the Disasters and Emergency Committee, where the browser showed up as an "unusual event" in the access logs.

I believe, the case is part of a more general theme (which is, indeed, related to the EME topic): There's a perceptible will to regulate any kind of browsing into consumer-style app usage. E.g., manually entering a URL ("URL hacking") has been considered a fraud attempt; using a browser which only supports the basic protocol set and not all of it is considered as possibly related to intrusion and terrorism (oh, that T-word again). In the end, we may wake up with the law enforcing a certain, standardized life style. We may wake up with a deregulated companies and strictly regulated citizens.

[cookiecaper]

I understand you're referring to a criminal prosecution. Criminal prosecutors are, from my limited observations as a layperson with a minor interest in law, more guilty of this than anyone. They go hyper-aggressive on charges, expecting them to be pared down. Some of it is a ploy to get a quick plea. There is an element of calling the bluff, and the defendant's attorney would have to evaluate the situation and advise whether or not that was smart in the given case.

This is not to say there aren't ridiculous prosecutions that run their course, especially in niche areas that aren't widely understood and thus hard to create public outcry over, like insider trading or computer crimes. It's just to indicate that using Lynx, by itself, is not considered criminal by any sane person. It's a nit the prosecutors pick when they're trying to nail you on something larger, a detail they exaggerate to attempt to create the impression of one's villainous ways.

Just don't want people to uninstall Lynx in fear that they'll be arrested for firing it up. :)

EDIT: From re-reading your comment, it seems you're suggesting that this wasn't part of a larger operation, but that actual charges were brought because of a single aberrant entry in the access logs? I find this hard to imagine, but if true, I would guess that this is more along the lines of "abuse of police power to harass an enemy" than "literally a random dude who just visited our site in a text-based browser". I've read access logs for many years now and even small sites get all kinds of weird things in there, it doesn't seem plausible that something like that would flag off any kind of detector. Do you have a link to more details about the case?