A TOS can actually be very important in determining whether criminal law was broken or not.
Take a real property, rather than intellectual property, example: my house is private property. If you open my door and walk into my living room, you are trespassing, which is a crime (or you could be breaking and entering depending on your intent). However, if I put a sign up saying "come on in, JohnsonB!" then you have my consent to enter, and you have therefore not violated the letter of the law.
See how consent to use private property is the crux of whether a criminal violation occurred?
A TOS defines the boundaries of how an intellectual property owner consents to your use of that property. Go outside the bounds of that TOS and you are no longer operating with consent, and may indeed be committing a crime.
I'm not saying that this is how it should be. Just that this is how the law is generally interpreted.
> 1.) We're reading TOS now? Is that against the law?
so is your comment a joke reply, or do you have a serious argument? has this ridiculous response indicates that you concede that it is against the terms of service?
> 2.) Irrelevant, could be a simple traffic reduction block.
if he thought it was that, why did he need a mask to retrieve his computer?
Violating a private entity's TOS is not a federal crime. He did not mask anything: MIT has an open network, and apparently unlocked wiring closets (trespassing was not charged). Rotating your IP address on an already open network to circumvent said TOS does not constitute a statutory violation either. You can sue him, that's about it.
Take a real property, rather than intellectual property, example: my house is private property. If you open my door and walk into my living room, you are trespassing, which is a crime (or you could be breaking and entering depending on your intent). However, if I put a sign up saying "come on in, JohnsonB!" then you have my consent to enter, and you have therefore not violated the letter of the law.
See how consent to use private property is the crux of whether a criminal violation occurred?
A TOS defines the boundaries of how an intellectual property owner consents to your use of that property. Go outside the bounds of that TOS and you are no longer operating with consent, and may indeed be committing a crime.
I'm not saying that this is how it should be. Just that this is how the law is generally interpreted.