[jforman]

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.