[MichaelGG]

I don't think people are really arguing that part. Well Techdirt is a bit with the whole whining about "b-b-but 3taps was making CL more valuable" as if that mattered (apart from being open to interpretation).

The issue is that CL and this judge have set a precedent (I think?) that private companies can make up felonies by deciding what "authorized access" is.

You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil business issue. (And really, there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways. Or at least there should be some level of malicious intent required.) Trying to use a law with criminal/felony penalties is grossly out-of-line.

[sangnoir]

> there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways.

Are you sure about that? So you don't want any legal recourse for someone that overloads your API/web servers with thousands of requests per second? You might say a technical solution (like rate limiting) would do - but that will cost you time & money with no upside, and can be easily circumvented (use many clients in parallel with the same effect - hammering your server and increasing your costs)

I think a law for that is fine, as a last resort. It will keep people at their best behaviour.

[Dylan16807]

A rule against hammering a server is not at all the same as a rule against accessing the server at all.

[sangnoir]

We likely are in agreement - isn't a rule against hammering a server 'a legal limit on the kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system'? I was disagreeing with parent who said:

> there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways.

[Dylan16807]

The difference between "limit on that kind of behavior" and "limit on the kind of behavior" is critical.

A limit on red cars is a limit on "the color" of cars, but it's not a limit on "that color" when someone is pointing at a blue car.

So when "that kind" refers to sanely-implemented scraping, then there should not be a limit. There is a limit on "the kind", to restrict it to activities like scraping that aren't inherently harmful.

[sangnoir]

Unfortunately english isn't very precise: it's difficult to parse what MichaelGG was referring to by 'that'. I assumed he was referring to scraping (his previous sentence), but it's also possible he was referring to the CL case.

For the record, I maintain my belief that there should be a law that applies to scraping of publicly available sites.

> You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil business issue. (And really, there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways

[tedunangst]

> You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil business issue. ... Trying to use a law with criminal/felony penalties is grossly out-of-line.

And the CFAA also happens to be the law that makes it a civil business issue, thanks to the 1030(g) section that was amended in 1996. Wikipedia has elected to make no mention of this section, but other sources do.

http://www.balch.com/files/Publication/01d78bb1-08f4-4a25-8c...

"Section 1030(g) expressly provides the civil remedy (and thus federal court subject matter jurisdiction) for violation of the CFAA"

[MichaelGG]

Oh. So what's TechDirt getting worked up over then?

[tedunangst]

As tptacek put it, rageviews.