[jnbiche]

So sue on that basis, not on accessing the website.

I think most of us are not so unhappy about the suing, although we may disagree with it. We're very unhappy about using CFAA, which passes the line into criminal penalties. So we're talking about initiating a process against someone who scraped your site that could land them in jail.

[tptacek]

You, too, are repeating the false trope that the CFAA is an egregious overreaction by Craigslist. Not only is it not that (it is literally the federal private cause of action specifically intended for enforcing terms of service), but it's more limited than other civil causes of action: plaintiffs can sue only for certain types of damages.

It's also preposterous to suggest that Craigslist somehow "passed the line into criminal penalties". Just because a section of the law also has criminal offenses specified does not make all invocations of that law criminal. Private parties can't criminally prosecute people. There was, obviously, no risk of criminal charges in this case.

Techdirt is, as usually, being manipulative in how they frame this story. The are the Internet's foremost amplifier of online law misinformation.