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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

> is that really meaningfully different from using Firefox or Chrome?

In the USA legally it is because the vast majority of the judges that have ruled on these things think anything that isn't a browser is a hacking tool. Using wget is enough to get you thrown in federal prison for accessing public web resources.

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> Using wget is enough to get you thrown in federal prison for accessing public web resources.

Example?

Aaron Swartz remains a prominent example. RIP

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/when-pro...

His JSTOR code (below) calls wget: https://osf.io/bnd2h

Nitpick, on page three of the document you posted it states that his script used curl and not wget

I was interpolating, the article implies wget but I didn’t mean to imply I had verified that or anything. I’ll admit I did make a stronger statement than intended and was relying on third party interpretations of the code. Thanks for the clarification!

I think weev may have used wget in his AT&T work where he discovered links or interactions between customer data and iOS in an AT&T subsite?

http://madisonian.net/2013/04/09/academics-go-to-jail-cfaa-e...

Were those public resources, though?

Nope, you needed to be on the MIT network. He argued that they should be public, which is very much NOT the same thing as actually being public in the eyes of the law.

So, had he opened a browser and used the javascript console to download everything instead, he would have gotten off scot free?

What's a javascript console? Sounds like a hacker tool, off to prison with him.

The crime was not that he used wget, it’s that after he was banned from the service he used a server closet he was not permitted to access to continue downloading. Still bullshit but it’s not even close to wgetting a public resource

Isn’t MIT a public university?

Edit: no, it’s a private land grant university. What kind of socialism is this, anyway? How is this structure even valid, if not for historical precedent?

Nothing against socialism or even my point, really. Just very odd to see how blatantly discriminatory and contradictory this seems to have a private university performing a necessary public service, with free land from the state. Not that the work isn’t well done, or anything. Just bears strict scrutiny.

If I go to a public park and bust open the lock on the utilities shed and mess with the tools, it’s still a crime.

United States v. Swartz?

weev?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#AT&T_data_breach

Yes. That's what I was thinking of.

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