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Comment by throwwebmaster | Hacker News Reader

By accessing the data on a website, you are forming a contract with that website and are subject to the website’s terms and conditions.

As a website owner, beyond that, there is no need to tell someone they cannot access your site if you simply block them from accessing your servers instead using a multitude of techniques.

Where does caching come into play at all here? You cannot cache content to begin with if the server is blocking access in the first place. And if you have already cached it in the act of violating said website’s terms of service, then you are still not in compliance.

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I'm pretty sure that first paragraph is false. Until I explicitly agree to a contract, or "terms and conditions", I am not bound by anything. If a site I navigate to embeds content from another website I am not immediately bound by the terms and conditions of that neclsred site, to think otherwise would invite madness.

Not to mention the fact that terms and conditions are not contracts. I don't think they carry the same weight, although someone please correct me on this if I am incorrect.

Plaintiff: “Judge, when the defendant used my public website, a contract with me was implicitly made”

Judge: “what defendant? There is no one here.”

Plaintiff: “Oh he was anonymous, so I am not sure who it was…”

Judge: “Hmm interesting, so you seem to think an implicit contract exists that you want to enforce with no documentation at all with a party you can’t name, because you are not sure who it is?”

Plaintiff: “Exactly.”

Judge: “Feel free to come back when you aren’t going to waste the court’s time”

This clear instance of reductio ad absurdum is wholly non-analogous. Factually inaccurate court proceeding depictions and legal misunderstandings aside, for one thing, the non-hypothetical defendant’s identity is well-known in this specific instance.

Interesting. I would have thought that someone with the ability to craft such a sesquipedalian response would also have been capable of understanding irony.

Also…you missed the word “public”, again.

While I appreciate your nod to my writing (I have a mutual appreciation, I might add, for your Soliloquising), again, none of the data obtained was public.

Less speculation and more facts:

https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...

This is heavily supported by Case Law.

Not according to some rulings the last few years. A contract requires a meeting of minds.

No.

According to many rulings the last few years, continually and systematically accessing a third party’s data under the clear expectation that you are aware of (as well as agreed to) their terms is definitely a meeting of minds.

I think you missed the word “public” on my comment. If you are posting content for public consumption, unless that content is copyrighted by you AND I republish/sell/etc it. You basically don’t have much to say if I choose to keep a copy of it.

If you don’t want me to have a copy of it for any reason, don’t let me have it at all.

Is it public though? For one thing, you need to have a registered user account and be part of the targeting audience as a winning biddee for ad placement in order to see the ads in question. As an ordinary person, unless you share your private login credentials with me (which would be another ToS violation), I cannot view nor access the ads you have been shown.

You seem to be hung up on users and passwords, I am talking anonymous public accessible sites.

If you publish content on a website that willingly provides data to anonymous users of your site, even with a TOC on the site, the TOC is not enforceable if you cannot prove that the user explicitly agreed to the TOC. If you don’t know who the user is, you can’t prove that they agreed to your TOC.

Having a TOC is basically legal theater if you allow anonymous users. The implied threat is basically “IF we find out who you are” and you use the site in a way that is contrary to our published TOC, we will take action against you.

Your only recourse in that case is to pursue sites that are republishing your copyrighted content…because only at that point can you actually identify the party that may be misusing your site and it’s content.

In reply to your sibling comment: I actually agree with you in the anonymous case and point out that many of the examples named (including FB, the topic of discussion) require user authentication.

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