I listed all seven of them downthread before you wrote this comment. Which of them applies to a blog post? Please be specific.
You can feel free to point to the part of the DOJ manual that rebuts me, too.
You can feel free to point to the part of the DOJ manual that rebuts me, too.
1030(a)(2)(C) Whoever intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer; shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
Under the statute, a "protected computer" generally means any computer connected to the internet.
Also, based on the legislative history, "obtains information" has been read to mean "merely observing" information.
The only issue is "without authorization." Based on its plain meaning, the law could mean that you need affirmative authorization to access any website.
Obviously, that's a real stretch, but there was a case decided by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals [1] that held a company liable for using a web scraper - where the court said the defendants exceeded authorized access based on the website's boilerplate copyright notice.
[1]http://openjurist.org/274/f3d/577/ef-cultural-travel-bv-v-ex...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
You can't parse sentences out of context and apply programmer logic to them, that's not how laws work.
It's true that Judge Kozinski in the 9th Circuit said he would not "apply a badly drafted piece of legislation to lead to [an] absurd result."
But the issue is not cut and dry.
Kozinski essentially acknowledged he was interpreting the statute in a manner possibly at odds with its very language. These courts get reversed all the time (over 70% of their cases) - and other circuits have read the law more narrowly.
And the government itself supports a narrow reading of the law.
OP's article is over the top. My point is, the "authorization" part of the law appears extremely broad and as the DOJ puts it: "the case law on this issue is muddy."
As for common law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
I am still not a lawyer.
Common law is judge-made and only governs in the absence of statutory authority. (Due process and trial by jury are constitutional laws). The reasonable man is primarily a negligence standard.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190406060457657...
obviously includes formal language that means something i don't understand.