Hacker News Reader

I believe he is referring to the case of Weev.

Who is not a direct analogy. In law, your motives matter when determining whether an act was criminal. The fancy term is mens rea, literally "guilty mind".

Unfortunately this high school civics version of the U.S. criminal justice system is not accurate. "Mens rea" comes from the traditional common law, which is now increasingly divorced from actual federal criminal statutory law. An increasingly number of federal crimes say unlawful intent may be presumed or is even irrelevant.

Note I'm not taking a position on whether any possible TOS violations rise to the level of a CFAA violation, or whether DOJ would care, just that waving around terms like "mens rea" does not an actual rebuttal make.

Or, if you prefer a high school civics sur-rebuttal, "ignorance of the law is no defense." :)

I'm not American, but I do resemble one on the internet.

It does vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but strict liability is still rare and still largely constrained to summary offences, not indictable offences.

Regardless of whether you are in a purely code jurisdiction or purely common law jurisdiction or some hybrid, there usually has to be additional effort by a legislator to indicate that strict liability applies.

IANAL, TINLA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com