Aaron’s Law, much-needed reforms to computer crimes law, introduced in Congress
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
In addition to the two changes listed by Ars Technica, there's another tweak making it clear that the court should consider the "fair market" value of the information, which I guess for JSTOR would have still looked quite high.
MIT allows a level of access on it's networks that people not on MIT have trouble understanding, it's not what you or I (assuming you're not from MIT) would think of on other campuses and certainly not in the private sector
Second, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have an unusually open access system in place, one that allows any and all visitors to come on with any email they wish, but then think that blocking an IP means you can call it a day, authorization over. That makes no sense. If he uses a new address, he gets authorization again. If he gets a new MAC address he gets authorization again. Sadly, I think for MIT to remove authorization they would have to be less open, they would have to actually change policies for signing up to campus networks.
And don't get me started on the unlocked, well grafitti'd closet...
When it's their private property, they can have their cake and eat it too. I can let everyone in town into my living room but capriciously disallow you one day because I realize you have attached earlobes. That's just how license works.
The only consideration is notice. Does blocking a MAC address reasonably signal to the user that their consent was revoked, either objectively or in actual fact? I think you'd have a hard time arguing that Aaron, being very technically savvy, didn't realize that MIT was trying to kick him off its network.
And if I come back wearing prosthetic ears, is that a felony?
No, it isn't, and it isn't how property law works, either. Free and equal access to private property has been bandied about for decades, and leans away from your interpretation.
There is no such thing unless the property is something like a restaurant or hotel and you discriminate based on a protected characteristic (race, mostly).
PS: The law is all about edge cases if you don't know the specifics you really have no idea what's legal most of the time.
Vis-a-vis beach access: the exception arises in that context because the waters of a state and all submerged land and land up to the mean high tide line are public property. Thus, while you remain free to revoke license to use your property arbitrarily, you can't use that to unfairly monopolize access to public property.
The fact that it's an educational institution doesn't make its property any less private. IIRC, the fact that MIT is engaged in interstate commerce with the public brings it within the domain of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, but those laws carry only very specific limitations: MIT can't refuse someone access solely based on their: race, color, religion, or national origin, and must make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Those regulations on the use of MIT's private property don't make the property any less private than any other such regulations, nor do they in any way prejudice MIT's rights to control access to their property for any other reason.
There is no level of authorization that would allow him to go into a network closet (regardless of easy access) and setup his laptop to do what he did. Apparenly you are in the minority. When his IP and/or MAC was blocked it was because of un-authorized usage of the network. When he actively circumvented that, it was an illegal act.
I would also argue that Aaron KNEW he was not authorized to do what he did the moment he stepped into that network closet.
(I think the law is a step forward, though I don't think it does enough to mitigate the real problem with CFAA, which is that sentences under CFAA scale with dollar damages. The bit about making it harder to "accelerate" CFAA crimes when they're done in furtherance of crimes that are also CFAA crimes is also very important, but doesn't address the core flaw of the statute.)
Yes, "international law" is a fiction and rightly so.
http://site.com/posts/img.jpg
http://site.com/posts/img_t.jpg
> The proposed definition … is to obtain information … by knowingly circumventing technological or physical measures designed to prevent unauthorized individuals from obtaining that information.
suggests that, in that context, the debate would be whether a certain URL structure implies a legitimate attempt at securing content, rather than just being a side-effect of website structure/design.
Would it be unreasonable to argue that blatant disregard for security due-dilligence or just 'bad' security is not an honest attempt at the same, and thus equivalent to no security at all?