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Yes, according to the law – and we should all pause to think of the implication. After all, haven’t you ever clicked "I accept" without reading the pages and pages of legal fine prints? There may be a clause that there that you’re breaking:
Prosecutors in a New Jersey ticket scalping case are pushing the envelope on the federal computer hacking law, setting a precedent that could make it a felony to violate a website’s terms of service and fool a CAPTCHA, according to electronic civil rights groups intervening in the case.
At issue is a four-month-old criminal prosecution against the online ticket-reselling business Wiseguy Tickets, which allegedly used a network of shell companies, rented servers and automated scripts to snatch up more than 1 million premium tickets for coveted concerts and sporting events, which it resold for more than $25 million in profits.
The four Wiseguy defendants, who also operated other ticket-reselling businesses, allegedly used sophisticated programming and inside information to bypass technological measures — including CAPTCHA — at Ticketmaster and other sites that were intended to prevent such bulk automated purchases. This violated the sites’ terms of service, and according to prosecutors constituted unauthorized computer access under the anti-hacking Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA.
Naturally, civil liberty groups are alarmed:
“Under the government’s theory, anyone who disregards — or doesn’t read — the terms of service on any website could face computer crime charges,” said EFF civil liberties director Jennifer Granick in a press release. “Price-comparison services, social network aggregators, and users who skim a few years off their ages could all be criminals if the government prevails.”
Kim Zetter of Wired’s Threat LEvel explains: Link – Bruce Schneier
If you, for some weird reason or another, have any interest in signing up to WalMart’s Twitter feed, be prepared to agree to a 3,379 word long (lord only knows how many characters) Terms of Use.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of Twitter myself, but I do understand that the main attraction is the simplicity of limiting things to 140 characters or less. It kind of defeats the purpose when you have a TOS this long.
Link Via BoingBoing
