EFF: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an important story on web access policy. It highlights Oracle’s claim regarding Rimini’s automated methods to download support materials from the company’s website.
We recommend that being an Internet marketer you read this story.
EFF’s Jamie Williams says, “Good news out of the Ninth Circuit: the federal court of appeals heeded EFF’s advice and rejected an attempt by Oracle to hold a company criminally liable for accessing Oracle’s website in a manner it didn’t like. The court ruled back in 2012 that merely violating a website’s terms of use is not a crime under the federal computer crime statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But some companies, like Oracle, turned to state computer crime statutes—in this case, California and Nevada—to enforce their computer use preferences.
This decision shores up the good precedent from 2012 and makes clear—if it wasn’t clear already—that violating a corporate computer use policy is not a crime.
At oral argument in July 2017, Judge Susan Graber pushed back [at around 33:40] on Oracle’s argument that automated scraping was a violation of the computer crime law. And Monday, the 3-judge panel issued a unanimous decision rejecting Oracle’s position”.
Ninth Circuit Doubles Down: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime
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