Fraud is a crime; a general definition might be "deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain", but in simple terms it's lying. If you lie to someone for financial gain, it's a crime. But violating the terms of a contract is not a crime, at least in the general case.

> But why?

Because that's what the law says. :)

> If one can prove that a party premeditated and willfully went against the terms of the contract in order to deceive the other party and profited from this deceit while also breaking laws

Very, very simply: If you lied, it's fraud. If you didn't lie, then it's not fraud. It might well be some other crime, but it's not fraud, because fraud is a word that means lying. So you say:

> went against the terms of the contract in order to deceive

But it depends what you mean by that. If I meant to follow the contract when I sign it, but later change my mind, and you just assume I'm following it, you are deceived, but I didn't lie, and it's not fraud. If I didn't mean to follow it when I signed it then I'm lying and it's fraud. Similarly if I mean to follow it when I sign, later change my mind, and you then ask me "hey, are you following the contract?", and I say "yes" even though I'm not, then I'm lying, and it's fraud. The key element isn't whether or not you were deceived, or whether or not I actually followed the contract, but whether I lied, because that's what the crime is.

Man, and I thought programming had difficult edge cases :)

From this post and the article you linked above, the takeaway I get is to ask everyday "Are you following the contract?" I understand the legal definition, but I gather that the layman will still think it's fraud.

I guess a simple solution in that scenario would be to have a checkbox asking are you following the contract every time they login to the server.

Thanks, I learned a lot from you! :D