The analogy is starting to break down, but I think it's still instructive for the problem of applying a simple first principles approach.
Likewise in some high-crime jurisdictions, if you did not lock your car you are liable for it getting stolen or broken into[2]. An unlocked car is too tempting for some people to just walk past and not take it.
I know it might sound crazy but you could make the argument that a massive pool of highly-structured and very valuable data just sitting out in the open is an attractive nuisance and steps should be taken to put it behind a locked gate. Once that requirement has been satisfied, normal trespassing laws apply.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ndg-resident-question...
For example, if a woman walks down a dark alley wearing short skirts and gets raped, it isn't her fault. I mean can you imagine if we said "well, she was just an attractive nuisance!" The judge would throw the book at you.
I am saddened by this.
Once they have withdrawn permission, they can call the police and you can be charged with trespass, though that's usually a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
Yes, that will cause potential issues for other people, which is why they tend not to do that, but if you trivially create a thousand more agents, and potentially trigger a degradation of service, how are you different to the people who block junctions at traffic lights?
I'm not keen on inconveniencing people, and "it's not that bad" is a poor argument for doing something that someone has explicitly asked you not to do.
That's why it might be reasonable for laws around this sort of thing to be different in the virtual world.
What does is it have to do with ethics? CFAA law does not apply here and that is what matters.
But if you contest that or have an issue with the specific terminology I used, perhaps you'd prefer this terminology instead: "I don't think this is a good framework for interpreting the CFAA and establishing legal precedent."
The nature of the original complaint is authorised access to publicly published information. Again, if you do not want people to read publicly published information, do not publish it publicly.
And as a side note - we don't need inappropriate analogies; the web is real, we can discuss the real issue.
If I can walk near a pool, should I also be able to run? Is running anything more than faster walking? If I'm allowed to be around the pool walking with my entry ID, should I also be allowed to place my ID on a little motorized car and make it dart around the pool really fast? Should I be able to duplicate my badge, put it on a bunch of little cars and direct them to quickly get all the floaties before anyone else? How about giving them all their own fake IDs? Now all the same questions, except there is a sign that explicitly prohibits all of these examples except for walking.
It seems disingenuous to argue that the automation and rapid increase of a thing should be allowed just because a thing is allowed. That doesn't typically match our intuitive notions of ethics in other parts of society, like driving or walking around a pool. Yes, you can walk around a pool as much as you want, but if you change to running then you have fundamentally altered your behavior through increased capability, not merely done "more of walking" to utilize more of your freedom.
I suppose a natural counterargument to this analogy might be that running around pools is unsafe, and scraping is not unsafe in the same way. But my point here is establishing that a behavior intrinsically changes into a different behavior if you increase the speed at which you're doing it or the capability at which you can do it.