Re:Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons
by austincheney on Monday December 03, 2018 @11:19AM
(#18589924)
Quick question. If one group intends a grossly inadequate effort to be a layer of security and another party ignores that effort who is in error? It could be argued that if the supposed security measure is so poorly conceived the bypassing party presumed it to be an error and thus used their software knowledge to mitigate the defect. On one hand there is an intentional barrier to restrict access to content while on the other hand the intention is to serve content and so the bypassing party assists that service intention.
I am of the bias that a space of technology cannot be summarily redefined by a single group interest merely to compensate their financial insecurity.
Re:Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons
by otterley on Monday December 03, 2018 @11:49AM
(#18590217)
To make a long story short, the law to date has always been on the side of the property owner/rights holder insofar as these sorts of questions are concerned. You can’t presume that just because the door is swinging open in the breeze that it constitutes an invitation to enter or that you can fix the defect on someone else’s behalf without repercussions. Context matters in the law, just as it does in the real world.
It’s a common misconception that the word “effective,” as used in the respective legislation, was intended to mean “successful” or “always cause.” Rather, it’s always been interpreted to mean, “is designed to have the effect of.”
The fact that the measure is not always successful or is breakable does not make the law no longer applicable; that would be an absurd result. The law isn’t interpreted literally when the result would be absurd; this is doctrine that goes back to at least 1892 and even further back to English common law. See, e.g., Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).
Engineers too often assume that the text of the law means what they think it means. This is one of those cases where a lack of legal education serves them poorly and leads them to incorrect conclusions.