Re:Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found ...
by bawolff on Thursday October 14, 2021 @06:39PM
(#28871146)
It is the intent of the act, not the act itself, that is important.
If you know doing x will cause y, then when you do x you are doing y and you are responsible for the consequences of doing y. It doesn't matter what x was.
This is especially true in the real world.
It's always okay to ask for things. There would be no way for society to adapt, progress, or change if people were limited to only asking for things that they knew in advance they were allowed to have. If it's legal for a telemarketer, pollster, reporter, cop, or recruiter to contact me and ask me questions then it's just as legal for me to contact and ask a web server a question. The correct response to unauthorized requests is a 4xx, not a lawsuit.
More to the point, what makes it okay to ask a new web server for "/" without permission? Even if browse-through terms of service were legally enforceable they aren't known to the user or the browser before making the first connection and request.
If a web server doesn't want to answer questions then don't connect it to the Internet.