Re:You are committing a crime right now
by dendory on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @04:30AM
(#4813504)
I disagree that it's a one-off case. This case now sends a chilling effect to all security researchers. Next, what if a stock broker finds a press release on a web site that was published early, and makes money from it? What if a blogger finds a leaked photo of an unannounced product? The point is that they took a law that was meant to prevent you from hacking past security measures to get into a private computer, and successfully applied it to data posted on a public web server, and that is ridiculous, regardless what his intent was to do with the data.
Re:You are committing a crime right now
by vidarh on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @04:38AM
(#4813522)
You "disagree that it's a one-off case", but the comment you've replied to did not claim it is a one-off case. Nor did the comment you reply to dispute that it may have chilling effects. Who exactly are you disagreeing with?
weev's actions are a gray area. I don't think that convicting him under the CFAA is absurd. It might be unreasonable or unconstitutional, but there's a valid security issue at stake. To liken weev's actions to viewing a deliberately published-for-public-consumption blog post is a false equivalence: and precisely what makes the piece alarmist.