http://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/breaking-and-enteri...

I'm a lock troll. I like to go around breaking people's locks. I never steal anything, I just break locks because I'm a prick like that.

This guy I know, Franky, broke a lock the other day in order to save a child from a burning building.

How would you propose a black and white system handle this? Do I get to run around breaking locks with impunity, or are we going to punish Franky for the method of his good deed. I mean, the good deed's nice and all, but irrelevant to the matter at hand right?

2) You have an exception to such laws for exigent circumstances or implied consent.

Here is the flaw in your argument: We don't have to nail everything down to nail part of something down. We don't have to define "exigent circumstances" mathematically or put the badge number of authorized fire marshals in the statute. That doesn't mean we can't do better than obscenely broad and vague nonsense like "unauthorized access to a computer."

There is a reason we have laws more specific than "anyone who does anything bad shall be punished by a fine of up to one hundred trillion dollars or up to one thousand years in prison."

I don't think we're actually in disagreement. Maybe my analogy was just that badly thrown together?

The CFAA is the same way. It prohibits unauthorized access, which seems like it would generally be bad (though it's vague enough that who knows) and with no provision for looking into the circumstances to evaluate how bad, then goes on to impose penalties as though the unauthorized access was in furtherance of something like terrorism or bank fraud rather than accessing a wifi to check your email, even though the latter is still covered and subject to the same extreme penalties.

And none of this is about black and white, which is why I objected to the example. Wanting black and white laws is about fighting vagueness: Too much specificity is bad because it's too complicated and no one can understand it (see: tax code), but too much vagueness is also bad -- even worse -- because then you have no possible way to know what it actually means until you get told by a judge, by which point it's far too late.

The problem with your example is that it isn't an example of too much vagueness, it's an example of too much breadth. Take two examples: "Don't do things" and "don't do bad things without a good reason." The first isn't really vague at all -- it just covers everything, which is useless and stupid. So the problem is that it's too broad. The second isn't too broad -- it's pretty good at only criminalizing things that ought to be -- but it's hopelessly vague.

And it's overbreadth which is the trouble with "it is illegal to break locks." It covers breaking locks even for good reasons. So you need a list of exclusions or you end up like the DMCA: You're allowed to break them if they're your locks, or if necessary in order to do something legitimate, etc. Which is actually a counterexample of being okay with relatively simple laws and not needing a list of caveats to go along with them. Because we can't make things that simple, or we get the DMCA and the CFAA, which are both terrible and need to be seriously overhauled.

Damnit man! Don't give them ideas!