In particular, in more serious legal matters, the fact that you admitted you understood the intent of the policy would be held against you. Courts simply don't buy into the idea that "if something is technically allowed, it's authorized", any more than it's legal to enter through a window if a door is locked.
If by "arguments like this," you mean following the law but with suspect motives, then one of the strengths of the legal system in the US is that the courts absolutely accept arguments like these.
In criminal matters, you typically need both intent and some act forbidden by statute before a finding of guilt. You can't indict someone for ill will.
Intent alone is not generally sufficient for a conviction is the US, save for some cases of special liability (attempts, or some forms of aider and abettor or conspiracy). Sometimes intent doesn't matter at all, but that's generally reserved for traffic cases or statutory rape, where intent would pose special difficulties proving beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.
I can think of only a few notable counterexamples where a court made inferences about true intent and made a finding against a party despite a standing rule that would have let them off. MGM v. Grokster could be read that way. Grokster ran a service with "substantial noninfringing uses," which was previously sufficient for a defense of fair use. However, Grokster was found to infringe based on their constant encouragement for people to use their services to infringe. Grokster had "the object of promoting [their service's] use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement." You could read that as a sort of retroactive punishment for ill intentioned behavior.
Here's the twist though, that wasn't criminal law. There's generally a much higher bar for criminal law to strictly apply statutes as written. In civil law, both parties are citizens with equal rights before the courts, so there's more of a balancing test. In criminal law, most presumptions run against the state.
This isn't just a US twist. A German scholar of jurisprudence, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, was one of the first to argue that criminal (and tax) laws must be interpreted as narrowly as possible, because people deserve fair and clear warning of what is allowed and prohibited. See also the "Rule of Lenity" in statutory interpretation, whereby ambiguous criminal statutes are interpreted in favor of the defendant (wikipedia points to McNally v. US and a few other relevant cases): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation#Canon...
This isn't just a convention in the US though, judges cannot extend criminal laws to criminalize novel activity, because that would violate prohibitions against "ex post facto" laws under Art. 1 Sec. 9 of the Constitution. Ie, the Constitution forbids making some act a crime after it happened, the state must provide advanced warning. (Well, technically it's a violation of 14th Amendment Due Process, since Art. 1 Sec. 9 only binds the legislature, but similar principles apply). A fuller treatment can be found on this issue from the Supreme Court in Bouie v. City of Columbia and Rogers v. Tennessee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouie_v._City_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Tennessee
Although dissenting, and again not in criminal law, Scalia provided a nice quip on the subject in the recent Aereo opinion: "It is the role of good lawyers to identify and exploit [legal loopholes], and the role of Congress to eliminate them if it wishes." American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc., (Scalia, dissenting)
(To the point of the intent required by the CFAA, which might be in question here, Kalow v. Springnut would probably be illustrative: http://blog.internetcases.com/2008/07/17/cfaa-requires-inten... )
I was responding to the naked phrase "technically allowed," which in hindsight is ambiguous (ie, "allowed under the law via a technicality," or "technologically feasible").
Rereading, I still think I interpreted correctly the first time, but really can't be sure.
Good catch.
Obtaining goods by deception seems to cover this. Especially with the public admission of "I siged on, and had to pay, but discovered that my colleague did not have to pay so I was deceptive about the equipment I used, and the only reason I was deceptive was to avoid the requirement to pay".
There is no element in the discussion about needing to change user agent for work or anything else.
aka "false pretenses" or misrepresentation statutes.
Sure, this could fall under those statutes in jurisdictions where that covers services. Defendant would have several ways to make that case a nightmare, to the point where I see it as basically absurd to prosecute, but still conceivably illegal.
I wasn't trying to comment on whether there's some action involved in logging into a network that could satisfy some element in criminal law though. There absolutely could be some "actus reus" from a login.
I was really just intending to respond to the general comment about courts accepting arguments of the sort like, "this is technically permitted under the law, therefore legal." Maybe I misread that point though, maybe cynicalkane's "technically allowed" meant "allowed by the protocol" not "technically allowed by law."
In which case, consider my wandering diatribe above thoroughly moot. :)
Surely this has come up before now, yes?
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
But no, I probably can't find cases in courts. But then, I probably wouldn't be able to find cases where people steal the pillows, but that happens although it is a different law.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10223157/What-c...
> I spoke to the Metropolitan Police on the law regarding towel-lifting. “It is a crime,” its spokesman said. “If we were to receive allegations, we would follow them up.” In reality, it appears most hotels would be more likely to blacklist a guest over a petty theft, charge the items to their card, and save the police the trouble.
This is likely to be the case with fraud, which is both civil and criminal. The criminal fraud is probably tiny (unless you do it in every hotel you go to) and the hotel probably doesn't want the negative publicity. And they probably don't want to encourage the practice of user agent spoofing. So if hotels do care, and do take action, they'll just charge the credit card and block-list the user.
You also ignore all the "piggybacking" cases?
Here are a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking#Unite...
Here's the Met Police saying that they intend to prosecute all such behaviour: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/22/us-britain-wireles...
Still: I'm not sure how you conclude that it is not fraud just because no-one has been to court yet.
I said that the same reasons why there has not been a court case are the reasons why the above commenter can safely write what he has written without fear of prosecution.
The fact that the hotel is incompetent in preventing that fraud by relying on UserAgent seems less important than intent of user when changing UA string.
> he causes a computer to perform any function with intent
> to secure access to any program or data held in ***any***
> computerTo get charged under this law, you would have to be accused of the unauthorized access of something on the router itself, since that is the only relevant computer you aren't authorized to use. The charges against you would have to be based on the theory that sending packets with a spoofed MAC address or user agent is accessing the routing program and tables on the router in an unauthorized manner. That argument delves much deeper into the law than just the first clause.
Here's one BBC article that talks about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6960304.stm
> The Communications Act 2003 says a "person who (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence".
Seems pretty clear. A person is paying for hotel access; notices their Apple-device using colleague is not paying; spoofs the user agent; - these seem to cover all the points of dishonesty with the intent to avoid paying for a service.
Even if the hotel is in a country that doesn't have that particular law there is probably some fraud law that covers the actions. (I realise now that I should have mentioned the fraud because that's the more serious offence and it seems some people missed my point).
That doesn't make it any less illegal to use the useragent to deceive someone about what equipment you're using purely to avoid paying a charge.
I'm not a lawyer but that feels pretty clearly like fraud.