> Obtaining goods by deception

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. :)

Can you find an example in case law where someone's been prosecuted for obtaining access to a system by spoofing their MAC ID or user agent string?

Surely this has come up before now, yes?

Are you making an oblique reference to Aaron Swartz?

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.

There's probably a reason for the fact that there has never been a criminal case such as you've described, and it's for that reason the above poster is safe in writing what he did.

So, you ignore the bits of the Swartz case which were about his access of a network by spoofing MAC address and user agent?

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.

Read what I wrote more carefully.

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.