An interesting news article came up discussing how the Department of Justice is scheduled to deliver a statement to Congress tomorrow telling them that they would like to make it a prosecutable offense to violate a site’s Terms of Services (TOS). This specifically goes back to the Lori Drew case where the court discussed how it’s not correct for the private industry to set the conditions on what constitutes a criminal offense (this was involving the CFAA). The DOJ in particular wants to expand the “exceeds authorized access” portion of the act to include a site’s TOS as discussed in the article, saying that “the CFAA properly criminalizes ‘improper’ online activities.” That last statement alone sounds like a bad idea. The article also discusses how, if the DOJ gets what they want, the modified act would help the DOJ try to prosecute a person who consistently tries to upload copyrighted material to YouTube, because it violates their TOS. It’s unclear whether they would take into account the users’ intent such as if the person did not know they were uploading copyrighted materials. In any case, if the CFAA was modified in such a way that the DOJ suggests, it would likely give the DOJ a lot more power to prosecute users who violate any part of a site’s TOS. Scary thought.
Article – http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57324779-281/doj-lying-on-match.com-needs-to-be-a-crime/