EFF statement: Facebook TOS violations != Criminal violations
I stumbled upon this post today and found it very relevant both to our first assignment and to the Lori Drew case we read a few weeks ago.
Power Ventures built a service that aggregates information from different social networks and provides the users with a single view. To get information from Facebook, however, it logs in with the user’s password and scrapes the data–basically what the company in our first assignment was supposed to do.
Facebook is suing Power Ventures because it violates its TOS by logging in using “automated means”. The thing is that Facebook is also trying to penalize Power’s users under the California penal code as an access “without permission”. This looks very similar to the Drew case, and it is another example of a company trying to establish the definition of a crime in its TOS. However, this time the California penal code is argued, instead of the CFAA act.
The EFF, however, is urging a federal judge to dismiss such a claim, because it would set a terrible precedent in scope of the California criminal law.
I’m not an expert on how case law in one jurisdiction applies in another jurisdiction, but I feel that the judge could easily find a parallel in both cases. Hopefully, he will agree with the district court in the case and that will establish a huge barrier for Facebook’s claims.
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