Bottom line:
Companies get to decide what is a criminal act!
Give it
a moment to sink in and let the shock wear off. Then read again:
Companies
get to arbitrarily set criminal acts!
You think I jest. Perhaps you think
I over-react. Perhaps you think I greatly mis-interpret.
As I understand
the high-level aspect:
If you violate the terms of service, you are
considered to be in breach of the Criminal Law surrounding unauthorized
access!
Do I have that right? If I have that correct, then my conclusion
above has a very real potential of being correct. There are any number of TOS
that include the concept:
You agree we can change these terms any time we
want and if you use the service after we change the terms you agree to the new
terms.
So anyone building a TOS can literally put in anything they want no
matter how innocently small it seems:
You agree not to post photos! You can
upload documents, but not photos!
Jane decides to upload a photo she took
of herself and her little kitten in a document. The company decides that's a
breach of the TOS. As it's a breach of the TOS, she's now criminally guilty
with regards unauthorized access!
Tell me I'm wrong and the actual
wording of the Law is such that this kind of situation won't be
allowed.
According to the RIAA - Fair Use does not exist as part of
Copyright Law. Unauthorized use of a copyright protected work is illegal.
According to Judges who have listened to those lines of reasoning, the RIAA is
absolutely wrong!
What's to stop members of the RIAA authoring their
opinions (Fair Use does not exist) into their TOS?
It seriously boggles
the mind that Congress would think it's a good idea to allow a Law through that
allows thousands of private, independent entities who exhibit tendencies of zero
ethics the ability to author their own Criminal Laws.
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