> if message board nerds and other ordinary people can't figure out what the law requires in the cases that probably won't be prosecuted, but could be, then it deters people from doing things that shouldn't be -- and maybe even aren't -- against the law

Message boards are constantly debating insane shit.

If someone feels—beyond generalized anxiety—they’re on the edge of the law, there are plenty of private and public resources they can consult. If they want to shoot shit, as, to be clear, we’re doing here, they can ponder on a message board. The former presages real work. The latter entertainment.

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akerl_ 4 days ago | parent [-]

Do other disciplines do this in reverse? Is there a lawyer forum where the members constantly try to construct from the ground up "how does the internet happen", and then draw a bunch of inferences and concerns from their construction?

I'd like to know we're not unique in assuming that expertise in our field grants us the necessary magics to speak as experts in other ones.

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

People don't care about how the internet works because it's working right now and if it isn't then they can pay someone to fix it.

People care whether something is illegal before they do it because ordinary people can't pay someone to make the prosecutor go away after they've already done the thing they're being charged with.

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akerl_ 4 days ago | parent [-]

I think you've fallen into a message board hole.

Of the humans alive today, basically a rounding error of them are ever going to come anywhere near the CFAA. Firstly, the intent requirement. Which has been pointed out to you upthread and you just sortof waved away that judges are willing to accept anything as proof of intent, despite that not seeming to be the case from the cases I can see. Secondly, the average human alive is not poking at web vulnerabilities as part of their humanitarian journalism. The CFAA is nearly a perfect overlap where the people at risk of accidentally violating it are the folks who have the means to ask a professional about their nuanced situation.

The CFAA (like many laws) has problems, but you've really latched onto whether or not something counts as a crime for the CFAA in a way that doesn't seem to be attached with a real threat model.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Firstly, the intent requirement. Which has been pointed out to you upthread and you just sortof waved away that judges are willing to accept anything as proof of intent, despite that not seeming to be the case from the cases I can see. It's not that they're willing to accept anything, it's that isn't really how intent works, because intent is a question of fact when the ambiguity is a question of law. Which is how it produces an unreasonable result: It's not the intent to commit a crime, it's the intent to commit an act, whether or not you knew it was a crime. And when the law was ambiguous, you can't have known, because the judge hadn't decided it yet. So you do X, you end up in court, the judge finally decides if X is illegal, and then if it is the government has to prove if you intended to do X. But you did intend to do that, you just didn't intend for that to be illegal, which is the part they don't include in the accounting. It seems like I should also clarify this point from my post above: > and failed to include the part about intent to commit a crime The salient thing that burglary has and the CFAA is missing isn't the intent to commit unauthorized access, it's the intent to commit a separate crime, e.g. unauthorized access with the intent to commit credit card fraud. Because without that the penalties make no sense and it's not clear that should even be an independent crime, since there are definitely times when accessing a server the operator doesn't want you to should be allowed and basically all of the cases where it shouldn't are the instances where you're doing it to commit a separate crime. > The CFAA is nearly a perfect overlap where the people at risk of accidentally violating it are the folks who have the means to ask a professional about their nuanced situation. So you're in a situation where there hasn't been a high court case with the same fact pattern yet. You ask a professional and they tell you so. What now?

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JumpCrisscross 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Is there a lawyer forum where the members constantly try to construct from the ground up "how does the internet happen", and then draw a bunch of inferences and concerns from their construction?

Idk about lawyers, but finance forums will regularly construct absolutely batshit crazy assumptions about how the world works.

I think it’s a feature of online echo chambers.