Marcia Hofmann writes:
Good news: another federal judge has ruled that violating a website terms of service is not a crime. But there’s bad news, too — the court also found that bypassing technical or code-based barriers intended to limit access to or uses of a website may violate California’s computer crime law.
The decision comes in Facebook v. Power Ventures, a case in which Facebook is suing a company that offers a tool for users to access and aggregate their personal information across social networking sites. Because Facebook’s terms of service don’t allow users to access their information through “automated means,” Facebook claimed that Power accesses its service “without permission” in violation of California Penal Code Section 502. Facebook has also argued that Power broke the law by evading Facebook’s effort to block the Power browser’s IP address, which was meant to try to keep users from accessing their Facebook accounts though the Power website.
Read more on EFF.