"But in another version of this story, Auernheimer and Spitler were treated as criminals. The feds..."

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But in another version of this story, Auernheimer and Spitler were treated as criminals. The feds indicted Weev for identity theft and unauthorized access to a computer under the CFAA, even though it was AT&T — not them — that made the email addresses publicly available on the internet. Swayed by the government’s arguments that Weev and Spitler had engaged in “theft” (unfortunately, Weev’s own words) when Spitler “tricked” and “deceived” AT&T’s servers into giving him the email addresses, the jury found Weev guilty in short order.

The appeal filed yesterday argues that AT&T’s servers weren’t “deceived”. They did exactly what AT&T had programmed them to do whenever a correct URL was entered: publish email addresses. (The spoofing was irrelevant; Spitler would have gotten the same email addresses if he had manually inputted the URLs on an iPad rather than a spoofed desktop browser.) In short, one can’t violate the CFAA by accessing information on a freely available, public website.”



- You May Not Like Weev, But Your Online Freedom Depends on His Appeal | Wired Opinion | Wired.com (via jenn2d2)



via Birds on the Brain http://dendroica.tumblr.com/post/54682307762