Court Rules Accessing Public Website Not A Crime But Hiding IP Address Could Be

In the ongoing legal battle between craigslist and 3taps, a new court opinion makes clear that people are "authorized" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to access a public website. But what the court gave with one hand it took with the other, as it also ruled that sending a cease-and-desist letter and blocking an IP address is enough to "revoke" this authorization.

3taps collects real-estate data from craigslist and makes it available to other companies to use. One of those companies, Padmapper, republished craigslist apartment postings over a map to enable users to view apartment listings geographically, a feature then unavailable on the craigslist site. Craigslist's terms of service prohibits people from "scraping" or copying data from craigslist's site.

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/08/court-rules-accessing-public-we...