On January 15, 2013 Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) drafted
a proposed bill to be called “Aaron’s Law”, link here.
The law would reform the 1986 Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act, to eliminate the possibility of criminal prosecution merely for violation
of a “terms of service” agreement with a telecommunications, Internet service
or social networking provider, in interpreting the concepts of fraud or abuse.
Electronic Frontier Foundation has put the concept
this way: “If you’re allowed to access information, doing so in an innovative
way shouldn’t be a crime.” It also proposes
that penalties should be appropriate for offenses.
Some of the “innovative ways” include using a
different IP address or MAC to gain access.
The EFF link (which points to many discussion
drafts) is here.
It’s possible for people to be banned from specific
sites by IP address (by the “HTA access” mechanism), sometimes because of
misconduct on the site, so presumably it would not be illegal for someone know
he or she is “banned” from accessing a site through a different route (for
example, wireless).
Presumably such legislation would not exempt
deliberately flooding a site with bogus requests (for a “denial of service”
attack).
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