Attorney Who Sued Grindr Responds Extremely Poorly To The Supreme Court's Rejection Of Her Section 230 Lawsuit

from the upside-is-no-one-will-be-suing-Twitter-over-this-attorney's-veiled-threat dept

The Herrick v. Grindr case [um] ground to a halt on October 7th, as the Supreme Court refused to grant cert. The lawsuit -- and its attempt to undermine Section 230 immunity -- is dead, relegated to the pile of also-rans which have attempted to get a US court to rewrite this very important section of the Communications Decency Act.

Not that there was anything decent in the events leading up to the lawsuit. Matthew Herrick's ex-boyfriend used Herrick's information to create a fake Grindr profile and sent more than 1,200 men to Herrick's home and workplace over the next several months. Herrick sued Grindr, alleging that the company failed to prevent his ex from abusing the service to harass him.

The case was tossed on appeal, with the Second Circuit Court finding in favor of Grindr and its invocation of its Section 230 immunity. The party at fault here was Herrick's ex-boyfriend, but it was Grindr Herrick chose to take to court. The case was not argued well. The allegations contained suppositions that were pretty much impossible to reconcile, as Cathy Gellis pointed out in her post on the lawsuit. Herrick tried to dodge Section 230 immunity by claiming Grindr either handed out his geolocation info or some sort of bug left it exposed. This was the basis for his negligence claims. But none of that makes sense.

For it to be true Grindr would need to not only still be tracking him (even as an ex-user) but then, for some unknown reason, somehow unite the location data of the actual Herrick person with the fake Herrick profile. Herrick tried to argue that the first part was likely, citing for instance Google's location services continuing to track users after they'd thought it had stopped. But even if it were true that Grindr had continued to track him, it would be really random to associate that data with any other account he didn't control. From Grindr's point of view, his real account and the fake account would look like two completely separate users. Sure, Grindr could have a bug that mis-associated location data, but there's no reason for it to pick these two completely different accounts to merge the data from. It would be just as arbitrary as if it mixed up his data with any other Grindr account.

The most likely reason strange men kept showing up at Herrick's home and place of business was because his ex-boyfriend knew these locations and could send that info to Grindr users. That meant a third party was supplying the information that resulted in Herrick's harassment, not Grindr itself.

The denial of Supreme Court cert was tweeted by Section 230 legal scholar/law prof Eric Goldman. As readers of Techdirt are aware, there's seldom a Section 230 case Goldman (or his co-bloggers) don't cover, even if only briefly. Goldman's tweet of the Supreme Court denial was nothing but the reporting of the facts with the tiniest bit of commentary. Here's what Goldman said (links removed for clarity):

It's not the least bit surprising, but today SCOTUS denied cert in Herrick v Grindr, a significant #Sec230 defense-favorable ruling.

Here's how Herrick's lawyer responded to Goldman's innocuous tweet:

If you can't read/see it, the tweet reads:

Sure would be a shame if somebody misused a dating app to send men to this guy's home as happened 1200+ times to our client, Matthew.

Here's Scott Greenfield's take on this bizarre and inappropriate response by Herrick's attorney:

Goldberg’s reaction to Goldman’s twit appears to be a call to make him suffer the same harm that her client suffered, to implore some unduly passionate nutjob to e-personate Goldman so that he should become the target that Herrick was at the hands of his ex-boyfriend. As sick and twisted as Herrick’s ex might have been, this effort to target Goldman for attack, for harm, was even worse.

Eric Goldman’s attention to this case was as a lawyer, a law professor. While Herrick surely suffered terrible harm, it was at the hands of his ex-boyfriend. Goldberg, a lawyer, would be playing the ex-boyfriend to Goldman, the academic, not because he did anything to her or her client, but because his view of the law differed from hers.

Now, it could be Carrie Goldberg meant to do nothing more than point out Goldman's belief that platforms should not be held responsible for speech such as hers. If so, the point was made in the worst possible way. I doubt Goldberg wants Goldman to be harassed by strangers simply for disagreeing with her legal arguments, but a straight reading of her tweet doesn't really lend itself to charitable interpretations.

Also, it's odd for a self-proclaimed "victim rights'" attorney who goes around constantly insisting that her entire focus in life is protecting those who have been harmed... to then directly and explicitly wish harm on someone who merely commented (accurately) on a lawsuit. It becomes difficult to take her position seriously when she suggests the same sort of tactics she claims to fight against.

But this is the unfortunate side effect of arguments against Section 230 immunity. It's become increasingly popular to blame the immunity for the deeds and words of third-party users. This, of course, makes no sense. But the alternative is to recognize users are responsible for their own conduct and content and that unfortunate truth simply won't suffice when there's lawsuits to be filed, grandstands to be stood upon, and error-laden op-eds to be composed for the New York Times.

Greenfield points out the ridiculousness of this newly-popular Section 230 hatred, which has somehow managed to draw in acolytes from all political persuasions. (We'll try to forgive Greenfield's use of "safe harbor" [like the DMCA] rather than "immunity" [which is what it actually is].)

[F]or some of those on the Herrick’s side of the fence, there is no concern for Section 230 safe harbor, which is seen as nothing more than a protection that allows websites and apps to avoid the responsibility they would impose to protect their victims from harm. This is a view gathering support from both the right and left, both of which abhor the idea that they can’t dictate the content of the web to suit their demands and desires.

Ironically, they may share a hatred of this safe harbor, but their notions of who would be protected if it were gone are opposite. Neither seems to have the self-awareness to grasp this distinction, and both believe that they will own the future such that their vision of authoritarian control will prevail.

Lots of people want Section 230 immunity weakened or destroyed. Everyone who does thinks the internet will be better without it. But if it's gone, the services and platforms Section 230 opponents seem to believe will become better will actually become more restrictive or cease to exist. And crude reactions like Goldberg's are exactly the sort of thing that will disappear fastest if platforms can be sued for things their users have said.

Filed Under: carrie goldberg, eric goldman, matthew herrick, section 230, supreme court
Companies: grindr

Historical Documentation Of Key Section 230 Cases

from the nice-to-see dept

We've been talking a lot lately about the fact that people seem incredibly confused (i.e., mostly wrong) about the history, purpose, and even language of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. No matter how many times we try to correct the record, it seems that more people keep getting it wrong. We've talked a few times about Jeff Kosseff's excellent new book called The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, and, as Kosseff explains, part of his reason for putting together that book is that some of the early history around CDA 230 was at risk of disappearing.

And now Kosseff has teamed up with professor Eric Goldman to create an archive of documents related to key Section 230 cases.

As Kosseff notes:

As I noted in the book, many of the filings in the early Section 230 cases (particularly from the pre-PACER days), were particularly hard to track down. In an effort to ensure that these documents are not forever lost, I worked with Professor Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University to create an online archive of many of the filings. Below are some of the key court opinions mentioned in the book, along with some of the important court filings, if available. The files from the earliest cases are largely in paper format. We plan to add these filings once they are scanned; for now, we link to the court opinions.

This is great to see and should prove to be a useful resource, especially about some of the older cases.

Of course, it still won't stop some from misrepresenting the law, but at least having this information available will hopefully lead at least a few more people to understand the actual origins and purpose of the law.

Filed Under: cases, cda 230, eric goldman, history, jeff kosseff, section 230

Can SESTA Be Fixed?

from the will-it-be-fixed? dept

It appears that sometime this week (or even possibly today), the Senate is unfortunately likely to vote (perhaps by an overwhelming margin) for SESTA, despite the fact that it's a terribly drafted bill which no one can explain how it will actually stop sex trafficking. Indeed, it's a bill that many victims advocates are warning will not just make problems worse, but will put lives in danger. And that's leaving aside all of the damage it will do to free speech and tons of websites on the internet.

Much of this could have been avoided if anyone in Congress were actually interested in understanding how the internet worked, and how to write a bill that actually addressed problems around sex trafficking -- rather than buying into a false narrative (pushed mainly by Hollywood) that the liability protections of CDA 230 were magically responsible for sex traffickers using the internet. Two academics who are probably the most knowledgeable experts on intermediary liability, Daphne Keller at Stanford and Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University, have each posted thoughts on how to "salvage" SESTA. If Congress were serious, it would listen to them. But that's a big "if."

Let's start with Keller's suggestions that she helpfully put into a Twitter thread:

First up, she takes on the problematic "knowledge" standard used in SESTA/FOSTA. Again, a key part of the bill is that internet sites can become liable if they have "knowledge" of sex trafficking activity that is done on the platform. But what the hell is meant by "knowledge"? In other parts of the law, even when it's more spelled out, there are examples of legal cases lasting years while everyone wrangles over what "knowledge" means. In the copyright context, Viacom sued YouTube and were in court for more than half a decade, with much of that being over the simple question of whether knowledge meant "specific" knowledge or "general" knowledge. SESTA could solve many of its problems if it made its knowledge standard clear -- and, as Keller notes, one that wouldn't require "teams of lawyers."

Indeed, this is perhaps the largest problem with SESTA (and may also doom the bill in court). Prosecutors and the DOJ have already raised concerns about the standards in the bill, and even the politicians supporting it toss out very, very different definitions. Senator Rob Portman has claimed it requires "intent." Meanwhile, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claims that the standard is "knowingly turning a blind eye." That's... extremely different. Senator Cory Booker claims its "a high standard" that requires "proving beyond a reasonable doubt." All of those mean very different things, and when you have the politicians backing the bill all spouting nonsense, and the law itself doesn't clarify, you're making a huge mess.

Keller's second suggestion is to add in real and meaningful penalties for bad faith accusers as well as an appeals process for the accused. This is also a big deal. Again, looking at the DMCA, we've talked about how the one part of that law dealing with bad faith accusations is basically toothless and almost never useful. And thus, the DMCA is abused all the time. We have all those lessons to learn from -- and it appears that Congress is ignoring them.

Up next would be a clear statement that the law does not require monitoring all speech. Such a mandatory monitoring system would have tremendous First Amendment issues -- but unfortunately it seems likely that some may read the bill to require mandatory filtering (oddly, others will read it as saying you shouldn't use filters at all to avoid knowledge -- and that dichotomy of results should just emphasize how poorly the bill was drafted).

Fourth, Keller suggests making it clear that merely monitoring should not be deemed as knowledge (this could be seen as related to clarifying the knowledge standard as well). On that front, there may be an amendment on the table that could help (see below...).

Fifth: the bills should make it clear that it applies to service providers that are end user facing, rather than further up the stack. Again, here's a lesson that we've learned from takedowns in the copyright space. As Hollywood got more and more upset about various things online it continued to move up the stack beyond services to hosting companies, data centers, registrars and even ICANN itself. We shouldn't allow SESTA to allow for the same nonsense.

Finally, Keller suggests that if we must go through with such a bad bill, there should be some requirements on transparency about the impacts for both tech platforms and government agencies, so that we can look back on the bill and determine what it did -- both good and bad.

Will Congress take any of these steps? It doesn't look like it.

As for Goldman, his post focuses on an amendment that Senator Wyden is offering. Last I heard, it appears that the Senate may actually consider this amendment. And it's an amendment similar to one that Goldman himself suggested -- with a very modest addition to SESTA clarifying the whole question of does "monitoring" equal "knowledge." Specifically the amendment would add the following language:

The fact that a provider or user of an interactive computer service has undertaken any efforts (including monitoring and filtering) to identify, restrict access to, or remove material the provider or user considers objectionable shall not be considered in determining the criminal or civil liability of the provider or user for any material that the provider or user has not removed or restricted access to.

As Goldman notes, this one amendment would fix the worst problems of SESTA (while still leaving in place plenty of others). If you at least support making SESTA less horrible, he suggests calling your Senators and letting them know:

If you think this is a meritorious fix to a bad bill, then *immediately* call your Senators (you have 2, remember!) and tell them:

1) You oppose SESTA/FOSTA because it’s not clear the law actually helps sex trafficking victims; and

2) You want your Senator to support Sen. Wyden’s proposed content moderation amendment because it ensures online services will keep being the first line of defense in the fight against sex trafficking.

Note 1: This issue could be moot as early as Monday afternoon, so literally CALL NOW.

Note 2: CALL, not email. The EFF has made it easy for you to do.

It seems quite likely the bill is going to pass very soon and then get signed into law. The fact that there are simple and reasonable ways to improve on the bill, which Congress is blatantly ignoring, is problematic.

Filed Under: cda 230, daphne keller, eric goldman, fosta, intermediary liability, knowledge, knowledge standard, moderator's dilemma, rob portman, ron wyden, sesta

Techdirt Podcast Episode 157: The Worst Of Both Worlds - SESTA & FOSTA Together

from the sum-of-its-parts dept

It wasn't very long ago that we last discussed SESTA on the podcast, but now that the House has voted to approve its version of the bill with SESTA tacked on, it's unfortunately time to dig into the issues again. So this week we're joined by returning guest Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy and Technology and, for the first time, law professor Eric Goldman to talk about why the combination of SESTA and FOSTA has resulted in the worst of both worlds.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Filed Under: cda, emma llanso, eric goldman, fosta, podcast, section 230, sesta

Senator Blumenthal Happy That SESTA Will Kill Small Internet Companies

from the this-is-a-problem dept

So, earlier today the Senate Commerce Committee held a two and a half hour hearing about SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017. The panelists were evenly split, with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Yiota Souras from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children being in support of the bill, and Professor Eric Goldman and Abigail Slater from the Internet Association worrying about the impacts of SESTA (notably, both highlighted that they're not against all changes to CDA 230, they just want to be quite careful and are worried about the language in this bill). I was actually somewhat surprised that the hearing wasn't as bad as it could have been. There certainly was some grandstanding, and some insistence that because SESTA says it will go after sex trafficking, it obviously will -- but many Senators did seem willing to listen to concerns about the bill and how it's written. Much attention was paid to the sketchy "knowledge" standard in the bill, which we wrote about this morning. And that's good -- but there was a fair bit of nonsense spewed as well.

Perhaps the most problematic comments were from the bill's co-author, Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has been attacking CDA 230 since his time as Connecticut's Attorney General. While you can watch the entire hearing, I created a short clip of Blumenthal's questions (which, oddly, C-SPAN won't let me embed here) so I'll transcribe it:

Blumenthal: I think I've said why I support this legislation, which I helped craft, and we've tried to do it carefully. And we tried to listen to the industry. We've tried to listen really closely to some of the concerns that have been raised this morning by Mr. Goldman. For example, the idea that this legislation will cause sex trafficking to -- I'm using your word -- proliferate. Hard to believe. Mr. Becerra, what do you think and will this measure cause sex trafficking to proliferate?

So... the idea that Blumenthal listened carefully is laughable on its face. He's been fighting this issue since at least 2010 when he went after Craigslist for ads he didn't think they should have on the site. And in Blumenthal's own testimony he admitted that forcing Craigslist to change how it worked only led to sex trafficking ads moving from Craigslist -- which cooperated very closely with law enforcement -- to Backpage and expanded their reach. I'm at a loss as to why we should take Blumenthal's word on what will happen when he admits his own actions targeted at sex trafficking in the past made the problem worse. To then mock Prof. Goldman for suggesting the same might happen here is... quite incredible.

Also, interesting that rather than asking Goldman to clarify his position first (he does later), Blumenthal starts by asking Becerra to back him up.

Becerra: I can't agree with what Professor Goldman has said. I think it's just the opposite. If we have a standard in place, then I believe the stakeholders within the internet community will come forward in ways we've seen before, but even more vigoroulsy, because they'll understand what the standard is, and I think that's so very important to make it clear for folks. The most important thing, Senator Booker sorta pointed this out, is we need to get the opponents of this measure to explain, in detail, what they would propose in place. Otherwise, it's always a moving target. It's Whac-a-mole. Someone needs to give us what a better bill looks like.

So, this is also bizarre and wrong. First, much of the discussion from Goldman and Slater (and us) was about the lack of any clarity around the "standard." The bill says that "knowing conduct" that "assists, supports or facilitates" sex trafficking can make a platform guilty of civil and criminal violations of the law. But "knowing conduct" is not clarified. And as we've seen in other contexts, including in the copyright realm, years-long fights can happen in court over what "knowledge" might mean. The famous YouTube/Viacom fight, that went on for nearly a decade, was almost entirely focused on whether or not YouTube had knowledge of infringement, and whether the law required "specific" knowledge or "general" knowledge. Nothing in this bill clarifies that.

Even worse, the term "knowing conduct" is dangerously vague. It could be read to mean that if the site does something that it knows that it is doing, and it leads to facilitating sex trafficking -- even if the site doesn't know about that outcome -- it would constitute "knowing conduct." Goldman had pointed this exact problem out earlier in the hearing, so for Becerra to insist that this is a clear standard is ludicrous.

Becerra is also confused if he thinks this will lead internet companies to "more vigorously" come forward. Coming forward with evidence of sex trafficking will then be turned around on them as proof of "knowledge." With this law in place, why would any internet company be more willing to come forward when that only increases liability?

Finally, the idea that opponents need to come forward with other language is similarly weird. SESTA's supporters are the ones demanding a massive change in the underpinning of the internet. Shouldn't the burden be on them to prove that this will help and not hurt? And, on top of that, it also ignores the fact that many opponents have come forward with different language (which I know as a fact because someone ran some alternative language by me a few weeks ago, and again earlier this week). So either Becerra doesn't know that or he's being disingenuous.

I'll cut the next section where Blumenthal says (misleadingly) that a proposal put forth from tech companies was to curtail or "eliminate" the ability of State AGs to pursue violations of the law (the proposal I saw simply clarified when and how they could go after sites) and Becerra eagerly says that would be terrible, as you'd expect.

Blumenthal: Let me ask, Mr. Goldman, do you really believe that this law would cause sex trafficking to proliferate?

Goldman: Thank you, Senator, for the opportunity to clarify that. Indeed, my concern is that we already see a number of efforts on the part of legitimate players to reduce sex trafficking promotion. To the extent that any of those companies decide 'I am better off turning off my efforts across the board, to try to reduce the knowledge that I have,' then that creates a larger number of zones that the sites will not be taking the legitimate effort that we want them to take. It creates an environment where there's more places for that to occur.

This is an excellent and succinct explanation of the problem. Under SESTA, the "knowledge" standard is so vague and unclear, that actually doing what Congress wants -- policing sex trafficking -- creates "knowledge" and makes these companies liable under the law. Blumenthal, of course, doesn't seem to get it -- or doesn't care.

Blumenthal: You know, I have a higher opinion of the industry than you do. I really believe that this law will raise the bar, will increase consciousness, and that far from trying to evade, or, in fact, deny themselves knowledge, so as to avoid any accountability, they will be more energetic. I absolutely really believe that most of these companies want to do the right thing and that this law will give them an increased impetus and incentive to do so.

WHAT?!? First off, if the idea is to give companies a greater impetus and incentive to do what they already want to do (as Blumenthal claims...) then threatening them with criminal and civil penalties for simply "knowing" that their platforms are used for illegal activity seems like a totally fucked up way of doing so. If you want to encourage platforms to do the right thing, then why is the entire bill focused on punishing platforms for merely knowing that their platform was illegally used? Second, if Blumenthal truly had a higher opinion of tech companies, why is he misrepresenting what Goldman said, and saying that companies would choose to avoid knowledge to "avoid accountability"? That's not the issue at all -- and is, indeed, self-contradictory with Blumenthal's own statements. Companies want to do the right thing to reduce sex trafficking, but this bill puts them in legal jeopardy for even researching if their platforms are used that way. That's the point that Goldman was trying to make and Blumenthal totally misrepresents.

And then it gets worse. Goldman points out a separate issue, noting that big companies like Google and Facebook may have the resources to "do more" but startups without those resources won't be able to take the steps necessary to avoid liability under the law:

Goldman: There's no doubt that the legitimate players will do everything they can to not only work with the law enforcement and other advocates to address sex trafficking and will do more than they even do today. At the same time, the industry is not just the big players. There is a large number of smaller players who don't have the same kind of infrastructure. And for them they have to make the choice: can I afford to do the work that you're hoping they will do.

Okay, and here's where things get absolutely fucked up. Note what Goldman is clearly saying here: this bill will wreak havoc on startups who simply can't afford to monitor everything that people do on their platforms. And then, Blumenthal's response is to say that those startups are criminals who should be prosecuted:

Blumenthal: And I believe that those outliers -- and they are outliers -- will be successfully prosecuted, civilly and criminally under this law.

WHAT THE FUCK?!? Goldman was talking about tons and tons of smaller companies -- or anyone who operates any online service that enables user comments, where they can't monitor everything -- and under this law will have to make the choice of whether they do any monitoring at all or face the risk of that being used against them, and Blumenthal's response is that they should be prosecuted.

Senator Blumenthal: those companies are not outliers and they're not criminals. They're thousands upon thousands of smaller internet companies, many based in your home state of Connecticut, that you apparently want to see shut down.

That's messed up.

Filed Under: cda 230, eric goldman, richard blumenthal, sesta, startups

Professor Eric Goldman Stops Writing At Forbes, In Part Because Of Its Stance On Ad Blocking

from the pushing-away-your-own-writers dept

Law professor Eric Goldman (who has guest blogged here on occasion) has announced that he'll no longer be blogging at Forbes. There are a few different reasons why -- including some personal/family related ones, but one of the reasons that stands out is that he's unhappy with Forbes' decision to block people using ad blockers:

Forbes turns away readers who use ad blockers, and that creates problems for me. First, I’ve heard complaints that the technology misidentifies some users as using ad blockers when they don’t, leaving those users stuck. Second, many of my readers do use ad blockers, and Forbes’ policy hinders those readers from being able to read my posts. Worse, I felt like I lost some reader goodwill for contributing to a venue with an unpopular ad blocking policy.

We've discussed Forbes' anti-ad blocker policies, even wondering if we should stop linking to Forbes articles. I know that, for a while, Forbes was misidentifying me as using an ad blocker and not letting me access stories on the site. I can say that, more than once, I wasn't able to read some of Goldman's posts, that we might have written about, because of those blocks.

Most of our focus was on how this impacted readers and also folks like us who might send Forbes traffic -- but it's worth also thinking about how it impacts writers as well, and taking away their audience, or otherwise upsetting them. We've seen in the past some writers leave publications that had put up paywalls, and now the same impact may be happening for those that block ad blockers as well.

Filed Under: adblock, eric goldman
Companies: forbes

Law Professor Eric Goldman: The CFAA Is A Failed Experiment; It's Time To Gut It

from the take-a-stand dept

We've been talking a lot about CFAA reform lately, but law professor Eric Goldman is taking it a step further. He's written a fantastic piece for Forbes that explains why the whole concept underlying the CFAA is a failure and should be almost entirely done away with. The key part is the theory underlying the CFAA is an attempt to apply the age-old concept of "trespass to chattels" online, in the theory that the online world can be considered not unlike the offline world. Except... it's not so simple. Not at all.

Stretching the ancient doctrine of trespass to chattels to apply to Internet activities has been an experiment in law-making. Unfortunately, I think the experiment has failed completely. The CFAA and state computer crime laws initially were designed to restrict hackers from breaching computer security—a sensible objective that, as I discuss below, should be preserved. The expansion of these laws to cover all sending or receiving of data from an Internet-connected server hasn’t worked...

He goes on to point out that there have been massive unintended consequences of trying to apply an offline concept to a very different online world, and to also note that other existing laws can already handle many, if not potentially all, of the scenarios that people normally fear concerning malicious computer hacking.

Indeed, because legal doctrines already overlap so extensively, we almost never see an online trespass to chattels claim asserted on a standalone basis. Instead, an online trespass to chattels claim is usually just one of numerous legal violations asserted against the defendant. These doctrinal overlaps mean we usually don’t need online trespass to chattels either to supplement the more squarely applicable claims or to act as a “gap-filler” to plug the rare and narrow holes left by the other legal doctrines.

And thus, his recommendation is basically to gut the CFAA almost entirely:

1) Repeal most provisions of the CFAA (that don't relate to government-run computers) and preempt all analogous state laws, including state computer crime laws and common law trespass to chattels as applied online. Note: without dealing with analogous state laws, reforming the CFAA is an incomplete solution.

2) Retain only the (A) restrictions on criminal hacking, which I would define as the defeat of electronic security measures for the goal of fraud or data destruction (and some of these efforts are already covered by other laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act), and (B) restrictions on denial-of-service attacks, which I would define as the sending of data or requests to a server with the intent of overloading its capacity.

3) Eliminate all civil claims for this conduct, so that only the federal government can enforce violations.

4) Specify that any textual attempts to restrict server usage fail unless the terms are presented in a properly formed contract (usually, a mandatory click-through agreement).

It's difficult to argue with these suggestions, which is probably why most of Congress will likely instead ignore them.

Filed Under: cfaa, cfaa reform, chattles, doj, eric goldman, hacking, internet, laws, trespass, trespass on chattels