Online privacy threat averted
p2p news / p2pnet: A dangerous lower court ruling that threatened Internet privacy has been corrected, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).
Michael Snow, publisher of an anti-DirecTV web site, sued the company for unauthorized access under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), says the EFF, going on:
"Snow’s site had a banner and purported Terms of Service forbidding DirecTV representatives from entering the site or using its message board, but it was configured such that anyone in the public could do so."
A lower court had already dismissed the case, but for the wrong reasons, "holding that the SCA did not protect websites at all, even if they were configured to be private," says the EFF.
"However, the 11th Circuit clarified that websites are protected by the SCA, except when they are designed to be readily accessible to the general public."
The opinion reads:
Through the World Wide Web, individuals can easily and readily access websites hosted throughout the world. Given the Web’s ubiquitous and public nature, it becomes increasingly important in cases concerning electronic communications available through the Web for a plaintiff to demonstrate that those communications are not readily accessible.
If by simply clicking a hypertext link, after ignoring an express warning, on an otherwise publicly accessible webpage, one is liable under the SCA, then the floodgates of litigation would open and the merely curious would be prosecuted. We find no intent by Congress to so permit.
Digg this story.
Also See:
EFF – Appeals Court Corrects Dangerous Web Privacy Ruling, June 1, 2006
Zone-h – Music Companies under hackers’ fire, May 31, 2006
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