Critics of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are
noting that very little progress on Aaron’s Law has been made. I found a
proposed text Zoe Lofgren’s bill, but cannot find an HR number for it, and the
links on her own database give 404’s.
Essentially the proposal would mean that mere violation of a company’s
terns of service, absent some specific circumvention of technological security,
would not constitute a crime. The write up
with a draft from June 20, 2013 is here. (Earlier link Feb. 5, 2013 is gone.)
Jaikumar Vijayan has an article in Computer World
noting the lack of progress more than one year after Aaron Swartz’s suicide on
Jan. 11, 2013, link here.
It should not be a crime, it is said, to lie about
age to get a Facebook account.
It still appears that the documents that Swartz
wanted to make freely available actually belonged to the public domain. Various agencies wanted to be able to charge
fees to access what amount to public legal and research documents (even
laws). These were documents that it
would not have been copyright infringement to reproduce verbatim on a website
(Jan 15), 20140.
One wonders if the government will start searching
cloud backups for infringing items, over various pretexts.
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