News US court rules proxies, IP switching illegal

I guess this is what happens when technically illiterate people start to make laws and pass judgments on things they don't understand.
But saying that you would think the judge would seek the advise of people with knowledge on the subject he/she is making judgment on, much in the same way they receive advise from Doctors when dealing with medical cases.

 

A country run by retards. Wiping out bee populations and trying to control the internet. I begin to detest that country more each day.

 

I doubt accidental ip address change is covered by the law, as it states to deliberately circumvent a block.

 

No doubt that there will be an appeal to this judgment. Perhaps a more informed judge will overturn the ruling. A ruling or interpretation of law is only as good as the enforcement of it going forward. The ruling in question sets a bad precedence, but will it be used in other cases? It's impossible to tell at this point.

The whole big brother watching is really getting annoying these days. No doubt many more people will start taking countermeasures not because they have anything to hide, but simply because they don't want the government snooping around in their daily business.

Besides, the more information you collect, the more time and resources it takes to process that information. At some point, its bound to be counterproductive.

An individual breaks the law and they are punished, but if a government agency breaks the law, they simply say they are reviewing policy and re-educating their staff properly. A few of the head staff may lose their jobs, but they will likely just hop back in bed with private industry as a subject matter expert and end up making more money as a result.

Just look how many individuals actually did prison time for their role in the banking crisis. If the government won't prosecute the private sector sufficiently, there is little hope that they will police themselves any better.

 

Wouldn't it be the IP address of the router and not the one designated behing the subnet mask?

 

The problem is this: A "block" is too vague, and could mean simply unable to access. thinking that way, "deliberately circumvent a block" is what a system admin does when dealing with two identical IPs on the same network.

And that was just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many different ways this can be used.

 

do we need to spell everything out these days. a system admin in the above position has permission to deal with the problem, if an ip address of someone outside your network has been deliberately blocked, they no longer have permission to access that network, if they deliberately change their ip address to circumvent that block, they are breaking the law as outlined in the article.

 

Ha LOL just about every internet connection in South Africa is on a dynamic IP so all South Africans could now be breaking US law when they access certain sites

 

And if the US creates a law to allow it's citizens to be destroyed by drone strikes... if those citizens break the law... what then?

 

I don't see the problem here. Yes, if someone not authorised to access a network then uses a proxy to access it, it's wrong.

I don't believe for a second accidental IP switching or harmless activity will end up in prosecution.

Seems like a load of nonsense.

 

this would make using a US netflix account outside the use illegal and not just against TOS.
(as an example)

 

Seems the ruling could have focused on the "what" (continuing to maliciously use CL data after being blocked and having a cease and desist order issued) than the particulars of how it was done.

This company was clearly doing something wrong, and probably illegal, and had circumvented both legal and technological attempts to get it to stop. I think what the judge is saying is that while using a proxy is not in itself illegal, using one in the commission of a crime shows intent and therefore may rise to the level of being covered under CFAA.

Bottom line, don't get your panties in a twist over this yet...

 

In theory it would. But would Netflix do anything about it? Do they even care? The people doing this are paying customers after all.

 

This law will have as much of an impact as the anti-piracy laws. Considering the sheer magnitude of users who accidentally, and deliberately change their IP addresses (which is considerably higher than the amount of users who are pirating something), the only time this law can actually be even slightly effective is if someone is directly aware of somebody else deliberately changing their IP so they avoid a ban. I don't expect life will change for anybody who isn't doing anything sneaky. If anything, this law probably does more good than bad, when you consider that it can't possibly affect the average person.

 

From my understanding it wont affect your average user, you would need to receive a cease and desist letter before anything could be done, afaik.

 

more specific court cases being argued resulting in broad sweeping rulings that one party is happy with, a great way to make legislation.

it keeps the legal industry going mind, as a few months down the line they can argue the same thing over again but with a slightly different case and get a whole new heap of legal fees. Same as the patent 'industry', it's an area the legal industry has realised they can generate large amounts of work from, and work means payment, and that's the bottom line. Any justice done is a bonus.

 

This won't end well.
It always starts off with small things like this and end's up getting silly because of abuse by dimwit's in power.

 

So this would render services such as unblock-us illegal in the UK?

 

Does anyone actually object to the ruling in this case?

Ban avoidance is obviously wrong.

P