Having a website is not at all like 'shouting on a public square' and is exactly like having a bar open to the public.
Craigslist told a patron they couldn't come in any more. The patron put on a fake mustache and tried to come in the back door.
Would you support someone scraping a blog to repost it elsewhere? Do you support crawlers that don't respect robots.txt? I don't see a problem with Craigslist saying 'No, you can't scrape our users content to post on your website'.
The exact details of which laws and how the court case went may not be correct, but at a theoretical level the website as open-to-public bar/store/etc is a perfectly valid analogy.
Of course I don't support a crawler who steals content, it's immoral and should be punished by law and community. But the way they approached this in court, is overly dangerous and sets a precedent (for the anglosaxon law system) which could be very dangerous. It's way to broad.
An open bar to the public? At a bar you have a degree of physical contact which conveys info you can not have via internet, that's why the 'square' example fits better (imho). But example apart, I'm with you on this: the court case sets a dangerous precedent.
It's actually pretty narrow. If you have received sufficient notice that you are no longer allowed to access a resource (in this case, the cease and desist letter), then you can't use technical measures to mask who you are and try to access the resource.
What you said is unrelated to the mustache, and really should be rephrased to this:
> It's actually pretty narrow. If you have received sufficient notice that you are no longer allowed to access a resource, then you can't access the resource.
> Having a website is not at all like 'shouting on a public square' and is exactly like having a bar open to the public.
It's hilarious that you would claim that one strained meatspace analogy is completely wrong, and your other strained meatspace analogy is completely right.
This is why laws in one context should not be mapped by analogy over to another context; they should be derived from the fundamental moral principle that the original law codified.
Not that hilarious really. You can have a web site and prevent certain people from entering. You can have a bar and prevent certain people from entering. You can not shout on a public square and prevent certain people from listening.
You can have a cardboard box and prevent people from entering. Therefore a website is like a cardboard box. You can have a moon colony and prevent people from entering. Thus a website is like a moon colony.
Sure... in terms of whether you can control access to it... which is what we're talking about. As opposed to trying to control access to what you are shouting on a public square.
Craigslist told a patron they couldn't come in any more. The patron put on a fake mustache and tried to come in the back door.
Would you support someone scraping a blog to repost it elsewhere? Do you support crawlers that don't respect robots.txt? I don't see a problem with Craigslist saying 'No, you can't scrape our users content to post on your website'.
The exact details of which laws and how the court case went may not be correct, but at a theoretical level the website as open-to-public bar/store/etc is a perfectly valid analogy.