Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the DoJ, You May Be a Criminal

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/are-you-teenager-who-reads-news-online-according-justice-department-you-may-be

by sp332 • 13 years ago

195 145 13 years ago

solox3• 13 years ago

That protection act is one thing, these terms of service is another. Why would sites like Popular Mechanics impose an age limit?

hipsters_unite• 13 years ago

I guess they figure it's better to be safe than sorry? With the patchiness of laws viz., the internet, can't blame them.

speeder4• 13 years ago

I make games for children, so I have to track COPPA.

Among the children product makers, it is known that US government go crazy with COPPA, throwing huge lawsuits even against mom'n'pop shops if they think you are somehow not meeting COPPA fully.

Even my business, that has NOTHING to do with the USA (our dev lab is in Brazil, our headquarters is in Switzerland, and we sell to Russia, Brazil, France, Germany and Korea) we comply with COPPA because we fear USA might find a way to screw us.

When dealing with USA (that I don't know why its citizens still believe is land of the free) it is ALWAYS better to go safe than sorry.

gambiting16• 13 years ago

As time shows, even if you have never been in the US, never done any business in the US, and done something that is not a crime in your country, you can still be extradited and put on trial there based on accusations made by large corporations and media companies. Imagine if Saudi Arabia tried to get you extradited because you broke one of their laws even if you've never been there - they would be told to go and fuck themselves. Yet when US makes such a request, most EU countries will jump like a schoolgirl and happily comply.

superuser211• 13 years ago

What's sad is that the only entity throwing any lobbying weight against COPPA is Facebook, and that plays in the media pretty much universally as a big evil corporation trying to get permission to prey on children. Not that that would stop it from happening in Congress, but the public support isn't there.

cbhl• 13 years ago

Frankly, I found this surprisingly misguided for something from the EFF. CFFA isn't the law that causes such absurd Terms of Service -- COPPA is.

Children have been misrepresenting their ages since well before COPPA was introduced, but I distinctly remember COPPA making the problem much worse amongst my peers.

I remember, a few weeks before one of my birthdays, having to pick between abandoning my Neopets account so that I could create a new one where I pretended to be over thirteen, or asking my parents to sign a printed permission slip for me and each of my sisters and let me fax it to Neopets.

I ended up doing the latter, but only because I knew we had a fax machine in the house, and my parents already knew (and were okay with) me being on Neopets all day long. A bunch of my peers just created new accounts, and eventually devolved into sock-puppeting once they realized that there wasn't necessarily a one-to-one correspondance between people and accounts.

I'm not sure what the right answer is, though. The moment that a child turns 16, 18, or 21 (depending on jurisdiction) they're inundated with peers who want to go on Facebook, offers for loyalty programs and credit cards from every store they visit IRL, and tracking cookies from Ad networks online. If a kid has $20, and wants to buy something from the local Wal-Mart, no one will stop him/her from doing so. But if a kid wants to spend that $20 on Amazon.com, COPPA prevents them from even creating an account in the first place.

As a kid, I felt like COPPA simply prevented me from participating in the world in a way that nobody would have ever experienced before dial-up became mainstream, and I seriously think that harmed my ability and that of my peers to handle the privacy concerns that plague barely-legal adults today.

speeder4• 13 years ago

How I love crazy interactions between laws and the unintended consequences.

And laws related to children are seemly really prone to that, like the prohibitions in taking photos of naked minors, that had three important results in my view:

One, allow stupid cases, like ones that DO happened in the US, where for example a 15 year old girl was prosecuted for giving photos of herself to her boyfriend (also a minor).

Two, makes illegal to take photos of some real crimes, for example if you take a photo of a guy raping a minor girl in a park and hand to the police, you can still be prosecuted for taking the photo.

Three, meddles with human sexuality in ways that few people understand, although many people now believes that people below 18 are incapable of having sex with responsability, I refuse to believe that my mother (met my father when she was 15, they are still married) or my grandmother (married my grandfather when she was 14, they are still married and VERY happy) were some sort of stupid children that did not knew what they were doing.

gambiting16• 13 years ago

I believe you have seen this article? http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mus...

3825• 13 years ago

>for example if you take a photo of a guy raping a minor girl in a park and hand to the police, you can still be prosecuted for taking the photo

well, that is just wrong. what if it is an unmonitored security camera?

gambiting16• 13 years ago

In the US recording child pornography usually carries a larger penalty than raping a child. Imagine walking through the park at night with Google Glasses on, recording what you see. And there is a rape going on - congratulations, if you go and report it to the police, you "might" be put in jail for longer than the rapist. Unlikely? Maybe - but it's completely within the law.

onemorepassword2• 13 years ago

In this case however, and in two of the examples you mentioned, these are no "unintended consequences".

The laws are deliberately broad to allow the interest groups that lobbied for it to basically lay down the law without pesky democratic interference.

In this case, it's corporations that want to arbitrarily add new restrictions they haven't even thought of yet (or perhaps have already), so they want a broad law they can later redefine and apply as they please. Making breaking the terms of service crime allows them to do that. It basically allows them to write their own laws, including absurd ones.

In two of the examples you've given we're talking about laws that have be devised by people that want to enforce a repressive sexual morality on society. It absolutely is their intention to make any sexually oriented activity by anyone under 18 illegal.

And the sick part of it is, that by making it illegal in practice, they slowly manage to convince the rest of society things that used to be perfectly normal and harmless are now Very Bad Things(TM), which in turn allows them to push even further. See also: the history of copyright.

This currently happens in every Western country. We are considerably less free than the previous generation, and things are getting worse. This is not "unintended", there's a method behind it.

rozap• 13 years ago

I agree. It's a shame legislators don't see this sort of thing in the same light as the court described in the article. Laws like this have far reaching and sinister consequences.

This sort of problem is summed up nicely in the original post - "As the Ninth Circuit explained, “Ubiquitous, seldom-prosecuted crimes invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”"

SagelyGuru• 13 years ago

Very well put, I agree with every word. Yes, it is definitely intended, including the following:

'And it’s no excuse to say that the vast majority of these cases will never be prosecuted. As the Ninth Circuit explained, “Ubiquitous, seldom-prosecuted crimes invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Instead of pursuing only suspects of actual crimes, it opens the door for prosecutors to go after people because the government doesn’t like them.'

People lobbying for these laws and the legislators passing them are not stupid. They are as well aware of the above effect as the Ninth Circuit or anyone else. You really have to question their intentions before it is too late.

kbenson2• 13 years ago

While I agree with the gist of your post, I don't think it's correct to say there are no "unintended consequences". For some, most likely including those who originally introduced or lobbied for the law, the consequences may be entirely intended. Even so, there were many people that had to examine (to a large or small extent, depending) the law before it was ratified, and I think it's likely not all of considered or wanted all the consequences.

I think that's an important distinction to make (it's not every legislator that's a corporate shill or working to repress an aspect of free choice based on their own perceived moral superiority).

youngerdryas• 13 years ago

>We are considerably less free than the previous generation

This is patently false. The internet and other technologies have opened up massive vistas of freedom. Your bunker siege mentality, exciting as it may be, is an illusion.

samspot• 13 years ago

> devised by people that want to enforce a repressive sexual morality on society. It absolutely is their intention to make any sexually oriented activity by anyone under 18 illegal.

A little off topic, but I just have to ask, at what age does it go from repressive to appropriate?

blhack• 13 years ago

>I refuse to believe that my mother (met my father when she was 15, they are still married) or my grandmother (married my grandfather when she was 14, they are still married and VERY happy) were some sort of stupid children that did not knew what they were doing.

Your parents and grand parents grew up in a time when divorce wasn't culturally acceptable and likely just "toughed it out".

http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Historical_Divorce_Rate_Statis...

fakeer• 13 years ago

A divorce is never a good thing, certainly not if children are involved. But toughing it out is not an option either. Marriage is a human decision and we are known for making mistakes, aren't we? And if we did make a mistake, we have to rectify it or try to rectify it.

Over the time, the increase in divorce rate has has a lot to do with (personal) freedom, education and exposure especially of women; and not to the mention the era of women-emancipation and after.

Each period in the article correlates with women's status in society at the time, and is mentioned in there.

It would be interesting to know what were the % of divorces where women initiated it(it's recorded, right?).

fluidcruft• 13 years ago

Sorry, I don't think your information is useful. Admission is data relating to divorce rates of people that were married in their mid teens. The yearly marriage and divorces tallies you're offering include quite a bit of "churn" from the subset of serially married. Particularly since the overall number of marriages per year has decreased significantly despite population growth.

randomdata4• 13 years ago

I recall one study that showed that simply the pressure of marriage was the source of many divorces. Perhaps the pressure that comes with marriage has changed over the years and couples of older times felt less of a need for divorce?

pcl• 13 years ago

These laws also outlaw the sorts of pictures my parents have in their house -- photos of my sister and I splashing around naked in the kitchen sink when we were infants.

mistercow5• 13 years ago

IANAL but I don't think those pictures would qualify as CP under the law (in the US), unless they are "suggestive" in nature.

afreak• 13 years ago

Point two isn't an issue in Commonwealth countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_of_right

It would fall under the definition of "means an honest belief that an act is justifiable". If the photo of the girl getting raped in a park was meant to help catch the rapist, then any laws that would have gotten you in trouble for taking the photo would likely be tossed aside.

Evbn4• 13 years ago

But "meant" is interpreted by the court, not clear by evidence.

sodomizer3• 13 years ago

I want to meet your parents and grandparents. They sound lovely.

In defense of the laws, however, they were formulated only to regulate sex outside of marriage. With love and marriage, sex was viewed as something else.

For proof of this, look to the prosecutions. If we had a vast history of people being prosecuted for marrying young, that would be one thing. Instead we've got a lot of busts in parks or having other public trysts.

Evbn4• 13 years ago

That's because minor marriage is illegal and simply can't happen, so they become trysts instead.

quarterto• 13 years ago

The word "soon" does not appear anywhere in the article. The original title is "Are You A Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the Justice Department, You May Be a Criminal".

sp3322• 13 years ago

I may have misunderstood the article, but hasn't it been determined in courts that the current version of the CFAA doesn't criminalize ToS breaches? I thought the article title was referring to a proposed change to the act.

Edit: when I posted the article, I added the word [Soon] to the title.

ncallaway• 13 years ago

Yes, to my knowledge so far courts have held that breaching the ToS is not a violation of the CFAA.

The proposed bill, as written, would change that. I think the interjection into the title is accurate, and makes the title less hyperbolic.

eli• 13 years ago

The original title is misleading.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

It is not - only few of the circuits has rejected the arguments. Until there is SCOTUS decision this reading of CFAA is the law of some parts of the land.

gambiting16• 13 years ago

I am still waiting for a day when Americans are finally going to realize that it's long past the point when they should be completely fed up with this shit and don't accept it anymore. Breaching ToS a criminal offence? Is this land of the free, or the land of the corporations again?

bhb9163• 13 years ago

I think you're a bit too fixated on corporations. There is nothing magical about being incorporated that suddenly grants you wide control over your elected official. In fact, any legal entity (individual, corporation, or otherwise) that holds sway over a large swath of votes will possess considerable influence over their representatives. This is the way of democracy.

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

Well, corporations have a lot more money than you or I do.

gambiting16• 13 years ago

Except that EU countries would never pass a law that prioritizes corporations over citizens. Why is US considering a law that would make breaching ToS a criminal offence? Because people want it? I don't think so. And I have no problem with corporations per se. I know this word is thrown a lot nowadays, and sometimes not rightfully. But in this specific case, it's corporations(and other large institutions) which want to have a free hand in establishing their own laws, which were not voted for, which were not discussed with the public,and which cannot be fought. And it's fine as it is right now - you breach the ToS, they are free to stop doing business with you. But making it a criminal offence? Seriously?

charonn03• 13 years ago

Corporate personhood is accumulating more and more of the rights previously reserved to real persons, but none of the same moral, ethical, or legal inhibitors are effective against them. You can't imprison a corporation when they break the law, and fines simply become a cost of doing business. If they get big enough they gain de facto immunity from prosecution even for serious felonies[1].

[1] http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/med...

snowwrestler6• 13 years ago

I'm waiting for the day when people take the time to do some independent research on crazy-sounding stuff before flying off the handle. Sometimes the crazy stuff is true, and it is worth flying off the handle. In this case, though (as the article admits), U.S. federal courts have so far ruled that violating ToS is not by itself a criminal act under the CFAA.

superuser211• 13 years ago

Minors cannot enter into binding contracts, so the parts of the terms of service that specify a code of conduct, waive liability, etc. are not enforceable. Minors are legally toxic because of this, and no self-interested American business would ever knowingly interact with a minor online.

Conveniently ignored in all the stories about teenage whiz-kids who make money off internet businesses is that they are invariably committing federal felonies. There is not a single payment processor that doesn't require its users to be 18. Apple's developer program also requires its users to be 18. So does AdSense. These services also require users to input a birthday, so the minors using them needn't worry about "hacking" charges - they've committed fraud.

Obviously we need to fix the legal situation that makes this necessary, but that's why. (And because my parents follow rules, I wasn't allowed to do anything vaguely entrepreneurial on the internet until I turned 18).

gambiting16• 13 years ago

Hang on,so you cannot open a bank account before you are 18 in the US? In most EU countries you need to be 13 to open your own bank account.

superuser211• 13 years ago

Nope. You can have access to an account with your name on it, but it needs to be held jointly with an adult (typically a parent) and they have to accompany you to the bank and give permission to open it.

ryusage• 13 years ago

IIRC, when I got a bank account at 15 or so, my parents had to go with me to the bank and they had to also have their names on the account.

VLM• 13 years ago

A bank savings account has no liability, so I was able to open mine when I was 15 or so without any parental involvement.

A bank checking account has all kinds of interesting legal issues WRT bounced checks, so I couldn't open my checking account until after my 18th birthday. Also no credit cards until I was 18.

Nothing defines arbitrary and capricious like our financial and legal systems, so this could have changed last week, probably to "protect us from the terrorists" or "save the children".

mintplant5• 13 years ago

> Conveniently ignored in all the stories about teenage whiz-kids who make money off internet businesses is that they are invariably committing federal felonies.

Or, y'know, they've had their parents sign up for such things for them. That's what I did.

superuser211• 13 years ago

But they still agreed to a terms of service which prohibits sharing account credentials with the intent to break that agreement. (There could be a service that doesn't, but "no account sharing" seems to be boilerplate in ToS documents).

gamblor9565• 13 years ago

That's false. Minors can enter into binding contracts, however contracts cannot be enforced against minors (but the minor can enforce the contract). Indeed, if this was not the case, there would be no child actors, singers, athletes, endorsers, etc.

If you want to enforce a contract involving a minor against the minor, you need to get the parents to sign, because the enforcement action would proceed against the parent, not the child.

It's unfortunate that your parents misunderstood basic contract law. Maybe if they had spoken to a lawyer, you could have avoided delaying your entrepreneurial ambitions.

superuser211• 13 years ago

>however contracts cannot be enforced against minors

Which is why businesses don't like them, and put provisions in the contract to prohibit minors.

My parents would have let me enter a contract had one been available, but because businesses knew they could never use the contract to their advantage (and against me), they wouldn't make one in the first place.

dkulchenko3• 13 years ago

As someone who legally sold a business as a minor (still a minor today), you are mistaken. Take a look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors

superuser211• 13 years ago

Emancipation is a pretty drastic step that most families would never consider.

dreamdu5t• 13 years ago

Which court case decided that browsing a website is a form of contractual agreement with whatever happens to be posted?

aethertap• 13 years ago

If this is truly as described, then it seems like it's ripe for use by privacy advocates. Kind of a robots.txt for data miners and snoops.

New ToS: "You may not view any material on this site if you are in any way affiliated with [irritating corporation or agency]"

snowwrestler6• 13 years ago

I'm not a fan of hyperbole or stretching the truth, even when it is in service of a noble goal.

In this case the eye-catching headline is directly undercut by the actual state of legal precedent, which is that individuals are explicitly not a criminal just because you violate terms of use.

There are a lot of good arguments to fix the CFAA...why rely on a bad one?

sp3322• 13 years ago

When I posted the article, I added the word [Soon] to the title. I guess a mod removed it, even though it's more hyperbolic now...

walshemj4• 13 years ago

yes making wildly stupid statements like this is no way to act for a supposedly professional organization - all this will do is get the EFF treated as "nut jobs" by law makers and politicians.

sodomizer3• 13 years ago

Notice how many of the comments in this topic verge on the hysterical, paranoid, reactionary and ill-informed.

It brings them out. The sheer emotional appeal of the original headline brings out the worst in people.

lr• 13 years ago

Too bad computer and internet literacy tests are not required to be eligible to run for Congress. Our systems is so messed up because members of Congress are living in the Dark Ages in terms of their knowledge about technology and the internet, and the only ones feeding them any info are "rights holders" (read lobbyists).

Jack Abramoff was on "To the Best of Our Knowledge" on Sunday night, and all I can say is, we're f*&^ed. I think I will start donating more money to EFF.

dinkumthinkum2• 13 years ago

Computer literacy? I don't even care about computer literacy or people learning how to program ... I'd like congress people to be literate and not only that but be in the slightest bit rational. We have people in Congress that think CO2 is not a problem because it is in Coke cans and ones that think banning assault rifles leads us on toward a slippery slope of bestiality and oddly enough most of these come from one particular party.

eaxbin2• 13 years ago

Seriously, America - What's with the complete 3rd world acting?

pekk3• 13 years ago

Did you understand the article? The issue is all our "think of the children" wailing has forced websites to bar minors from viewing in order to avoid very serious liability.

eaxbin2• 13 years ago

I feel that your comment actually validates my point.

Your "think of the children" wailing makes me, and I fear, a lot of other people / countries step away from you.

duaneb3• 13 years ago

I love the EFF but they've got to stop this misleading, sensationalized crap if they want any money or support from me. They didn't nail Aaron because he violated the terms of service, they nailed him for STEALING FROM JSTOR. Just because the charges were related to a violation of TOS doesn't mean anything aside from the fact that a TOS violation may be a criminal offense. So say that!

betterunix7• 13 years ago

"They didn't nail Aaron because he violated the terms of service, they nailed him for STEALING FROM JSTOR"

Nothing was stolen, he destroyed or returned all copies of the scientific articles he downloaded, and JSTOR decline to press charges. He was then charged with computer crime for violating MIT's terms of service, which is a dubious legal standard that was already shot down by the courts years ago.

Aaron Swartz was the victim of an overzealous prosecutor with a history of civil rights abuses and who had previously driven another alleged hacker to suicide. The CFAA is shockingly broad and puts the public in legal danger by its very existence. There is no defense of the government's actions in the Aaron Swartz case.

duaneb3• 13 years ago

Sorry, I should have made this clear: the reason he was focused on by the attorneys general is because of the theft, not the TOS violation. I am perfectly aware Aaron resolved the case with JSTOR amicably. And I agree with everything you said.

dannyobrien• 13 years ago

The article doesn't say that he did. It's a discussion of one of the worst aspects of the CFAA, which is currently being considered for reform.

duaneb3• 13 years ago

Fair enough, but I feel that Aaron's prosecution is the reason why this is a major issue.

walshemj4• 13 years ago

Seems a bit grasping at straws for arguments against the new laws.

Are news papers tos justicable ie are they enforceable - you can put any kind of crap you want in a tos/contract for example you can sign a contact giving up your righst to a public holiday but its not a valid contract and is unenforceable.

The test woudl be are teenagers restricted from buying the print edition no they are not.

For an organization supposedly all about understanding and lobbying for sane laws I would expect better than this pathetic effort.

pekk3• 13 years ago

The underlying problem is the huge liability which websites face when children use those sites and may interact with adults, or view content their parents do not want them to see. This is what drives ToS to include provisions that say children shouldn't view the site. edit: effectively throwing the responsibility back onto the parents to prevent their children from using the site if it matters, which is where the responsibility belongs

diminoten• 13 years ago

Ever since the SOPA 2.0 stuff from the EFF, I can't take them seriously anymore.

sodomizer3• 13 years ago

The idea of having a site's TOS be law is terrible for almost infinite reasons. None of the rigor of law is applied to it.

Thus, I implore you, all webmasters: insert the phrase "And you promise to have sex with a goat" into your TOS as soon as possible. That should make Congress think twice...

Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the DoJ, You May Be a Criminal

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