may the force be with you

The Eleventh Circuit in the case of Snow v. DirecTV held that a webmaster may not exclude certain persons from his site merely by telling them their access is unauthorized.

In this case, Michael Snow was the webmaster of Stop Corporate Extortion, a "private support group website for "individuals who have been, are being, or will be sued by any Corporate entity." In order to access Snow's site, a user was required to register a username and password, and to agree to a statement affirming that the user was not associated with DirecTV, inc. He claimed that several agents of DirecTV ignored this warning and accessed his site. According to Snow, such unauthorized access violated the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which forbids accessing an electronic communication "without authorization."

The Eleventh Circuit rejected this claim. According to the court, the SCA does not apply to communications which are "readily accessible to the general public." On Snow's site, any member of the general public could access the site by merely registering with a username and password and clicking on the words "I Agree to these terms." Such an easily surmountable barrier to access is, according to the court, insufficient to make a site not "readily acessible to the general public."

While the court did not explain just what sort of security measures would invoke the SCA, it did hint that a webmaster who "screens the registrants before granting access" would have a stronger claim than one who merely asks his registrants to "self screen[ ]."

source:http://www.acsblog.org/ip-and-tech-law-2883-11th-circuit-to-webmasters-telling-someone-to-go-away-doesnt-make-them.html

# posted by dark master : 6/02/2006 12:08:00 PM