Posting Publicly Available URL Claimed a "Hack" 555
Urban Strata writes "Popular mobile phone community HowardForums.com is being hit with take-down notices from MobiTV. At issue is the fact that a HowardForums community member uncovered a publicly accessible URL for MobiTV's television stream. This URL is not encrypted or authenticated in any way, and yet MobiTV sent site owner Howard Chui a cease-and-desist letter for hosting a forum with the public URL, claiming that doing so is equivalent to hacking their service."
what about google? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that far fetch: imagine you are googling for your favorite show, and find some url with a video stream; and it's form a respectable "nbc.com" or the like website. How do you guess it's supposed to be a paying service?
Want a real life example? The other day I was looking for some bash command help, and the third google result was from http://www.experts-exchange.com./ [www.experts-exchange.com] If you access it directly, it hides the answers and asks you to pay. But from google, you get to the answers directly because of some glitch.
What I'm saying is you can't blame the user (or here, the website) if they never went through a dsiclaimer page that made them realise: "well, if I click this link, I will have done something illegal". Free equivalent services exist.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:-1, Interesting)
What I am trying to say is, if you used the URL and KNEW you should not use it you are morally stealing. If it was posted a s a here is a way to view some cool videos you may not be morally stealing.
In the short run it is the COMPANIES fault. They should have their system LOCKED down, security by Obfuscation is not security. It they did not do the minimal to protect their data, they are actually libel.
If I keep your Social, credit card info in a place that is not secure, encrypted and I get hacked, I am responsible and can be sued by you. If they do not want the average yahoo from watching their content they should protect it, and not assume no one will find the url. I could probably find it in google, will they send google a cease and desist?
It's just good business (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I know, secure connections are not rocket science. But it's business; the path perceived most profitable is the path chosen.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
WRONG! YAdefinitelyNAL!
Entering a house or other property without permission is trespass. Visiting a website is not trespass.
If this were a precedent, people could start suing you just for surfing the web. Visit my website without paying? That's a default judgement for $2500.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shame shame (Score:5, Interesting)
You've put your resource out in a public place with no restrictions - and they should be accountable?
Re:Shame shame (Score:5, Interesting)
DMCA notice to Canada? (Score:5, Interesting)
Silly MobiTV -- you can't copyright an URL!
Re:Is this what you want? (Score:4, Interesting)
WRONG. Based on your scenario we need to get permission from the site owner to visit any web site.
Any web site which is publicly available is de-facto a public web site. This is precedent since the inception of the www. Even if you had a button that said "Do not click unless you are a paid member of this site" you would have no legal leg to stand on if anyone else clicked it.
Everyone is making real property analogies to this. A web site is not a house, it is not a building, it is not a car. If it were, it would be taxed as such and we would all need written permission to visit each site.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm surfing the dregs of the internet looking for coveted pics of Natalie Portman petrified and covered in hot grits, and some javascript redirects me to a child porn page am I:
1. A criminal?
2. A criminal if I don't close the browser within 5 seconds?
3. Innocent?
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL but, under current law as I understand it, you're now guilty of possession of child pornography. If you choose to self-report or are caught through other means, the best you can do is hope that you're not prosecuted because it was an accident. The same goes (I believe) for possession of stolen goods ("But I paid $$ for it in a pawn shop and had no idea it was stolen!") or possession of narcotics ("He said they were just OTC pills to help keep me from dozing off!")
Awkward laws... Any idea of a fix?
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
->here-
Now,
The law is all about intent. If I replace an image on my site people are hotlinking to with child porn, I'm the one getting in trouble for it, not the people who suddenly see it on their sites. (And yes, things like this have been done. I don't know about with child porn, but certainly with hate speech.)
In any case, the content at MobiTV is legal and publicly accessible.
Re:what about google? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
The information, or Verizon's copy thereof, or their legal suscribers' access thereto -- those things are not destroyed.
The legally assigned rights related to profit for distribution are damaged.
Yes, Verizon can and should take steps to protect that value; but that doesn't make ir "right" or "ok" to take part in destroying it just because it's easy to do so.
The law probably should state that making information publically visible by posting it on the web without protection constitutes an implicit license to all who visit that URL. This would clear up a lot of problems.
If it were so, companies like Verizon would get serious about protecting their web-based content (or, failing to do so, have no recourse). Unless/until it is so, their failure to lock the doors doesn't make it ok to walk in and take what isn't yours.
123 and counting . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
It's going to be fun watching this proliferate.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
I signed-up for a morning exercise program with the park district was was held inthe high school. It was a weights and stationary cycles type of thing. The first day that I got there I went in the 'other' door into the gym and saw an exercise room with a lot of people my age working-out in there so I went in and got into it. Later the burly high school wrestling coach came in an put me in a hold and started yelling at me. Luckily when I could breathe I started talking about my wrestling coaches that I had in nearby schools and he let go of me. Then I explained my situation and he led me to another room where the program was on the other side of the main gym. It turned-out that this room was used by the coaches and teacher in the morning before work.
He was always really nice to me after that, and we talked a bunch of times after that about wrestling from 'back then'.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also not a crime to be in possession of CP if you did not willfully acquire it and did not discover its presence. You may, however, have some significant legal wrangling ahead of you before that defense is accepted. (For example, one individual was found with an external hard drive containing CP on top of his computer. He claimed that he had purchased it from a neighbor and never used it. Forensic evidence corroborated this story, and so he was in the clear. His neighbor, not so much.)
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
The web is a public network -- everything is assumed to be open to the public unless it's protected, at the very least, by a login. The fact that a someone intends for a page to be private doesn't make it so unless he does something about it. MobiTV is at fault for hiring an incompetent web designer. Period.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
To make it clearer, if somebody were to put a TV in their shop window with new movies playing and say that only people who paid for it may watch and all others must leave a public sidewalk, it would be ridiculous.
They are essentially asking for that, since the internet is accessible to the public (albeit not for free like the sidewalk) and they are not taking sufficient responsibility for the restriction of viewing.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, even better; there used to be a hill you could sit on in this town that let you watch over the fence into a drive-in movie screen. Is that theft? No; it's just spillover, a consequence of where the theater was located. They are broadcasting into the public space. They could have raised the fence another twenty feet to fix the problem, but they didn't care enough to.
This site could have restricted the accessibility of the URL, but didn't care enough to.
Plus, as a practical matter, they are now the latest idiot of the week on the internet. There is no way this will work out in their favor.
Re:Well, what did you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)