You most likely believe you’ve got the right to get anything that is set before the people, in the event you are a regular Internet user. Not at least in America, where the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was invoked to support a user-special prohibition on obtaining a Website, and in which a block to be circumvented by the usage of a proxy was ruled illegal.

The choice was issued in a spat between Craigslist and screen-scraper 3Exploits.

The classifieds website blocked 3Exploits and then sent it a cease and desist.

On the stipulations question, Craigslist was rebuffed. As the ‘ordinary, contemporary, common meaning’ of the word suggests, and as Brekka expressly held, “authorization” turns on the determination of the ‘power’ that allows-or forbids-accessibility”, judge Charles Breyer writes [note: judgement was quoted directly, with all the first US spelling].

Thus, while not ruling all proxy use prohibited, the case definitely opens a crack for more extensive prohibitions on IP address cloaking. Because Craigslist had instructed 3Exploits that it wasn’t authorised to obtain its Website, and because that instruction was unique to 3Exploits, its use of proxies made up “circumvention” in the language of the CFAA.

Nevertheless, an average user – say, an Australian that took the guidance of the Australian Consumers Association and used IP spoofing to get around -specific applications pricing – wouldn’t be in the exact same standing. Such a user would be breaking a website ‘s stipulations, which judge Breyer said didn’t break the CFAA until the website instituted a certain prohibition.