Power deliberately changed their IP address after being blocked by Facebook, so yes, they deliberately changed their identity and were in fact trespassing.

IP address does not equal identity.

For the purposes of this discussion, and the "technical solutions" the grantparent asks for, it does.

It really shouldn't. An IP is just an endpoint which could be accessed by n physical people. Going much further down this road ends up in some rather unpleasant territory.

So what if that guy moves away and Comcast reassigns his IP address to some other customer?

The guy did not do that in this court case, and for the purposes of this discussion. They did something else.

Pedantry. They instituted a technical change with the sole aim of circumventing Facebook's attempts to block their access.

This is the same argument people are making against this ruling. It sets a very bad precedent.

Arguing that an IP address is an identity "for this case" or "this argument" has the same fundamental problem. No, an IP address is not an identity and blocking an IP address is the physical world equivalent of putting up some traffic cones on a sidewalk. You can still get to where you want to go but you now have to "walk around" or "work around" as we call it in the digital world.

The only "clear message" it sends is, "don't use that IP."

I'm not arguing that an IP address is an identity. I'm arguing that Facebook made it explicitly clear, both via a cease & desist letter as well as technical changes, that it did not want Power accessing its servers or its data, whether on their own or on behalf of Power users.

> The only "clear message" it sends is, "don't use that IP."

Are you saying with a straight face that anyone at Power thought it was a coincidence that suddenly they couldn't access Facebook from very specific IP addresses?

> I'm arguing that Facebook made it explicitly clear, both via a cease & desist letter as well as technical changes, that it did not want Power accessing its servers or its data, whether on their own or on behalf of Power users.

Then it should stop authorizing Power to do so. Why would it let the credentials work for Power unless those credentials authorized Power access? That's the problem. The simple solution is 2-factor authentication.

This is a solved problem. If you have "open access" of your web services and and access is non-disruptive, I don't know why this should be a criminal violation. It shouldn't be criminal just because it doesn't fit with your business model.

If I tell you not to enter my house, and take no further steps to prevent you from entering my house, such as closing the door, it's still illegal for you to enter my house. If I tell you not to enter my business, and take no further steps for prevent you from doing so, it's illegal for you to enter (unless I have banned you for being a protected class). If I tell you not to ssh into a computer I own, and take no further steps to prevent you from doing so, it's still illegal. I think a lot of software engineers get so wrapped up in the technical side of security and dealing with anonymous and untraceable threats that they don't realize that for the most part, the law doesn't care about technical access control. It cares about social access control.

> If I tell you not to ssh into a computer I own, and take no further steps to prevent you from doing so, it's still illegal.

What if you tell me to stop doing it, but my friend is allowed and he types all of the commands that i tell him to type and then he sends me the data? That's why it doesn't quite make sense.

It doesn't make as much sense for a publicly accessible website and user tokens. It makes sense from a tort point of view, but not from a criminal point of view. The next step away would be for users to install an app that logs into facebook and forwards the data to the centralized server.

Thank you for coming up with a much better example than I could.

case closed, no new precedent needs to be set.

That's not how it works for physical trespassing. The onus is entirely on the trespasser not to go places he's not allowed. If a property owner tells you to stay off their property, and you subsequently visit that property, you're trespassing no matter how few barriers you encountered to that visit. Why shouldn't a clear "don't touch my web site" be legally enforceable, just like a clear "don't enter my unfenced, totally open yard" is?

Note: I'm not at all sure it should be enforceable, and the idea makes me uncomfortable, but I can't come up with a good reason.

This is a bit different from the common problem where someone guesses a URL and gets hit with unauthorized access. There, they merely lacked explicit permission to access the system in question, and the weird legal argument is that building a URL by hand implies unauthorized access. Here, the access followed a letter explicitly telling him not to access their system.

They weren't accessing Facebook with their own account, they were accessing Facebook with their users' accounts.

At that point there is a significant chunk of law which may apply: if they can be seen, by the latter of the law, to be falsifying their identity (by using someone else's) to gain access to a resource, then there may be a case for them to be charged with fraud.

Also, even though facebook themselves sometimes ask for the credentials to your other services (i.e. email accounts so they can scan for shared contacts), I bet their user agreements stipulate that your credentials for facebook should not be shared. I doubt they'd be stupid enough to punish their users for this, but is there some law that would be useful here for taking action against Power for encouraging users to breach their agreement with fb?

NOTE: I'm not a lawyer so you'll need to check with one before relying on what I've just said to be correct!

> if they can be seen, by the latter of the law, to be falsifying their identity (by using someone else's) to gain access to a resource, then there may be a case for them to be charged with fraud.

You've just made quite a few APIs illegal.

Where "impersonation" is part of the protocol no deception is involved, so this shouldn't affect such APIs. In fact in those cases it is not really impersonation, it is acting on behalf of, presumably by prior agreement (or similar by words that are a bit less anthropomorphic).

Using someone's identity is only illegal if you do it without their knowledge/permission. Valets don't need to sign a power of attorney contract in order to use your keys to park your car.

It's not really relevant to this case.

Car keys are not typically considered a form of identification.

Also, the laws against identity theft do not always (ever?) reference the victim's knowledge. In California, if you impersonate someone and profit as a result, you are guilty of false impersonation. The law doesn't care if the person you're impersonating knows.