mike scott wrote:
On 9 Oct 2008 at 13:46, Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Thursday 09 October 2008 13:40:40 mike scott wrote:
having seen an
example of how legal ignorance in the UK of normal computer use
results in reasonable actions becoming prosecutable.
Could you send us/me (i.e. either on or off list) a reference?
I don't have any links to the specific case I'm thinking of.
However (and I know this is OT for the list, but others may be
interested), it ran IIRC roughly as follows.
Web site notices attempted access to file system root. Turns out a
computer consultant was adding /.. repeatedly to a URL in order to
navigate from a deep link up to an unknown higher available level.
Perfectly reasonable and easier than deleteing trailing components in
the browser address bar. Unfortunately, web browser was mapping URL
directly to file system, with inevitable results. Court failed to
recognise distinction between (external) URL and (local) filename;
consultant was convicted of attempting to gain unlawful access,
rather than site operators of sheer incompetence. (Pretty poor
"consultant" if you ask me, but there you go :-) ) There was too
some nonsense about not having "permission" to access a web site -
which would apply to virtually all attempted accesses - the court not
recognising apparently that http was itself negotiating said
permission. It seemed to me the court just "didn't get it", and no-
one had enough technical nous to make it clear.
Our problem in the UK is that the law is sometimes woolly in wording,
and applied patchily (eg BT seems to get away with busting holes in
RIPA and data protection procedures, yet the above can happen.)
I'd think the message was pretty hard to misinterpret legally -- the
original request asked to unsubscribe "me" and is included in the
message that unsubscribes "me" (because it's a reply, not an independent
message). But here's an alternative that, while less responsive to the
request, would avoid the issue.
If such a request comes in from a subscribed user (say,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]), we can send a message like:
*From this account ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) send a message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (The subject and content are ignored,
only the address matters.) You should soon get an unsubscribe
confirmation message. Once you respond to that, your subscription will
be canceled. If you do not receive such a message within a day or so,
you can try contacting [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get a person with
authority to unsubscribe you. There is nothing more that the users on
this list can do to help. Goodbye, and we'll hope to hear from you again
some day.*
How about the unsubscribed user case -- did you see any problem there?
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