It appears that Mel Sembler of Straight Inc fame may have been party to a federal crime with in the last year, and i want to get the word out.
To explain, I need to give you all a bit of background. You may or may not have heard of Aaron Schwartz, and the precedent that his arrest set. The short version is that, under the CFA laws, in certain cases accessing a computer system in a way that violates the terms of service, is a felony. Especially if it interferes with the day to day operation of that system.
SOMEONE from the Sembler.com domain has done exactly that. They deleted large amounts of content from the wikipedia article on Mel Sembler. Wikipedia TOS call that vandalism. This was done multiple times from IP addresses from within the sembler.com domain, and as recently as Feb 3, 2012.
If Arron Schwartz was arrested for downloading too many free articles, which was non destructive, why is Mel Sembler not being arrested for attempting to destroy data?
There has been a ruling by a federal judge that it is only a felony if technical or code based barriers are bypassed. This has occurred. Given that sembler.com attempted to conceal their identity by doing anonymous edits, especially since they played whack a mole with the IP's they used, I'd call that bypassing technical or code based barriers. When one IP drew attention, they'd switch to another. This was done multiple times. It was done to get around specific IP addresses being watched for edits as these IP's had been noted performing deletions previously. In other words, bypassing both technical and code based barriers. I think there is a solid argument here.
I need to get the word out about this. Spread the word. tell anyone who may care. Copy and paste this anywhere you feel is relevant.
