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Consenting To Computer Use, James Grimmelmann
Consenting To Computer Use, James Grimmelmann
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) makes it a crime to “access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access.” Courts and commentators have struggled to explain what types of conduct by a computer user are “without authorization.” But this approach is backwards; authorization is not so much a question of what a computer user does, as it is a question of what a computer owner allows.
In other words, authorization under the CFAA is an issue of consent, not conduct; to understand authorization, we need to understand consent. Building on Peter Westen’s taxonomy of consent, I argue …