The Aaron Swartz case has triggered a lot of interest in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030, the federal statute prohibiting unauthorized access to computers. Given that interest, I thought I would provide links to my academic articles on the Act and its overbreath:
1) Cybercrime’s Scope: Interpreting ‘Access’ and ‘Authorization’ in Computer Misuse Statutes, 78 NYU Law Review 1278 (2003). This article explained the origins of “unauthorized access” laws and showed how courts had begun to construe them in unreasonably broad ways. It advocated a narrow reading of the statutes so that their coverage would be limited to the breach of technological access barriers.
2) Vagueness Challenges to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 94 Minn. L. Rev. 1561 (2010). This article documented the incredible growth in the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act since its enactment. It then showed how vagueness challenges to the statute could be used to narrow the scope of the statute by focusing on two recent criminal prosecutions, United States v. Drew and United States v. Nosal.