[Wikimedia-l] Block evasion might be a federal offense

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Peter Gervai <grinapo at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Martijn Hoekstra
> <martijnhoekstra at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 21, 2013 8:56 AM, "Peter Gervai" <grinapo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The account and/or underlying IP is
> > blocked. That is the technical impediment. The action that is now a
> federal
> > offense, it seems, is to defy the warning, by circumventing the block by
> > changing IP and/or account to do what you were told not to do on the
> > warning.
>
> Technicalities aside if I follow you right then it is a federal
> offense to edit Wikipedia when you were told not to (eg. banned but
> _not_ blocked). If that's the case the IP part of the discussion is
> mainly irrelevant as one does not have to evade a block to violate the
> ban.
>

[insert IANAL disclaimer here]

No, the linked case (and I apologize for posting a feedly link[0], it links
to an ars article, I was on my phone at the time, but the link is good)
demonstrates that if there is a ban to violate, the technical evasion of
the block becomes a crime. Evading a block without an indication to stop
seems to be not a violation, nor is editing in defiance of a ban while no
block is present.  It is quite possible that a final warning could be
considered a ban, but that's straying a bit from the original case.

[0] the target for the original link was
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/changing-ip-address-to-access-public-website-ruled-violation-of-us-law/



> > The central issue though, that it
> > seems block evasion is a federal offense, is not affected by the
> difficulty
> > in proving evidence for it. It is the question whether the evasion is a
> > crime that bothers me.
>
> [insert meetoo here]
>
> g
>
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