[nols]

The CFAA is absurdly broadly worded, so much so that it's extremely easy to wield against people accused of violating it. The DoJ uses it as their hammer, if they targeted everyone who violated it the jails would be overflowing.

[beedogs]

It would be nice if they'd target someone -- like Uber -- who really deserves to be punished for it.

[Spivak]

Writing a law that makes basically everyone a criminal and selectively applying it to 'people who deserve it' is the wrong way to approach this problem.

[pyre]

Ah, but Uber can afford a legal time that could make some case law surrounding the CFAA that the DoJ doesn't want to me made.

[yawaworht12]

That's not how the law should work. Its frightening that people think this way and it's the reason the US has the largest incarcerated population in the world.

[cookiecaper]

Yes, my understanding is that criminal prosecutions under the CFAA are relatively rare. It's primarily wielded in civil cases. It seems very unlikely that Kalanick et al would be brought up on criminal charges for this. I'm not a lawyer.

[toomuchtodo]

CFAA criminal charges (and the associated sentencing guidelines) were famously used as leverage against Aaron Swartz.

https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

"Even first-time offenses for accessing a protected computer without sufficient "authorization" can be punishable by up to five years in prison each (ten years for repeat offenses), plus fines. Violations of other parts of the CFAA are punishable by up to ten years, 20 years, and even life in prison. The excessive penalties were a key factor in the government's case against Aaron Swartz, where eleven out of thirteen alleged crimes were CFAA offenses, some of which were "unauthorized" access claims."

I doubt Uber had authorization to use Lyft's API in the manner they did.