Can I ban robots? Say I have a website with content I want to protect. Say I want people to access that site — but only manually, while sitting at their computer typing the keys — not by writing some computer program that somehow accesses the data remotely or automatically by robots. Is that even possible to do? Say in the Terms and Conditions agreement maybe I include a clause that says something to the effect: You agree not to use this site by copying anything automatically or by using any robots; You will only access the site manually. I seem to recall somewhere on this site somebody mentioned a case that ruled that once someone made the information available, they had no right to control how others would use or access the information? Is that right or am I imagining I read something here that never was?
Pragmatically, on your server side, there is nothing about an http request from a computer program that is any different than one typed manually, so if the "robot" doesn't intend to honor your demand, there's little or nothing you can do. Most sites implement a "robots.txt" file in their root directory that defines the site's policy, and many/most of the web crawlers and spiders respect that policy...but it's an honor system. You can use sophisticated metadata methods to block programmatic access to your site...refuse new connections less than five seconds apart, for example. Edit: There's no law that says you have to honor an http GET request. You can allow or refuse them at your most capricious whim.
If the tool circumvents Windows' copy protection (which is a computer question, not a legal one, but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which this isn't access-circumvention), then it is a violation of 17 USC 1201, which forbids &quot;circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title&quot;. It is both illegal to use, and to &quot;manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic&quot; in such a program.
Most of the question has nothing to do with the law, it's about technical how-to or how-does, which should be asked in Information Security SE. There are two possible legal questions: is it legal to break into a computer system and take a database of passwords, and it is legal to acquire such a database obtained by someone else. As should be known in the US, per 18 USC 1030, breaking into a computer is illegal in the US. Given that, it is extremely unlikely that Google illegally breaks into other computer systems to obtain passwords. The aforementioned law criminalizes accessing computers without authorization, not (just) &quot;taking&quot; stuff from computers without authorization. The law does not criminalize receipt of illegally obtained material. Passwords are not protected by copyright. If Google were to induce someone to break into a computer system to get passwords, that would be legally actionable, however there is no law penalizing innocent receipt of illegally-obtained passwords (insofar as they are not protected by copyright). It is not illegal to access the dark web, at least in the US (probably it is illegal in Saudi Arabia). Using stuff gotten from the dark web can easily be illegal (e.g. logging in to someone's bank account, or forging a passport). There are many services which monitor the dark web and report breaches, which is totally legal.
You have the right to request anything you want, but there is a very limited set of things that you can have a legal expectation of them doing. The service provider has no obligation to block a user. You can likewise request a report, and from a pirate site I would expect no response. There is no legal requirement that a pirate site block an offending user after a certain number of offenses. There is no direct way to compel a pirate site to ban a user. Indirectly you might accomplish that end if you take legal action against the site, which causes them to ban a user in order to protect themselves If a DMCA request was not "proper" (the correct legal form) they will not perform a takedown, and may not inform you that they won't. Make sure your takedown request is legally correct and actually delivered to the correct person. If they still ignore your request, they will have lost the "safe harbor" provisions, and you can theoretically sue them. Since the pirate site presumably only hosts a link to elsewhere, their making public such a link is not itself copyright infringement, so you need to be going after the ISPs who manage the actual host sites. The pirate site might still be a contributor to infringement, along MGM v. Grokster lines. A standard defense against infringement would be "We had no idea", and ignoring DMCA takedown notices is clear proof that they did have an idea. That's basically what DMCA takedown is about: saying what it takes to use the "We had no idea" defense.
Assuming Chegg own the copyright, then they can restrict the activities that copyright protects The statement you quote is no more or less than the rights granted to them by copyright law. Basically, it's their stuff, they get to decide how you can use it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the uses that you have nominated are prohibited. For that, we would have to look at the specific fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright protection where you are. It's likely that both of your usage scenarios would meet fair use and probably fair dealing (which is harder to meet). You may also find that, buried somewhere in those massive terms of use, is something that deals with this directly.
Depending on your jurisdiction, such lists may be protected, but not by copyright. For example, in Germany there was a court decision that scanning all the country’s phone books and selling them on CD constituted “unfair competition” and was illegal, while hiring 1000 typists who would manually type in all this information would not be. Databases are protected in many jurisdictions, and a list of the 1000 most commonly used English words could reasonably be called a database.
That depends what is meant by &quot;not allow&quot;. Such a blog author could certainly include a statement that the blog was intended only for female readers. That would not be enforceable. She could include a ToS provision requiring a user to agree to such a restriction. That might be enforceable in theory, but it would be a lot of work to try to enforce, as a blog author does not normally know who her readers are. Such an author could have the blog require registration and log-in, and as part of the registration process require registrants to provide evidence that they are females. That might work to keep (at least most) males from directly reading the blog. If we suppose that the author had such a registration process, and someone brought suit under a federal or state anti-discrimination law, what would happen? Such laws usually only apply to &quot;places of public accommodation&quot;. Such laws have mostly been employed to address discrimination in hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar places. I am not aware of any case declaring a blog or any similar online service a &quot;public accommodation&quot;. Such a finding would be needed for a suit in such a case to be won by the plaintiff. There are also specific laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, and education. But those would not apply to this sort of case. So I am inclined to doubt that any such restriction, if imposed by a blog author, would be found to violate US anti-discrimination law.
This would be unauthorized access to a computer. The offence is found in Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Note that this is a criminal offence, approaching the police about it might be the best way of handling the situation (if you want to go that route, and also, I'm not a lawyer).