Mistakenly agreed with a scammer’s term of use Say, someone was scammed by a false online bitcoin mining service. He invested some money to buy the scammer’s service, the service was said to produce bitcoins online at a very fast speed without any user operation. But when the victim was about to withdraw his money from the online mining site, his money was frozen. However, prior to this, he agreed to the terms of use mistakenly (he skipped viewing the TOS and just hit the agree button) in the scammer’s website saying: You must keep online while the mining is running, or you will not get your money back. Yes, he got offline while mining, but the online mining was said to run at least 7 days to get money, and hanging 7 days online is pretty much impossible. Could the scammer be accused? What evidence could the victim provide to accuse him?
Accused of what? Clearly stating under which conditions you (the accuser) would earn money by doing nothing more than staying online for 7 days? You agreed to these conditions, but did not fulfill them, so the scammer (the accused) was the one that earned money for doing nothing. The scammer had the same motive as you had, earning money for doing nothing. In the end a Judge will make a decision based on the presented situation and motive of the participants. In this case the motives were the same, but you did not fulfill the conditions you agreed to, so the other - as agreed to - earned the money for doing nothing. The Judge will probably come to the conclusion that had you, in the unlikely event of actually earning money for doing nothing, would not make a claim that the scammer was trying to commit a fraud. So the Judge's final conclusion may be, that both parties had agreed to attempt fraud against each other and that only one would be successful. Since the agreed result (as desired by both parties, whom we assume are not minors) came about, the Judge would probably dismiss this case to avoid further waste of the taxpayers money. Based on the Jurisdiction, this will be worded differently - but in the final result will mean the same.
This would be wire fraud, which is any type of fraud committed using electronic communications (the term originally comes from the use of telegrams to commit fraud... just like how &quot;wiring&quot; money devised from paying the bill at one telegram station and having the bill collector take an equal amount of money from a different station.). Wire Fraud is basically a fraud crime over electronic communications, so it doesn't matter how you defraud someone, the fact that you did it in this manner is guilty... using a bank system to fraudulently create more money in your digit account would qualify. The bank would be the victim since it does have a set amount of money in assets that it owes to its customers (account holders) and Federal Insurance (which prevents the Bank Run scene in &quot;It's a Wonderful Life&quot; from happening) requires the bank to carefully keep books. Additionally, Wire Fraud comes with a $100,000 fine against the perpetrator for committing the crime where a financial institution is a victim, so it's in the Bank's interest to report a sudden income surge of fake dollars to the authorities lest they have to pay the fine out of their own pocket, risk their federal insurance, or lose their consumer confidence with account holders (who will pull their money and go to a more honest bank).
Note that what is being bought or sold here is actually information about the exploit. Attempting to criminally penalize the transmission of information in the US often runs into First Amendment issues. If a person has good reason to know that information is going to be used to commit a crime, or is likely to be so used, and there is no plausible legitimate use for the information, that person might be charged with complicity or conspiracy for distributing the information. But where there are legitimate uses, that is much less likely. Here the information could be used to defend against the exploit, or to identify and remove software subject to the exploit, or for research into such exploits generally. There may be other legit uses as well. Some years ago the Federal government attempted to prosecute a person for exporting a book describing how to create an encryption program. The courts eventually ruled that this was protected speech. I suspect a similar ruling would be made in the sort of case described in the question, but the details would matter.
Yes, it's illegal. 18 USC 1030 (a) (5) (A) [Whoever] knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer [shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section]. &quot;Damage&quot; is defined at (e)(8) to mean &quot;any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information&quot;. Your proposed attack would certainly cause impairment to the availability of the Stack Exchange system and the data and information which it hosts. Whatever else you may think about the Stack Exchange terms of service, they certainly do not authorize any user or moderator to &quot;destroy the site&quot; in any sense such as you describe. It's not necessary for the TOS to explicitly say &quot;you may not do X&quot;; it's enough that they don't say that you may do it. To use a firewall analogy, it's &quot;default deny&quot;. &quot;Protected computer&quot; is defined in (e)(2) to mean, essentially, any computer that is used in or affects interstate commerce. Which means practically every computer that has ever accessed the Internet, and certainly includes Stack Exchange servers. So your proposed attack would include all the elements of a violation of this section. Such a violation is punishable by up to five years' imprisonment if it causes a loss of more than $5000 (see (4)(A)(i)(I)), which if such an attack were successful, it certainly would. Greater penalties are possible in certain circumstances. Even if the loss does not exceed $5000, or if the attack is merely attempted but without success, it is still punishable by one year imprisonment or a fine ((4)(G)(i)). There is nothing in the terms of service saying you will go to federal jail for destroying stack exchange. Irrelevant. It is not up to Stack Exchange Inc. or its TOS to determine who does or doesn't go to federal prison. Rather, it is up to Congress to determine what conduct deserves such punishment (as they did in 1984 by enacting this law), up to federal law enforcement and prosecutors to investigate and make a case against an alleged violator, and up to the federal courts to determine if the accused is guilty and how they should be punished.
Where can I find actual cases where Blockchain (particularly Ethereum Blockchain) was used in a case, or better yet, decided the verdict of a case The results of this query reflect that that has not happened in U.S. courts yet. Mentions of Ethereum in those rulings are marginal and essentially unrelated to the blockchain technology on which major cryptocurrencies are implemented. That being said, the notion of smart contracts in Ethereum is quite distant from the disputes decided under contract law. In Ethereum, "smart contracts" is the term for programs that will execute a transaction in accordance to a predetermined schedule and/or conditions. Its involvement in contract law seemingly might only be in terms of (1) parties not furnishing the requisite keys, thereby frustrating the execution of that transaction, or (2) the implementation of those programs departing from what was agreed upon between the parties. Neither of these aspects has anything to do with the novelties spoken of Blockchain. Moreover, the expertise that programming and Blockchain entail implies that verdicts (or more precisely, the fact-finding therefor) would be premised on testimony provided by an expert witness. The average juror is unlikely to have the knowledge and skills set to assess the evidence (e.g. Blockchain, smart contracts, etc.) more directly.
Hacking into a computer owned by someone else and accessing the data stored on it without permission is a misdemeanor according to StGB 202a (de|en). But only if it's successful. So a failed attempt isn't a misdemeanor yet. When you notice that someone might have committed a criminal offence (regardless of whether you are a victim or just a witness), then the usual procedure is to report it to the police. If they consider the crime serious enough to investigate, then they will request the identity from the ISP. But the copyright lawsuits which are filed in bulk by law firms working with media companies are not crime reports. They are civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is when someone had a tangible damage because of something someone else did, and now they want money in compensation. When there is no damage, then there is nothing to sue for. So when you want a judge to file an injunction to force an ISP to give them the identity of one of their users, then you would first have to explain to them how much financial damage you had because of that person and that this is enough damage to make it worth everyone's time. That might be quite challenging for nothing but a failed SSH login attempt. But it might be possible if a single person made so many login attempts that it incurred you non-negligible bandwidth cost or even caused a denial-of-service.
united-states That is going to depend greatly on the circumstances. In the US generally anyone may express an opinion on the value or merits of an investment, indeed that is protected speech under the first amendment. However, a person with an interest in a stock or other security who publishes an opinion or statement intended to deceive people, with the further intent of profiting by the deception, may well have committed securities fraud. If the published text contains false statements of fact, known to the author to be false, or that the author knows have not been checked and might well be false, that is additional evidence of such fraud. There are other cases in which such posting of an alleged &quot;opinion piece&quot; might be criminal or an actionable tort. But that would not make the site illegal. It would be the specific acts by specific people that would be illegal. Only if the site were routinely used for such unlawful purposes and seemed to have no legitimate purpose would one be likely to say that the site was illegal, and even then it is a stretch.
In most cases, there is no direct legal recourse for such a withdrawal. Money in a joint account is co-owned, and any account holder may withdraw any of it for any lawful purpose. As the article &quot;What is a joint bank account?&quot; from Bankrate.com states: The money in joint accounts belongs to both owners. Either person can withdraw or spend the money at will — even if they weren’t the one to deposit the funds. The bank makes no distinction between money deposited by one person or the other, making a joint account useful for handling shared expenses. But a joint bank account should only be opened with someone whom you trust, since that person has equal control over the account’s funds. If the account holders have a contract or legal agreement that controls what money can be withdrawn and for what purposes, then a violation of such an agreement might be a cause for legal action. But merely opening a joint account does not create such an agreement nor imply it.