Updated Forum Rules and Proposed Forum Changes

Oh dear god I've been arguing against someone whose legal education comes from Cracked? That's what I get for falling behind on my reading.

Ok, the Cracked article gives two examples of this "crime." The first one was a prison guard who was arrested not for giving false information on a facebook profile, but for doing so while posing as another person without their permission. That would be fraud, and the Act covers using computer systems without authorization for the purposes of fraud. The underlying crime was the fraud: using a computer made it potentially a specific federal crime different from just simply impersonation.

The second case I'm going to quote the article:

Further:

When I sign in to the City of Heroes forums with an anonymous handle, I do so with the full authorization from NCSoft. Therefore, the Act doesn't apply.

Theoretically speaking, using a false name without authorization could be construed as unauthorized access, but a significant percentage of legal scholars, including Judge George Wu above, believe criminalizing that specific form of breach of contract without any other underlying crime is unlikely to be constitutional. The very case that Cracked links to sets legal precedent that interpreting US18 1030 as criminalizing violations of terms of service to gain access to a computer system without the furtherance of any other crime or fraud is invalid, because Judge George Wu explicitly stated in his opinion, there are really only two possibilities: *some* breaches of contract represent unauthorized access and criminalized under the statute, in which case the statute is unconstitutionally vague, or *all* breaches of contract represent unauthorized access and criminalized under the statute, in which case the statute is unconstitutionally broad.

If that is your excuse I'm going to assume this is a blanket disclaimer.

Typically, if Arcanaville's quoting makes someone look foolish, it's not because she quoted them but because they said whatever it was in the first place.

See my Guides and Tutorials

This is clearly my fault.

You can add it to the disclaimer I put in my post (that you didn't keep in your quote):

Taking information that is organized specifically by what the reader is looking for and smashing it together with things that are unrelated is not simplifying.

The Tank forum generally does not have threads on "how does taunt work" or things equally generic. It has specific questions about tank builds and powers. Having that convenience removed by smooshing irrelevant information about brutes in there does nothing but make things harder to find.

That disclaimer was irrelevant, so it wasn't necessary to quote. I don't care if you think the law is fair or reasonable, I only care what you assert the law to say. You explicitly said "using anything but your real name on the internet is illegal in the US" because of that Act, and that statement is false. It does not anywhere say that. Every element of the Act refers to unauthorized access. Using a pseudonym here on the City of Heroes forums, for example, is authorized access. I'm allowed to do so, so I am.

That's separate from the fact that federal precedent states legally that the misdemeanor sections involving unauthorized access without an underlying act of fraud, theft, or damage are not to be interpreted as implying breach of contractual requirements represents unauthorized access as defined in the law.

Its too bad there are no estoppel rules in the forum EULA.

I could not agree more strongly. Most MMO's have class specific forums; f2pers looking for info will expect it (and so do I - it is the only section of the forums that I regularly browse). This one is not your typical MMO - free players are going to need AT specific guidance. Please don't make it harder to find what they need.

Bluntly: this is meddling, not fixing. A section titled "Archetypes" followed by a forum for each archetype is not confusing - it is properly organized as people would expect.

@Zwillinger: it seems to me that your basic objection is not to the forums themselves so much as to the way in which they are presented. Perhaps the best fix would be to focus on improved presentation rather than changing the actual forums.

Does that even work? Most people I've seen use a simple image tag in their sig, not that upload link.

The one time I tested it I used Option 1. Yes, it worked.

I've never tested Option 2 so can't comment on it.