- to access a computer with authorization and to use such access
to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser
is not entitled so to obtain or alter.
If you don't get it, court doesn't care about what's reasonableness, technically correctness, etc. Only if your lawyers can convince jury/judge. Twinky made me crazy, It the gloves don't fit... and so forth.
It is not specifically defined in the law, so it reverts to the traditional meaning: anything the owner of the system says you aren't authorized to access.
It's lunacy, I know. That's what HTTP headers and WAFs and such are for. But that's the stupid law, and it sent someone who used to be my friend to federal prison for changing a user agent and referrer and accessing unprotected data on the web.
Tread carefully.
Knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a
protected computer without authorization, or exceeds
authorized access, and by means of such conduct
furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value,
The mismatch between the world views of jurisprudence and engineers is a neverending source of joy. (If working in tech has made you cynical like me, that is.)
Which doesn't matter, because the WSJ is never going to sue you. But make sure you only consider your justification a personal one, not one that would provide any legal protection.
i disable javascript. so i can't even see their page (and hence i don't know my access is being denied since i got a 200 http response, which means "OK") so i try different user agents with the intent of reading the content they are providing. Just like microsoft case.