Computer Misuse (Amendement) Bill

[Pete Chown]

Ben Laurie wrote:

> Hmm. Fetching webpages, sometimes - but not if I set up the webserver
> with the intention that, say, only I should access it.

In this case consent could be inferred from your conduct, since I
wouldn't know that you didn't want other people to gain access to it. 
This would be true even though you did not intend your conduct to
support the inference.

There are various offences which raise problems related to consent.  The
courts have managed to give effect to them without reaching a silly
conclusion, IMHO.

> If I send you an
> unsolicited mail is that with your consent?

I think it has to be understood that way.  A listening SMTP server has
to be seen as equivalent to a letterbox.

One thing that would be nice is a protocol whereby machine owners can
publish the permissions which are granted to the Internet at large.  The
robots.txt file is a protocol a bit like this, but it would be nice to
extend it to publishing policies like "no spam", "access to ssh must be
explicitly authorised" and so on.

-- 
Pete