Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, "intentional access to a protected computer" maybe? Not a lawyer or prosecutor, but there have been some pretty ridiculous prosecutions under the Act in the past. I'm slightly nervous to even bring it up today, but I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out by now.
Absolutely nothing would have happened at the time, and you have no reason to be nervous talking about it :) In my reckless teenage years I did far worse very often and nothing ever came of any of it.
Please refrain from replying with what could be construed as legal advice without the proper disclaimer. Different jurisdictions have different laws, and they can be draconian.
For example, someone got into legal trouble (and wrote a blog post about the ordeal) after only a single attempt to browse to a URL from which they had accidentally deleted some text at the end.
A disclaimer should be implied for everything on the internet by default.
If someone wants to take some random anecdote from some random guy on the internet as legal advice that isn’t really my fault or problem - I’m not prefacing everything I write with an arguably useless disclaimer to account for such an absurd scenario.
Only people who would need to leave a disclaimer would be lawyers, and even they are saying it's out of an abundance of caution to ensure they are not viewed as giving a client legal advice.
Not really. I believe you are liable if the other person understands you are advising them based on your expertise in the specific field.
1. So if someone tells you they are a lawyer and then proceeds to tell you to do something illegal, they might be liable.
2. Some with engineers. If somebody tells you they make living wiring mains in houses and then proceeds to tell you to remove cover from a power supply and tweak it, they might be liable if you get shocked or your house burns down.
But I am not a lawyer.
For example, in Czech civil code there is something along the lines of:
> Section 5
> (1) Any person who publicly or in communication with another person presents themselves as a member of a certain profession or status, thereby indicating their ability to act with the knowledge and diligence associated with their profession or status, shall be held accountable if they act without the requisite professional care.
So you’re saying that you can be sued for telling a story, based on your life experience, just because someone on the internet interpreted it as advice?
So then every comment ever made that wasn’t intentional trolling and fiction then. Must be a backlogged court system with all those cases of someone being held liable for the perception of another. How does one prove they perceived something as advice? Wouldn’t it be easy to throw out short of the comment literally saying, “my advice would be”.
