
Grindr Will Now Have to Sue Fuckr to Keep Controversial Tool Down - ccnafr
https://torrentfreak.com/grindr-will-now-have-to-sue-fuckr-to-keep-controversial-tool-down-180930/
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ekimekim
> In addition, Fuckr offers access to a trove of information about Grindr
> users not freely available

> "Fuckr does not bypass any technical access control mechanism and does not
> access any work copyrighted by Grindr LLC"

From a surface reading, I'm guessing that Grindr's "security" model is "trust
the client", and so Fuckr can access all kinds of information just by using an
undocumented API. Grindr's lawyers are claiming this circumvents access
controls, and tomlandia is claiming this doesn't count as circumventing "any
_technical_ access control mechanism" (emphasis mine).

This is all, of course, wild speculation on my part (I'm not aware of the
history of Fuckr or how it works). But if I'm right it's a very interesting
precedent.

Is accessing an undocumented API in ways the developers do not wish you to
"circumventing access controls"? It has a lot of parallels to the "change the
id in the url by 1 and access things you aren't supposed to" scenario. I'm not
sure if that ever got a definitive ruling either.

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hannasanarion
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is infamous got how broadly it defines
"unauthorized use": basically anything other than what the designer or owner
intended. So their case would be pretty solid.

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jsjohnst
But the CFAA is a criminal act, not civil. Using the DMCA for a CFAA violation
seems wrong to me. You shouldn’t have grounds to sue for a copyright violation
when it was a possible CFAA violation, imho.

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yosefzeev
This all sounds like some horrible joke instead of serious business dilemmas.

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auslander
Cyberpunk at its best

