Aug 07, 2014, 23:33 pm
There's been some attention paid to a recent Forbes article that confirms what pretty much everyone has always said: Congress won't move forward with reforming the CFAA. There's nothing particularly new in the article. It's just rehashing things that were hashed out over the past few years: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a very out-of-date law concerning hacking, has been abused mightily for decades, well beyond its intended purpose. It got lots of attention as the law being used against Aaron Swartz, but the abuses started long before that. However, many tech companies, led by Oracle, have fought against reform (in part because they use the threat of the law to keep employees from running off with trade secrets, even though there are other laws for that). At the same time, the DOJ would actually like to make the law even worse.
And, in the simplistic minds of many in Congress, if the big industry associated with the issue and the government don't want the necessary reforms -- even if the public is interested in such reforms -- it's just not worth doing. This doesn't necessarily mean that CFAA reform won't eventually happen, but like ECPA reform, patent reform and other related issues, very little can actually get through Congress these days. So in many cases, in the minds of certain folks in Congress, it's just not worth trying, even if it's the right thing to do.
Source
And, in the simplistic minds of many in Congress, if the big industry associated with the issue and the government don't want the necessary reforms -- even if the public is interested in such reforms -- it's just not worth doing. This doesn't necessarily mean that CFAA reform won't eventually happen, but like ECPA reform, patent reform and other related issues, very little can actually get through Congress these days. So in many cases, in the minds of certain folks in Congress, it's just not worth trying, even if it's the right thing to do.
Source