9th Circuit Ruling Last Week Could Make Millions of Americans

It could be illegal to share passwords with out the express permissions of a systems owner and could be prosecuted under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

How many of us share various online passwords with spouses, partners, coworkers, friends, and relatives? At work we frequently share passwords for accounts. There are still services we use that have no option to add sub accounts for each individual that needs to access the service. A great example is our online hosting & domain name provider. While there are sub-accounts to access the hosting account there is only one account for the domain management and billing login. While the account belongs to my boss (company owner) and he accesses the account to pay the bill I'm the one that buys, manages, and maintains the domains. It would be poor business practice and impractical to have an employee "own" that account.

On a personal level I manage and pay bills for my roommate who is 67 and computer/internet challenged. I've also had to login and pay bills for my parents when my mom was in the hospital. My dad is also computer challenged, and it wouldn't matter anyway since he isn't the one that signed up online and listed as the "account owner" on most of them. Thinking about it, my mom would have to stop paying a couple of his bills online that are solely in his name.

There was at least one voice of reason:

“The majority is wrong to conclude that a person necessarily accesses a computer account ‘without authorization’ if he does so without the permission of the system owner,” Reinhardt wrote in his dissent.

This kind of reminds me of when Florida almost banned all computers and smartphones by "accident" in 2013. The poorly written bill banned:

849.16 Machines or devices which come within provisions of law defined -
As used in this chapter, the term "slot machine or device" means any machine or device or system or network of devices that is adapted for use in such a way that, upon activation, which may be achieved by, but is not limited to, as a result of the insertion of any piece of money, coin, account number, code, or other object or information, such machine or device or system is directly or indirectly caused to operate or may be operated and if the user, whether by application of skill or by reason of any element of chance or of any other outcome of such operation unpredictable by the user.

Well then, Facebook not to mention the internet is full of free online slot machine & card games. With one poorly written piece of legislation just about everyone in the state of Florida would have been a criminal.