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***mandy*** · 02-02-2006, 10:38 AM,

Quote:Information technology continues to advance at warp speed, and the law struggles to catch up. When new laws have not yet been enacted to address emerging areas of Internet disputes, courts are called upon to try to use and mold ancient legal theories to achieve high-tech resolution. Trespass is one of the ancient legal theories relied upon more and more by courts that are grappling with Internet cases.

For example, in the very recent case of Thomas Kerrins v. Intermix Media, Inc., a federal court in Los Angeles just held that trespass was a viable legal theory to address the alleged distribution of spyware and adware programs...

eBay was a pioneer in creating a niche for this theory in the world of the Internet. In a case decided in 2000, eBay convinced a federal judge in San Jose that its servers had been trespassed by Bidder's Edge...

full article: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/...inrod.html

iron_chick · 02-02-2006, 05:32 PM,

This is just one recent example of the application of the trespass theory in Cyberspace. eBay was a pioneer in creating a niche for this theory in the world of the Internet. In a case decided in 2000, eBay convinced a federal judge in San Jose that its servers had been trespassed by Bidder's Edge, which maintained an Internet auction aggregation site. Long story short, Bidder's Edge used "spiders" to crawl eBay's servers to obtain auction information it posted on its aggregate auction site. The court held that because the crawling practice placed some minimal burden on eBay's servers, eBay prevailed on its trespass to chattels theory.

Gosh, it appears that back in 2000, eBay actually *did* have access to the IP addresses of visitors to its site, even if they didn't log in to a user account.

LSOSB.

iron_chick · 02-02-2006, 05:42 PM,

"To enable computers to communicate [**5] with each other over the Internet, each is assigned a unique Internet Protocol ("IP") address. (Maynor Decl. P 6.) When a computer requests information from another computer over the Internet, the requesting computer must offer its IP address to the responding computer in order to allow a response to be sent. (Id.) These IP addresses allow the identification of the source of incoming requests. (Id.) eBay identifies robotic activity on its site by monitoring the number of incoming requests from each particular IP address. (Id. P 7.) Once eBay identifies an IP address believed to be involved in robotic activity, an investigation into the identity, origin and owner of the IP address may be made in order to determine if the activity is legitimate or authorized. (Id. P 8.) If an investigation reveals unauthorized robotic activity, eBay may attempt to ignore ("block") any further requests from that IP address. (Id.) Attempts to block requests from particular IP addresses are not always successful. (Id. P 9; Johnson-Laird Decl. P 27.)"

Ebay, Inc. v. Bidder's Edge, 100 F. Supp. 2d 1058 (N.D. Cal. 2000)

LSOSB

dnc_ont · 02-03-2006, 01:44 PM,

[quote author=iron_chick link=topic=2471.msg8742#msg8742 date=1138901557]

Gosh, it appears that back in 2000, eBay actually *did* have access to the IP addresses of visitors to its site, even if they didn't log in to a user account.

LSOSB.

[/quote]

Maybe they *did*. Then maybe they enhanced that feature. And with most all eBay enhancements, well... 'nuff said.

sneakymagenta · 02-03-2006, 05:15 PM,

Quote:Maybe they *did*. Then maybe they enhanced that feature. And with most all eBay enhancements, well... 'nuff said.

bargainbloodhound · 02-03-2006, 10:55 PM,

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=2471.msg8797#msg8797 date=1138986941]

Quote:Maybe they *did*. Then maybe they enhanced that feature. And with most all eBay enhancements, well... 'nuff said.

[/quote]

Possible, but I think LSOSB is more likely.