The Protected Privacy Rights of a Computer? and Follow-Up Decision

Follow on to the prior link:

http://www.alternet.org/culture/sharing-streaming-service-passwords-federal-crime

"According to Vice’s Jason Koebler, the prosecution’s case relied on a clause in the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that stated that made it a criminal act to “knowingly and with intent to defraud access a protected computer without authorization.”

Several things to comment on here!

What is a "protected computer"?  It could be the computer itself.  My mac is protected by my password.  I own a protected password entry computer hardware device.  Call it a thing on the Internet of Things IoT.  Like I am a thing object physical body human being on the internet of people.  I am protected by rights that cannot be infringed upon.  Some apply to my body others apply to my being, the part of me that is software in my brain as a separate distinct unique entity attribute of Me.

I may say that a any violation of my Civil Rights is a violation of me.  If it is a violation of my right to life in the strict definition of "living breathing" it is a violation of my physical body.  Violation of my right to Free Speech would be a violation of my consciousness.... What gets violated in this situation.  An expression made by my body in some fashion like speaking, and therefore my body or an expression of my mind.

Mind and Body.  Substance and spirit.  A binary one to one exclusive relationship of a human being.  By definition I think that it would be generally agreed that all living breathing human beings have a mind spirit as long as they are living breathing unless by definition they are brain dead.  Pre-natal is another category but that is another matter.

What exactly is the entity relationship between hardware and software.  Computer and Operating system.  Body and mind.  As Artificial Intelligence emerges it is becoming a more interesting question.  It looks like the model for Intelligence has been established already by Natural Intelligence.  Broader definitions of Intelligence are being made that say all things have a natural intelligence.  All matter has its associated link to information content that enables it to be an object with attributes, methods and means of communicating messages to other objects.

Human Rights are exclusively human.  Duh.  Animal Rights, Environmental Rights.  The "Rights of things are an evolving definition challenging the human centric notion of all rights revolve around us.  Some say God said so when he told us to go forth, multiply and dominate the earth.  Earth was once the center of the universe.  Now it is the USA.  We just tend to perceive things in a natural discriminating way...

Defraud? http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/defraud:
"
To make a Misrepresentation of an existing material fact, knowing it to be false or making it recklessly without regard to whether it is true or false, intending for someone to rely on the misrepresentation and under circumstances in which such person does rely on it to his or her damage. To practice Fraud; to cheat or trick. To deprive a person of property or any interest, estate, or right by fraud, deceit, or artifice.
Intent to defraud means an intention to deceive another person, and to induce such other person, in reliance upon such deception, to assume, create, transfer, alter, or terminate a right, obligation, or power with reference to property."

Fraud is the noun.  Defraud is a verb.  Fraud as the subject of a phrase is perpetrated (defraud) upon an object of the subject (fraud) "Someone".  Someone being anyone who we define as a "Person" because they have certain ascribed attribute entities of Person.

A company is a Person my friend.

Is a computer a Person?  It owns conceptual things.  Those conceptual things that have attributes of Ownership Rights.  

or:

Is the conceptual thing called Software on the physical device called Computer the essence of the entity we have given the name Computer that is technically the physical device but commonly used to mean not what the physical device is or does  but what the Software is or does for us.  Analogous to calling a thing and Internet when we really mean what is actually the World Wide Web.  The information content residing on a computer.

One way of looking at it is that computers have no rights.  It is the software residing on computers that have rights.  "Person" entities own rights to the software.  The privacy protection and authorizations associated with a "Key" to a computer is actually a key to the software content on a hardware device.  A "Computer" is a hardware device! https://www.google.com/?client=seamonkey-a#q=Computer+definiton

More precisely....computing loves precision...Protected Privacy Rights relate in a Object Oriented conceptual structure to the Conceptual Software Entity residing on and in relationship to a Physical Hardware Device Entity.

I think that the accurate frame of reference for this this Problem Domain of Protected Privacy Rights is the Conceptual Software existing on the Hardware Device we commonly call a Computer.  

As an example perhaps:  Cars are becoming endowed with Artificial Intelligence.  A conceptual entity with attributes of Natural Intelligence.  Ownership and access to a car is one thing but ownership rights and access to the artificial intelligence software that operates the car is distinct from rights to ownership of the car itself.  That situation is a matter that is evolving toward resolution resolved by the legal system. 

The principal Object Problem Domain to solve the problem is in the frame of Software, not Hardware.  Addressing the problem domain technically in terms of  "Protected Privacy Rights of a Computer" when "Software" is the meaning confuses the issue.

This MIT review conflates the meaning of Computer (the hardware device) with Software.  It is a technical matter but fortunately we know what the review means when it uses the term Computer loosely to mean Software.  It is a Software war.  We are so used to Hardware war that it will be a long time before we see it as a battle of minds rather than a battle of bodies.

The essence of the Information Age is that we have created the ability to detach the physical binding of conceptual things from their physical representation and manage them better in a conceptual domain free from their binding to a related physical domain.  The general way we think and express things in the Information Age continues to be a manner of associating the conceptual essence of a thing to its physical expression relationship even when we are, to be precise talking about the Conceptual nature detached from but directly associated with its physical expression.  

Apple and oranges are both fruits.  Physical and Conceptual are both Entity Objects.  Talking about Apples when we mean Oranges is the definition of confusion by conflation.   The Information Age requires us to be more precise yet for example we continue to identify what is really the World Wide Web (Conceptual Stuff) using the term Internet (Hardware stuff).  Fortunately most of us also recognize the difference between our cell phones and its software operating system and the software apps that run on that operating system.

Detachment of the tight Physical binding to its Conceptual attributes is the essence of the Information Age?  Yes, indeed.  That is what we will do with driverless cars.  The physical binding connection of a human to a car is detached and a conceptual essence of the relationship is therefore freed to undertaken by a non human conceptual entity software abstract of human intelligence called Artificial Intelligence implemented in software to drive the car.  What happens to the human driver?  It goes to the back seat.  Or even farther removed to not being in the vehicle at all when the intent is not to convey a physical human but to convey things.

The follow up decsion:
 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/ninth-circuit-panel-backs-away-dangerous-password-sharing-decision-creates-even

Good thing.  This deserves an better examination of the situation at the higher macro Object Oriented level of Information Organization rights of ownership.