AMAs are "Ask me anything"s where people field questions from Redditors.
The panel includes Demand Progress, Aaron Swartz's partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Free Press, Orin Kerr, Jennifer Granick, Lawrence Lessig, Marvin Ammori, Tim Berners Lee.
Jay Cox of the EFF said this is what they're ultimately trying to accomplish by raising awareness about the CFAA reform
"We want to reform a vague, overly-expansive law that was originally intended to only deal with malicious computer trespass of a very small subset of computers. The law has been used in an aggressive manner by the DOJ, which believes that violating a terms of service should be punishable under the CFAA. For a great example of why reform is needed check out our blog post on the terms of service on news sites--some of which say if you're under 18 you can't access their website. The law was recently used in the aggressive prosecution of Aaron Swartz. Even before Aaron's death, we were fighting in the courts to narrow, and curtail, the law.
Common sense reform to the CFAA is needed to curtail aggressive prosecution by the DOJ and to ensure that companies can thrive. Large companies have all used the CFAA as a way to stop startups and innovators from creating innovative new products and services. That's why we're asking people to tell their Congressmen to reform the CFAA.
We're trying to: *) Make sure the CFAA doesn't criminalize simple terms of service violations *) Make sure that security, researchers, engineers, and innovators can create addons, new products, and new services without the threat of a criminal prosecution *) Decrease some of the penalties in the law so that low-level offenses aren't punished by an overbearing heavy-handed regime."
David Segal of Demand Progress on why the CFAA is bad (in its current state and with the potential new amendments):
"The biggest issue: Law enforcement asserts that it's a crime for you to violate a terms of service agreement on a website. Meaning that if Facebook says don't share your password with your friend, but you do anyway, then you're a federal criminal.
If Stephen Colbert starts a Twitter account for Bill Clinton, he's a federal criminal:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130409/08525322632/did-stephen-colbert-president-bill-clinton-violate-cfaa.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
This means almost all of us are criminals, which is a hallmark of an authoritarian society and means that we're all susceptible to prosecution if we do something that steps on the wrong persons toes. It also creates a chilling effect on innovation, because if you're trying to build a device or platform that's inter-operable with other devices/platforms, it's easy to violate terms of use agreements."
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