Can we just 'bottom line' this ?

[thehat]

I'm not a law person either, and probably am getting it wrong here, but I'll ask the question anyway, The Act ostensibly targets those who wish to gain unauthorised access to computer systems (for whatever reason)...as picscout and other bots/ spiders /scrapers /snoopers / fuskers are not invited in to our systems aren't they therefore "hackers"  and contravening the act??
Is there also not another part of law that says evidence gathered must be inline with legal search methods...i.e. a search warrant...and any evidence gathered to the contrary (without a warrant) is inadmissible...if it ever came to court??

[DavidVGoliath]

On evidence: search warrants are requirements under criminal law, and copyright matters are civil law.

Also, if the language of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 were to mean PicScout were illegal, then so too would the core technologies of many search engines - and I'm sure that we'd have heard all about that by now

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

see my replay above, if it's not password protected, it's accessible, simple as that. in this day and age the "stealing bandwidth" is just not an issue. I think a better way to look at is like this..Using your garden house..
scenario a: the house is locked, but you break the window and grab something...obviosly this would be breaking/entering, burglary etc.. or hacking.

scenario b: the house is locked, the windows are are locked, but the curtains are open, you peek in , have a look and leave..no harm no foul.