Corbis Copyright Complaint

Corbis email | 04/16/04 | Jim Robinson

[supercat]

If you REALLY believe that you have the right to walk down the street, trying locks, to see if someone forgot to lock the door when they left for work, and then entering their premises "without legal risk", then please do assign someone to let us know when you try it. (I'd ask you to let us know yourself, but I doubt the county lockup will allow you access to a computer.)

I would expect that the locks are affixed to areas surrounded by walls or fences, correct? The existence of walls or fences would suggest that one would need permission to enter, though in many cases that permission may be granted by proxy (e.g. a sign that says "OPEN").

In the absense of signage or other indications to the contrary, I have a general right to walk up anybody's front walk and either knock on their door or ring their doorbell. The front walk is private property, but in the absense of signage or other indications to the contrary a public invitation is presumed.

For trespassing laws to be enforced on private property, it is not necessary that the property be made difficult for unauthorized persons to enter; what is required is to ensure that one cannot enter without willfully trespassing.

If someone has a web site which is password-protected with a username of "username" and a password of "password", then someone visiting the site might be considered a trespasser unless they were somehow explicitly invited. Such a feeble password would of course not be recommended, but its feebleness should not justify trespass. On the other hand, if a web server makes a document available without any particular user authentication, accessing such a document should not be considered trespass.