Appeals Court Agrees with EFF that Building a Web Browser Doesn’t Violate the CFAA

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has endorsed a commonsense technical interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a law not usually given to such interpretation. Amazon had sued Perplexity AI to try to shut down its Comet browser, claiming the browser’s optional agentic AI “Assistant” that can browse websites like Amazon for comparison shopping purposes, violated the CFAA because Amazon did not “authorize” Perplexity to access Amazon users’ accounts. Rejecting that theory, the Ninth Circuit held that Perplexity was unlikely to be liable because users operate the tool, not Perplexity. That’s the right conclusion, as both a legal and technical matter. As we explained to the court in our amicus brief, the CFAA...

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