Researches that trespass a digital network aren't the only ones who are affected, though.
Let's say, a quote from the OP article:
"Lanier said that after finding severe vulnerabilities in an unnamed “embedded device marketed towards children” and reporting them to the manufacturer, he received calls from lawyers threatening him with action.
[...]
As is often the case with CFAA things when they go to court, the lawyers and even sometimes the technical people or business people don't understand what it is you actually did. There were claims that we were 'hacking into their systems'.
The threat of a CFAA prosecution forced Lanier and his team to walk away from the research."
There's nothing to that anecdote other than a company getting mad about exposing defects in a product and their lawyer making a nasty phone call.
The CFAA is vague and over-broad, you won't get any disagreement from me on that. Applying it in a case involving a device you bought and own is totally inconsistent with traditional norms of private property. But those are edge cases. The actual prosecutions people get up in arms about aren't edge cases. They pertain to conduct that clearly violates the norms of trespassing on private property, and hackers justify their actions by saying that those norms shouldn't apply to digital networks. Juries, unsurprisingly, don't buy that. So hackers and the broader tech community call them "ignorant."
You've also got the Sony VS Hotz lawsuit, where Hotz was forced to back-off. Edge cases, maybe, but demonstrate that not everybody draws the line at the same place.
For you, someone finding a vulnerability in the software that provides a network service, hosted in some server he doesn't own, is clearly trespassing private property -even if he only accesses his own account's data- but finding a vulnerability in the software that comes bundled on a device he bought, is not.
For Sony, let's say, both constitutes violations of her property -it's her software, she owns it and she doesn't care if the carrier is her server or the device she just sold you. In both cases she only gives you permission to use her software in a certain way, which excludes any sort of hacking.
Maybe the reason that many draw the line to the medium, is because it is easier to visually compare a computer network to a physical property than a device that you have bought (but has data you don't own)?
But is the physical ownership of the medium that carries the data what matters or the ownership of the actual data that are being accessed? If it's the medium, why, when the really important thing that the owner cares to protect is, in almost all cases, the data?
Not trying to argue, just expressing some questions that I think are tricky and deserve more thought than they get. In any case, I think physical and digital property analogies can only take us that far, so I try to keep clear of them.
Sony vs. George Hotz was a civil case in which the CFAA played a small role compared to the numerous other statutes invoked, and that case ended in a settlement.
What we are talking about in this thread is the supposed criminalization of security research. If you're trying to get someone to take the other side of the argument that security research is needlessly legally risky, you're probably not going to find many takers. There is a world of difference, however, between being sued and being imprisoned.
"Lanier said that after finding severe vulnerabilities in an unnamed “embedded device marketed towards children” and reporting them to the manufacturer, he received calls from lawyers threatening him with action. [...] As is often the case with CFAA things when they go to court, the lawyers and even sometimes the technical people or business people don't understand what it is you actually did. There were claims that we were 'hacking into their systems'.
The threat of a CFAA prosecution forced Lanier and his team to walk away from the research."