It's not about what the law allows, it's about the cost to defend yourself. And yes, there are cases such as in web scraping where that has been ruled against the law (running whatever code you want on your machine...not about DOSing or distributing, just running). There have been other cases where simply accessing ToS-disallowed parts of a site has been ruled illegal too, whether we like it or not. That the OP is being asked to risk his livelihood and money defending himself for others ideals in light of these past rulings is armchair idealism. I made it clear in my original statement that it's not exactly about who's right, it's about the cost of being right, especially in non-obvious situations.