IANAL, but I'd have guessed that the answer to Kerr's first question -- does an IP address block constitute a "technological barrier?" -- would be no. My reasoning is this: IP addresses change all the time and so a normal, unsophisticated user could, perhaps even unwittingly evade the barrier without any sort of technological workaround. If you could accidentally do it in the course of your day, it's doesn't pass muster as a "barrier".
Imagine you had a building complex with many roads leading to it and you want to forbid motorcycles from entering it. You set up a blockade on one of those roads, and have a security guard turn away motorcycles. But there are all these other roads leading to the complex without blockades. Normal, every day people roads just like the one that has a blockade, and anyone could use them to drive in on a motorcycle. Does that constitute a barrier that's being circumvented?
That's all all directed at that narrow question. For the record, I don't think you should be allowed to use a website when the owners have asked you not to, but I do see how it's pretty different than, say, brute forcing the SSH password. And so that narrower question might have some impact on what charges their guilty of.
IP addresses assigned by ISPs do, yes. But as I understand it, the IP addresses Craigslist banned in this case were the ones assigned to 3Taps' domain name based on DNS records. That's a different situation.
Imagine you had a building complex with many roads leading to it and you want to forbid motorcycles from entering it. You set up a blockade on one of those roads, and have a security guard turn away motorcycles. But there are all these other roads leading to the complex without blockades. Normal, every day people roads just like the one that has a blockade, and anyone could use them to drive in on a motorcycle. Does that constitute a barrier that's being circumvented?
That's all all directed at that narrow question. For the record, I don't think you should be allowed to use a website when the owners have asked you not to, but I do see how it's pretty different than, say, brute forcing the SSH password. And so that narrower question might have some impact on what charges their guilty of.