The article[0] linked to in the above blog post appears to offer a more in-depth legal analysis. Also here[1] is the actual decision.

Current Hacker News threads linking to the Washington Post article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087407

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12089068

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

[1]https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/12/1...

This decision implies that a website owner can, on a landing page, and/or via postal or email message, notify Google, and other search engines, social media and data brokers that the owner does not grant, and indeed revokes, any authority to crawl, catalog, archive, link to or otherwise view or use the content on the site's other pages.

(Yes I know most sites want to be crawled and cataloged, but some might prefer otherwise, or to negotiate deals with search engines, or otherwise monetize or leverage their content.)

For a search vendor to proceed in the face of such a restriction would be an unauthorized and therefore criminal use of the site owner's server, content and traffic/throughput allotment.

Maybe this would be a good way to defeat Mozilla's upcoming Context Graph, which promises its own set of obnoxious side-effects.

Very soon a judge shall also rule that looking at a building without permission while walking on the street is a crime.

Such litigations show how busy a life these guys have.