On Thu, 9 Dec 2010, Derek J. Balling wrote: > On Dec 9, 2010, at 3:01 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> the problem with this is that even though the data has been leaked, that >> doesn't mean that it's public domain data. Hosting the data and passing it >> on is (or at least has the flavor of) 'trafficing in stolden merchandise' >> >> What makes leaded data 'Ok' to host and pass on, but unauthorized copies >> of commercial software, books, music, etc 'Piracy'? > > Legally speaking, once it's been released by an organization purporting > to be of "journalistic intent", the SCOTUS case-law protects that > release of data into the wild. And once it's in the wild "legally", > it's just "data of journalistic value". > > The leaker can face stiff penalties, but beyond that initial leaker, the > existing case-law is pretty clearly on the side of the public, not the > gov't.
there is legality and there are ethics, they don't always agree. In this sort of case I agree that the case law probably makes it legal (but I am NOT a lawyer), but I seriously question the ethics of the matter. Just because huge volumes of data can now be made available easily doesn't mean that it should be. And just because a huge volume of data includes some smoking gun of something illegal (which may or may not be the case with this data), doesn't mean that everything in that huge volume of data should be distributed. Using that logic would say that since some people do illegal things in e-mail or on phone calls, it's perfectly appropriate for entities (like the government, but not neccessarily limited to them) to monitor all e-mail and phone calls so that they can search for the bad guys. Please note that I am not saying that there is nothing in these documents that needs to be made public, but I am seriously questioning the ethics of publishing everything with a 'come explore this and dig for dirt' message. This includes re-publishing and hosting the data. David Lang _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
