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Blueovalnews went through this exact thing several years ago with Ford. The court and the rulings were in Blueovalnews's favor. They were even posting actual scanned internal Ford documents online of past and future vehicles. Here is the timeline.

Blueovalnews went through this exact thing several years ago with Ford. The court and the rulings were in Blueovalnews's favor. They were even posting actual scanned internal Ford documents online of past and future vehicles. Here is the timeline.

This kind of thing has happened before, and the site publishing the trade secrets was not liable, because they did not steal the secrets themselves.

Ford has a history of bullying websites around. Their long running problems with Blue Oval News is a perfect example.

The history is here, but basically, Blue Oval News published internal Ford documents that talked about performance problems in the '99 Mustang Cobra. Basically, Ford was advertising better performance than the Mustang delivered. Ford sued to have the documents removed from the website, saying that the documents were trade secrets and were copyrighted. Ford convinced BON's ISP that BON was violating a court order by publishing the documents (despite the fact that the court case had not convened and no orders had been issued), and got the site shut down for a few days. Eventually, Blue Oval News won the case.

If Ford is willing to fight so hard to keep actual facts from being published, I guess it's not surprising that they would want to regulate the disemination of unflattering opinions as well.

As I understand it one of the basic ideas supporting the current 1st ammendment doctrine is no prior restraint. IMHO any ruling that requires owners of automated systems to check the legality of links would have enough of a chilling effect to be considered prior restraint.

I notice in the Wired story they talk about the RIAA having gone for the ISP. This is, I think, perhaps more of concern than the linking issue. The idea that just by writing a letter it's possible to silence a web site is very distubing. I suspect (hope) this is one aspect of the DCMA that won't survive the courts. (see also the Ford vs Blue oval case also had a big company shutting down a little guy by going for the ISP (the details are different but the issue is there - the blue oval case is currently on appeal with the ACLU getting involved).

John (who has been sued enough in the past to know it's all a lottery anyway)

I really doubt Adobe will win because this is extremely similar to when Ford Motors sued Blue Oval News for printing secret car designs on their website. Even though the car designs were secret and probably stolen by an employee who had signed an NDA, the website won.