Hellgate London Code Stolen?

The Gamers With Jobs Press Pass is reporting on a rumour that the code for Hellgate:London has been stolen. 'Reliable sources' indicate that Flagship Studios' servers have been taken down (and hopefully secured) in the wake of the incident. From the article: "My source indicates that the virtual break-in was conducted by a Chinese individual who is currently attempting to sell the code from a personal website. For those of you who don't know, Hellgate: London is the first project by ex-Blizzard developer Bill Roper and his new studio, the game has been at the last two E3's and looks to be shaping up very nicely."

Comments

Poor use of the word "stolen"

[RingDev]

Now, how many people here have screamed bloody murder about how downloading digital content (ie: Movies and music) is not Theft because nothing of value has been removed from the original owner.

In this case, it's even less then those because the code owner likely hasn't copyrighted the code at this point. So at best you are looking at an trade secrecy issue and some vague 'unlawful use of a computer' crime. Attempting to sell the code could get you into more legal trouble, but it still isn't theft as nothing has been stolen.

-Rick