Slashdot Mirror
Federal Judge Bars Instant Publishing of Analysts' Stock Tips
An anonymous reader writes "Big Banking firms Barclay's Capital, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch successfully obtained an injunction against theflyonthewall.com, Inc., preventing them from immediately publishing the firms' stock upgrades and downgrades. This case could have far-reaching consequences concerning internet communication and publication of news." Here's some interesting analysis from Paul Levy, via Dave Farber's Interesting People list.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let's be clear on this, the issue has nothing to do with having up-to-the-second stocks news or not. It has nothing to do with an RSS aggregator having a feed from a news site.
It is about a news aggregator publicly disseminating PRIVATE information - buy/sell is professional advice and not news. Professional advice is subject to a two-party contract - it can be given confidentially. This is leaked advice.
Usually leaks aren't much of a problem because there's copyright and so on, they can't just reproduce the detail necessary to completely steal your advice usefully. But, in this case all that's really interesting is the company name and whether the word after it is "buy" or "sell". The entirety of the substance can be in the article. Contrast this with say the problem with the leak being that it is embarrassing - here the "news" is not the substance of the advice as advice, it is the fact that it is embarrassing.
Secondly, absolutely key to the value of that information is extreme timeliness. It only has value if you have that information before most other people, after which point the information becomes obsolete. Thirdly, the person giving the advice is also of high importance. "Sell Microsoft" has a greatly different value as information when Merrill Lynch says it than say, Bob down the pub. So people were paying thefly to get Merrill Lynch's advice more cheaply than buying it from Merrill Lynch.
The point the judge upheld is that thefly were not announcing news, they were reproducing a private professional opinion - and an opinion that was of value because of whose it was. Nobody wanted this as some retrospective news about some event, they wanted to know this information for the exact same reason and no other reason than those for which Merril Lynch's clients were paying for it.
This is little different than say, someone finding out the Coke formula, setting up a factory and marketing it as Coca Cola. The one difference is that in this case the product is "knowledge". The judge seems to have been quite savvy in differentiating the "product" and "knowledge" elements on the basis of the extent that timeliness was important.