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Sony Demands Press Destroy Leaked Documents
SydShamino writes In an effort that may run afoul of the first amendment, Sony, through their lawyer David Boies (of SCO infamy), has sent a letter to major news organizations demanding that they refrain from downloading any leaked documents, and destroy those already possessed. Sony threatens legal action to news organizations that do not comply, saying that "Sony Pictures Entertainment will have no choice but to hold you responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by you."
What are they going to do, install a rootkit on my computer to prevent me from downloading stuff? Who thinks up this stuff?
[quote]In an effort that may run afoul of the first amendment,[/quote]
First amendment has nothing to do with this. The first amendment protects from criminal government prosecution, not reactions from private individuals/entities.
Here's a very good explanation - http://www.xkcd.com/1357/
Yeah, this won't spur me to download them for myself. Nah, not at all.
If Nixon could have just asked everyone to destroy the recordings, we might have been able to avoid watergate too.
"Sony Pictures Entertainment will have no choice but to hold you responsible "
They have no choice? As in their hands are legally or physically tied so that they absolutely HAVE to sue you? The people at the top of Sony will have actually no other choice in the world, like, say, going to watch a Knicks game or reading a nice book? They have only one choice, which is to sue?
Bullshit.
If Sony keeps doing it, their documents will be forever alive in the form of magnet links, formerly torrent file sharing technology.
They do have the the army of trained lawyers to harass mass audiences, except that newspapers have seen much badder boys coming to them with the threats.
Now, assuming Sony documents will survive, will be available for everyone, and will be commented, how exactly SONY will know which newspaper has caused an actual harm?
I think that their litigation budget will be fully depleted for several years in the future.
And all I got was $150 dollars reimbursement for the damage their rootkit did. I say the guardians of peace should be limited $150 dollars worth of liability as well.
It's okay for SONY to be NOSY, but nobody look at the shady stuff they are up to.
CAPTCHA: dumbly
Why would they ever think this would be a good idea?
So what is so interesting in those documents, that Sony cares that much?
I haven't baught a Sony product since the Rootkit fiasco. Looks like they not only didn't learn ANYTHING from that but they continue to show disdain not just for their customers but also for the actors that work for them. They need to go. I honestly don't know why anyone would ever buy their products.
Nothing good can come of this for Sony. All it will do is further harm the brand and, by proxy, all the honest Joes already screwed over by the breach. It's pathetic how badly that company needs a coherent PR strategy.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Me think Sony needs to look up Streisand Effect....
...as if the press will follow suit, dancing to the sony tune when there's a high-paying story to tell... The press has no allegiance to sony, nor has the public after their stunts, and lest not forget that sony has a criminal history with the verdict on the rootkits. Sony is just reaping what it hasbeen sowing over the years.
Every time I think about getting a PS4 they remind me why I should not support them. Thank you Sony!
Sony still loses. Compelling news outlets to pretend the hacked data isn't freely accessible does not make it so. It seems likely that they're just trying to keep negative press about the breach to a minimum, but that sort of thing will only go so far as it will still get reported on one way or another.
The Supreme Court has held that the first amendment trumps anything Sony might want to say or do, as long as the folks releasing the documents didn't have a hand in taking them.
So keep firing those blanks there Sony.
.
While I do not look at Sony's latest threat tactics as beneficial to the situation, I also think the news organizations should stop their feeding frenzy.
Sony Pictures Entertainment will have no choice but to hold you responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by you.
Since they won't hold themselves responsible for all the wrong-doing they've been doing, or the poor security, the obvious solution is to blame someone else.
If Sony keeps doing it, their documents will be forever alive in the form of magnet links, formerly torrent file sharing technology.
Regardless, those documents will be floating around torrent sites, even if they do nothing. The horse has left the barn.
But this isn't about trying to actually keep the information under wraps - this is about trying to get some financial recompense. Like, someone let the horse out, and your neighbor suddenly has a sale on fresh horse meat... You're not getting your horse back, but maybe you should get a portion of their unlawfully gained profits.
In particular, the material includes both material under copyright, as well as trade secrets. Copyright law doesn't include a safe harbor for "but I'm a newspaper" or a generic "first amendment!" defense - while papers could publish short excerpts of the leaked info under fair use (17 USC 107), for news or commentary purposes, they could not, say, publish the entire script to the new Bond movie, relying on a defense of "well, we didn't steal it, and the first amendment says we can publish anything we want because we're the media."
Going further, many states' trade secret laws actually include explicit provisions about publishing trade secrets that were obtained unlawfully, even if you weren't the person who originally stole them. And while terrible law professor Eugene Volokh thinks that the Bartnicki case has a first amendment exemption, he's clearly never actually read it - SCOTUS specifically said that it doesn't apply to trade secrets, but for matters of public interest. Now, that may apply to things like Sony's CEO's salary, but it likely doesn't apply to things like advertising campaign plans or product release strategies.
So, if the media publishes the unlawfully obtained trade secrets or publishes the material under copyright in a way that exceeds the bounds of fair use, then they may be financially liable for Sony's damages. That doesn't put the horse back in the barn, since it's gone, man, but it does at least help pay for the new horse (and maybe a better lock).
David Boies has not intention of upholding his oath as an officer of the court to uphold the Constitution of the United States, otherwise, he would never support the blanket suppression of Free Speech of the Press. Granted Sony has a right to protect their intellectual property and press should have an obligation not to publish trade secrets that have no public value other than to cause harm to Sony, but that's an ethical decision, not a legal one.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
That is all.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Who has torrents, magnet links, or whatever?
What are they going to do, install a rootkit on my computer to prevent me from downloading stuff? Who thinks up this stuff?
The documents DEMAND that the the press DESTROY SONY!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The newspapers with go toe to toe with the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA, but will back down from a nasty letter from Sony with no legal standing? Right.
They can put whatever disclaimer that they want on the e-mails, but if e-mails or other documents show that Sony is involved in illegal things, then the disclaimers will not protect that from disclosure. Of course, the press would be wise to thoroughly investigate and make sure then they were not passing along bogus information that North Korea was trying to falsely attribute to them. But given that this is Sony and "lawyer" David Boies, I think that this threat reeks of desperation and would not be at all surprised to find that illegal things were leaking out. You can't hide a conspiracy or other illegal action simply by attaching legal boiler-plate "for internal use only" tags to all of the documents.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If Nixon could have just asked everyone to destroy the recordings, we might have been able to avoid watergate too.
I'm not quite sure that example can be applied here...
Mod parent up! (crap, I had points left yesterday.... :)
Parent makes the important point: There's existing SCOTUS case law for this, and Sony's legal-ish threats and demand for press et al to refrain from looking at embarrassing things wouldn't stand up in a stiff breeze, much less in a lower court.
Frankly I'm kind of surprised to see a relatively experienced lawyer such as Boies make a demand like this, even if he is a distinguished douchebag. Usually lawyers like him are concerned about appearances, and making laughable demands that evoke a Streisand effect is bad for business.
I think not...(*poof*)
Looks like Sony's bringing out the big guns; Puffed, tear-streaked cheeks and chapped anuses blazing.
They can demand anything they want. Enforcing it, legally, is another matter.
Boies, the gift that keeps on giving.
grow some balls and go after the real culprits instead of some wimpy bloggers and journalists. You have Stallone and the guy who played Spiderman at your disposal, send them to go kick some communist ass. Go on!
Brian Krebs got one, reported on it, and was kind enough to post it for the world to see Sony for their true colors...
Article: http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...
Demand Letter: http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-...
I can hear Barbara Streisand's voice now... (Well, what I hear is "her" voice from the Mecha-Streisand "South Park" episode...)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
First amendment does not protect you against consequence, it only put stops to the government limiting the public speech in some case. Example : 1st amendement does not protect you against alal civil oiabilities, like libel, like loss of money if you leak stuff etc... And sicne those document are copyrighted and marked as personal to sony, downloading and spreading them is not a first amendment issue but a copyright and a liability issues when a 3rd aprty knowingly spread confidential document. Bottom line : if the journalist psread the document they are civil liable, and you can bet your ass they will lose.
"Sony can't (successfully) sue for whatever else you can dream up, because that would be the government enforcing some law restricting the press from doing their job as the press, a clear violation of the first amendment."
No. Proof : press is bound by copyright law too. Press cannot give the full copy of a book in an article and pretend it is covered by first amendment and freedom of press. Freedom of press is not a get-free-out-of-civil-liabilities card.
Bottom line : the first amendement and freedom of press is about not allowing the government to limit and infringe on press. It is not a "get free" card for all laws whatsoever, including copyright, 3rd party liabilities and so forth. If you spread private confidential or copyrighted document, you will get bitten in the ass , and it will be by civil lawsuit.
In fact remember : free speech mean the government cannot stops your speech. It does not protect you of ANY private consequence for that speech. If that would be the case journalist would never be sued for libel.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/sony-hack-part-deux/
CAPTCHA: looting
Mod parent up! (crap, I had points left yesterday.... :)
Parent makes the important point: There's existing SCOTUS case law for this, and Sony's legal-ish threats and demand for press et al to refrain from looking at embarrassing things wouldn't stand up in a stiff breeze, much less in a lower court.
Frankly I'm kind of surprised to see a relatively experienced lawyer such as Boies make a demand like this, even if he is a distinguished douchebag. Usually lawyers like him are concerned about appearances, and making laughable demands that evoke a Streisand effect is bad for business.
Unfortunately, parent is incorrect regarding the SCOTUS case law. Not the AC's fault, though - Eugene Volokh's quoted in the article and makes the same mistake. The case law refers specifically to publishing (actually re-playing) an illegally intercepted phone conversation on a matter of great public interest (specifically public teachers union negotiations with the school board). It explicitly says that its holding doesn't apply to trade secrets, private matters, or gossip... and what's the issue here? Trade secrets, private matters, and gossip.
Boies may be a douchebag, but he's a douchebag who actively practices law and apparently reads the cases in full, unlike the good Professor Volokh, who has never actually practiced.
copyright law has specific exemptions for the press and there is no transitive notion of confidentiality.
even the government itself can't prevent leaked docs from being published, the pentagon papers are
a good historical example.
pro tip: mathematics and the law are different.
I've personally gone against David Boise (yes IAAL -- and I won that case actually). And while his marketing is a little over the top, he is still a very good lawyer and he has built up an excellent team of lawyers. The problem with block downloads like this are that they contain materials that are protected by harsh laws (copyrights, trade secrets, etc.) that the journalists do not require for their articles or investigations. Sure there are fair use defenses, but it's going to be a tough one for [NEWSPAPER X] to argue that it was fair use to keep that copy Annie on it's servers (or laptop) to expose Sony's hack to the world, or that the journalist really needed to watch that copy of Annie to get an in-depth view of Sony's inner workings. The same goes for scripts that have been leaked, etc. There is little journalistic value in divulging the unreleased works of other. Well, other than sheer gossip/entertainment style news).
That said, I don't care for Sony one bit and don't shed a single tear about what's happening to them, but I do care about some of the news outlets that could get their asses handed to them for thinking that freedom of the press is going to save them from a copyright infringement claim. See Monge v. Maya Magazines, 688 F.3d 1164 (9th Cir. 2012)
Well, someone has to be responsible for Sony's massive fuckup and we all know it won't be Sony.
I think Frozen said it best... "Let it go, let it go..."
There MIGHT be an existing SCOTUS case law, but it does not apply to Sony, because Sony is ___*NOT*___ owned by the Americans
Lest you forget, Sony is a JAPANESE corporation - and the Japs can tell the SCOTUS to go to hell - just like they have told the whole world to go to hell in their whale hunting exercises
Since Sony isn't a part of the government, it can't really demand destruction of those documents. It can merely request, which is basically the same as 'politely ask to'. It can also note that disseminating parties may be liable for any damages to Sony that could arise. They need to prove damages though, and there's a lot of news sources involved. Will they do a reverse class-action suit or something? :P
You may have a point, but given the bludgeoning that SCO took from IBM, I'd think twice before putting my eggs in the Boies basket.
The press is receiving and distributing stolen property.
Without the press the damage would be minimal, and the press is profiting from causing that damage. Ruling it illegal would create a situation where the press can't be used as a tool to do the dirty work of future thieves, which would greatly minimize the expected results from future thefts, thereby reducing their occurrences.
It's interesting that the police/prosecution can't use illegally obtained evidence... but the press can. I'm guessing the U.S. courts side with the press.
This akin to farting and then telling everyone not to smell your fart.
News for you, Sony: The cat is out of the bag, you lost the bag, and the cat ain't going back in any new bag.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
nt
It can also note that disseminating parties may be liable for any damages to Sony that could arise. They need to prove damages though, and there's a lot of news sources involved. Will they do a reverse class-action suit or something? :P
No, but they could sue them collectively under a joint and several liability argument, saying "we were damaged by $X... feel free to figure out which of you pays which percentage of that amongst yourselves," based on a theory that by linking to each other in the articles, they were acting in concert. That wouldn't require proving which individual new source is responsible for which damage.
Are you saying Sony is the government? Because they are not. So the 1st amendment doesn't mean jack here.
I'm really confused about this hack/leak. With the gov't docs, I can understand the argument. Bad things were happening, and it is *our* government and we should have oversight. In the case of Sony, why is the media publishing the data at all? What reason other than being nosy, or hating on Sony, do we have? Is there a defensible position here to just hack every company and expose all their emails?
It seems no better than publishing all the nudes that were hacked out of apple. Where do we draw the line about what 'information wants to be free' and at what point does that cross the line with 'I have a right to privacy'?
The flower children of 1960-70-ies have all grown and are running the country. A feminist NY Times reporter agreed to show the Sony exec an article about her prior to publishing it — which is strictly against journalistic ethics. The article, of course, is quite adoring — the firm is praised for its "pro-women" movies (like "Frozen"). Journalistic integrity is secondary to the agenda — the Greater Good of promoting women justifies the means. Nobody will know, right?
Sony executive — Ms. Pascal — is quoted in the exchange as unable to properly spell "you are". Despite her correspondent — NYT's Dowd — gently correcting her several times, she kept writing "YOUR" (yes, in ALL CAPS) instead of "you're". How could such a moron become a major executive? Because it is good for a company's image to have a woman at the top, that's how... And, it being Hollywood, she had to be an Illiberal, of course.
And that's part of the bigger picture — our very President is who he is not (only) because of personal merits, but because of his race. Some mythical "haters" may have voted against him because of it, but he got more votes thanks to it, than he lost due to it.
Not only did it help him in 2008, it helped him all along before that. We don't know, how well he did in college, for example, but we know, he was elected President of Harvard Law Review — a feat, for which he thanked Black professors...
Among the first things he did in White House, was to appoint a fellow affirmative action "wise Latina" to Supreme Court. Again, not because she is the best qualified legal expert, but because she is a Latino.
No one with the functional organ will agree to a brain surgery done by a doctor, who got to do it because of his skin color or sex. Why, then, do we tolerate the governance of public and private institutions alike run by people, whose gender and race were taken into account, when they got the job?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"I've got one that can see..."
APK
P.S.=> This isn't a world of great men - it's a world of secret-handshake 'committees' now & "networking" rather than what you know (in that case, it's how cheap are you, but... the "powers that be" forgot 1 thing - you DO get what you pay for, but then again? They've "gotta get their bonuses" for doing zero imo).
Hey - All you've gotta do? "JOIN THE RIGHT 'FRAT'" & get what's yours, then split... the new mantra!
It's become bogus, but @ least you see thru it - it's wrong, but how it's become largely (the lousy results show it though, hate to say that - you get, what you get, with what you said))... apk
So you yourself have seen the documents, all of them, and know that is all it pertains too?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
"We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram" besides given that there are most likely NGigacopies running about of parts or all of the dump how likely is it that this would even be in the same building as "working to contain the breach"?
By the way, Boies is still alive? I thought he'd been killed by a pack of rabid raccoons after that whole SCO debacle. Are we sure he's not actually rabid zombie raccoon Boies?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Any facts extracted from the stolen information are not copyright. However, the specific correspondence unless quoted as evidence (and limited to making the point) could be.
I give a horse sh*t about the leaked docs-etc.
But, I need to ask:
Can we finally have our PS3 unlocked and updated too?
I want to play my old PS2 games on my PS3 and run Linux too.
You know that he lost a case to a gardener, who was unrepresented by a lawyer, right? His firm did not cover itself with glory in the SCO cases either.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
What Sony SHOULD REALLY do is sue anyone publishing these. How? Why? Libel. All Sony has to state is that the documents are fake and that those publishing these are causing harm. As those publishing the documents have no way to prove the authenticity they are screwed royal!
Last laugh with Sony.
Yes, And I can assure you there aren't any trade secrets. There's alot of bs, HR info that can be used for ID theft, stalking, doxing and the like, gosspis, propoganda, bad scripts, good scripts, shitloads of powerpoint (dear deity why the hell is everything in powerpoint) and pictures of everyone to go with their physical address, how much money they make and ss#. Throw in the signatures scanned in, facility maps, the financies of the company and its org chart all with how its going to attack the internet over the next year and there you have it.
Court decisions are only binding in court. If Sony sends Robocop 2 to your meeting, you are dead regardless of whatever someone in a robe says.
This is the company known for the rootkit. They are not limited to lawful acts. Politeness might pay.
and what's the issue here? Trade secrets, private matters, and gossip.
Not only..: Leaked Emails Reveal MPAA Plans To Pay Elected Officials To Attack Google
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
First thing a lawyer thinks of is a non-disclosure to limit the damage.
NDCs should be illegal. Transparency everywhere.
If they did it and public knowledge is damaging,
they caused the damage by their actions
and deserve the karma to come back and bite them on the bum.
Go well
Does it ever happen? Until threshold of probability of guilt is sufficient against any one single party, that party cannot be "punished". "Acting in concert" needs much better evidence than just linking to each other.
Extended to criminal law, it means any unsolved murder mystery is solved - just say that someone in the city committed the murder, let them fight amongst themselves about who hangs. All residents of the city are acting in concert because they sell goods and services to each other.
Probably you meant this only for civil law, but even there it appears unprecedented to me.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
What are they going to do if they don't comply ? Install a rootkit on their computer to make sure they don't download or delete the documents ?
SCO was financed by Microsoft to attack Novell and IBM and spread FUD among cowardly second-rate companies using Linux servers rather than Windows. It is exactly what a company of Sony's character would want here.
So you can see https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
would have destroyed that possibility.
I hope my friends who work for Sony have got their pensions secure, before the whole thing folds.
There was a hilarious comment on the news a couple of days ago accusing Sony of acting in an "un-American manner" over this matter. But, DOH!, they're a fucking Japanese company. Durrrrr!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"