IOKIYAJ? April 26
Shorter EFF: buying stolen merchandise is fine as long as you write a story about it.
The EFF does lots of great work, but this seems a bit much. If felony theft is justifiable when it’s part of a journalistic endeavor, what other crimes are okay if you’re a journalist?
There’s a more interesting legal question in all this, though (or maybe not… I’m no lawyer). “Information from sources” is an abstract notion covered by the likes of patent, copyright, and trade-secret law. Physical goods, on the other hand, live in concrete reality — where they’re either in their rightful owner’s hands or not. Where does one draw the line between the two?
In other words, what if Nick Denton had paid $5000 to a sticky-fingered bar-crawler for photos and descriptions of the stolen phone instead of the item itself? What if a thief employed a thumb drive and a quick hand to copy design schematics from a careless engineer’s laptop, and then sold his find? What if information was leaked via stolen media (whether a digital storage device or good old-fashioned printed material)? There seems to be a gradient between “information” and “property” these days.
(If you haven’t been following the iPhone heist story, digging back from above links should catch you up. Also, Here’s a nice backgrounder if you don’t recognize this post’s title.)