

Wall Street Journal Leak site expects you to own the copyright - VierScar
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/phone-hacking-publishers-leak.html

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sudonim
My guess is that some idealistic bright young thing at WSJ said "We should let
people submit stuff to us anonymously" and envisioned it as a simple file
upload with a submit button. And because laws exist and lawyers at big
companies (and small ones) tell you whether to use one square of toilet paper
or two, they said "you must add this copyright thing or it's not gonna fly".
And the idealistic bright young thing thought "That's not quite as cool as an
anonymous document dump, but it's a document dump... I guess".

Then the internet (the market?) told the WSJ, we do not agree to your lawyers'
terms and conditions and another good idea was defeated. Big corp: you can't
remove the core values from a product and expect the idiots will flock to it
because you are Big corp and should be taken seriously.

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Duff
Doesn't that pretty much invalidate the notion that the site is in fact a
"leak" site? If I own the copyright, I'm not leaking, I'm releasing
information!

Maybe this is just a fancy new way for government officials to release phony
"leaked" stories without attribution?

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travisp
My understanding in the United States is that the federal government can't
copyright. I'm not sure how this affects other governments, but the must own
the copyright issue shouldn't apply to US government documents.

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delinka
I'm pretty near certain that is the case. But this is probably more about
lawyering than anything else: "Your Honor, to our knowledge the submitter of
the document owns the copyright and any infringement is born entirely by
them."

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dsl
Pro-tip: If you mail the documents to them you don't have to click an accept
checkbox.

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ikilledkojack
I could think of a better place to mail whistle blowing material - namely John
Young.

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dsl
Send them to as many places as you can. Then you don't end up with the
Wikileaks problem where they delay publishing to suit political goals.

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jordanb
This makes me wonder if there's a loophole in their source protection pledge.

If you were to check the box asserting copyright, and if the whilstleblowee
were to file a John Doe suit against you for copyright infringement and then
subpena your identity from the WSJ, would they comply with the subpena?

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Flemlord
Yes.

"Al Jazeera and the WSJ both say they reserve the right to identify leakers to
law enforcement if pressed to."

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ltamake
Ha ha ha, oh wow. So much for "WikiLeaks competitor".

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alexqgb
It's like the Zune of document dumps.

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mrcharles
Totalitarian honeypot?

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nicetryguy
sounds like Wile E. Coyote is running ACMEleaks, waiting for the roadrunner

conglomerates and altruism don't tend to mix

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jasonmcalacanis
That's just CYA.

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ratsbane
It concerns me a lot when someone asks me to sign something with a lot of
boilerplate or "it's just CYA.". Even if it's for a friend, you never know
when the company's going to be sold or your friend isn't in charge any more
and all of the things you signed will be in the hands of someone you've never
met. Words are important, whether they're in computer programs or legal
documents.

