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Subject: Re: Sometimes it is hard to walk the line as a journalist

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 16:10:41 12/22/97

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On December 22, 1997 at 17:45:19, Chris Whittington wrote:

>But the software is a different case, no? Decade 2 has already
>transferred the property. It's there in its bits and bytes already. Its
>then just a case of accessing the bits and bytes, decade 2 has a
>mechanism for this, this mechanism got reported.
>
>Seems different to me.

It is different, sure.  Actually it is very interesting.

There are a few issues.  First, what was on the site had a bug, it was
exposing functionality that Ed didn't want exposed.  By publishing
instructions about how to access this functionality, people could get
more than Ed obviously wanted them to get.  Yeah, sure you can download
this thing and get at the additional functionality without hacking the
exe bytes.  But there are still ethical issues here.

Additionally, the software was still available for download from Ed's
site, and we have what amounts to an exhortation to go get the thing if
you haven't already gotten it.  This is another issue.

Finally, "journalism" is the reason this was reported at all, which
casts the above in a new light.  If some random person did the above it
might be different than if someone did it because they felt compelled to
professionally.

Last night I wrote a post in "alt.journalism", called "Simple ethics
issue", asking for help with this.  I'm sure my questions was loaded,
since my own opinions on the subject come through, but it might be worth
seeing what the journalism people come up with.

So far there have been two responses, both suggesting a law suit.

bruce



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