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Comment by jayzee | Hacker News Reader

You can't buy stolen stuff. If the FBI wants to use the stuff they may still have to pay for it.

Besides deals at that level are all political and given to their buddies. The person who gave the deal to HBGary is going to still fork over the money since what is a few $M between friends esp when they are not your $M.

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Your second paragraph is true, but the first paragraph only applies to physical property and, trivially, to legally protected intellectual property. ("Trivially" because in the case of intellectual property, the only value is in the legal protection itself, whereas for physical property it's possible to illegally transfer stolen goods even though the new possessor will not have a legal claim to them.) However, private-eye type intelligence has no legal protection as property as far as I know. It is only "sold" in the sense that the person who has it reveals the info in exchange for compensation.

It depends on whether the information in question is the raw source information, or the actual intelligence report created by the private-eye.

Only if the buyer intended to publish the report, in which case it would be the protected intellectual property I mentioned. But if the report were leaked before the private-eye was able to sell it, there is nothing he could do legally to prevent the potential buyer from acting on that information (which is usually why people hire detectives). In particular, the FBI would legally be able to investigate and prosecute people using HBGary's info without paying HBGary. Professional courtesy and/or conflicts of interest might prompt them to pay for it anyway, of course.

I was assuming there would be some sort of copyright issues with the information. I think that HBGray owns copyright on the report itself since they likely have some sort of analysis in addition to the raw information organized in an understandable fashion, though I guess there might not be any 'fruit of the poisoned tree'-type issues with the FBI using that information in their investigation.

What about chain of evidence? Who's to say that the hacker didn't change details of the report between downloading it and publishing it? "This is a report from a security expert" sounds quite a bit better in court than "This is a report that another hacker claims is an unaltered copy he nicked from a security expert".

> However, private-eye type intelligence has no legal protection as property as far as I know.

Why do you assume that it isn't "born copyrighted" like almost everything else? (The big exception is pure data, such as the phone book.) The expression of observations is clearly copyrightable.

And then there's trade secret protection. The fact that they got hacked doesn't necessary void that.

Is it really stolen if people just tell the FBI the information, and it just so happens to be the same information that the security group was going to give?

Say you and I know this really cute girl. Let's call her Susie. I just won the lottery and I bought a new Mercedes (or whatever the devil it is these kids are driving nowadays...) that I want to give to Susie for Valentine's day.

But on Feb 13, I leave the keys in the ignition when the car's in my driveway and you take it and give it to Susie as a present from you to her. You get the love, I get screwed.

Is it really stolen if you just give the car to her and it just so happens to be the same car that I was going to give?

You wouldn't download a car.

Fuck you I would.

this is the reference (contains same language as parent post)

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.thevrabec.com...

Obligatory piracy warning from The IT Crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

I actually have downloaded blueprints for every patent filed...well, did in 2005. I'm just waiting for my printer.

Of course not, it'd block the tubes!

Please, let's stop equating information with property.

Say you're a guy in a pub and you overhear some private company contractors talking about just learning that a group of terrorists is plotting to blow up the Empire State Building, and mentioning some things in detail. You decide to tell the FBI about the terrorists, while they might refuse to give up their information if the price isn't right.

No, that's an example of stealing an object. Stealing an object is fundamentally not the same as telling someone something, even if it's something you didn't want them to say. This is why your example induces an obvious ethical reaction, whereas the original example induces a much more complicated one.

The better example is, you found out where her long-lost cousin lived, some guy eavesdropped, and HE told her where said cousin lived, and she jumped into HIS arms and drove off into the sunset. You are not now without an object that you formerly owned; you just planned to exploit a scarcity of information that no longer exists, and you're mad about it.

You also feel cheated because you were the one that did all the work to find her cousin, and he got all the benefit. That doesn't make it the same as stealing a car.

But in this case, the information was actually of little value, but because there was a scarcity of information in the first place, the FBI would have been none the wiser.

The ethics of spreading information are complicated. Oversimplifying them by comparing them to the ethics of stealing physical objects is wrong and bad.

"The better example is, you found out where her long-lost cousin lived, some guy eavesdropped, and HE told her where said cousin lived, and she jumped into HIS arms and drove off into the sunset. You are not now without an object that you formerly owned; you just planned to exploit a scarcity of information that no longer exists, and you're mad about it.

You also feel cheated because you were the one that did all the work to find her cousin, and he got all the benefit. That doesn't make it the same as stealing a car."

There's Something About Mary

I recommend familiarizing yourself with the concept of rivalrous goods.

I recommend familiarizing yourself with the concept of making people think that treating nonrivalrous goods as rivalrous is a moral imperative.

After all, you wouldn't download happiness.

Ah, but you can steal a kiss.

This is a thoughtful enough contribution to the discussion. Should you really be downvoting something to oblivion because you disagree with the sentiment or find the content erroneous/apocraphyl?

Please, don't downvote opinions you don't agree with. Even though the opinion may look ridiculous to you in general(it does to me), it is clearly stated and has its inner logic and has the right to be expressed. Downvoting is for irrelevant or emotion-driven comments.

(see http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )

Not all opinions are equally valid and worthwhile. In particular, opinions derived from from oversimplifications do not help the conversation and should be downvoted regardless of the stance.

Wouldn't the FBI want to get HBGary's copy anyway? Why wouldn't they expect the torrent to be tainted or incomplete?

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