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"Must return the [digital] documents, which they didn't plan on publishing anyway."

What?

A bunch of confidential documents were accidentally shared by the city via Dropbox, and these bloggers downloaded them.

Some of the documents were newsworthy, and the bloggers published them. Other documents were private but not newsworthy (personnel documents with social security numbers, for example), and the bloggers did not plan to publish them (because they are good people and were not out to destroy innocent public employees). They are agreeing to delete those files.

“Return” in legal parlance means delete when the files are digital copies.

This is my experience as well with contract language; return all files and delete/destroy all copies. With contract work “return” makes a bit more sense, as the other party may not have the most up to date versions of documents I worked on, for example.

This isn't the case here. The City wants the "return" of digital files AND to have them deleted from personal devices.

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