Comment Re:From a legal perspective, Swartz is probably wo (Score 1) 139
Well, he was going to be prosecuted primarily for violations of the CFAA, not copyright infringement.
Anyway the point I was trying to make is that I'm not convinced that OSVDB has any exclusive right to the information, period. If they don't have any exclusive right to it, then can try and "license" it all they want, but it doesn't matter. You don't get to just throw up a bunch of factual, non-copyrighted (and non-copyrightable) information on a public web page, then claim that anyone who doesn't comply with your "license" is doing something illegal... because they're facts. If you want to play that game, you'd better get your audience to sign a contract. There's no trade secrecy here, either, because the information is public.
Maybe OSVDB has some claim for unfair competition under state misappropriation laws, similar to the "hot news" doctrine. But their case would be much more convincing if they had a copyright claim, which even they don't seem convinced about.
Actually, given the way the CFAA is written (and abused), maybe that would cover the situation.
Of course McAfee is probably being a bad citizen here - I assume the point of the license, whether enforceable or not, is to try to defray the costs of establishing and maintaining the database. But simply being a bad citizen isn't necessarily illegal.