No, but they could sue them collectively under a joint and several liability argument, saying "we were damaged by $X... feel free to figure out which of you pays which percentage of that amongst yourselves," based on a theory that by linking to each other in the articles, they were acting in concert. That wouldn't require proving which individual new source is responsible for which damage.

I think it was one of the Gawker media sites that posted a full (and amusingly terrible) powerpoint presentation from the leaked stuff, full of marketing and distribution plans.

Unfortunately, parent is incorrect regarding the SCOTUS case law. Not the AC's fault, though - Eugene Volokh's quoted in the article and makes the same mistake. The case law refers specifically to publishing (actually re-playing) an illegally intercepted phone conversation on a matter of great public interest (specifically public teachers union negotiations with the school board). It explicitly says that its holding doesn't apply to trade secrets, private matters, or gossip... and what's the issue here? Trade secrets, private matters, and gossip.

Boies may be a douchebag, but he's a douchebag who actively practices law and apparently reads the cases in full, unlike the good Professor Volokh, who has never actually practiced.

Regardless, those documents will be floating around torrent sites, even if they do nothing. The horse has left the barn.

But this isn't about trying to actually keep the information under wraps - this is about trying to get some financial recompense. Like, someone let the horse out, and your neighbor suddenly has a sale on fresh horse meat... You're not getting your horse back, but maybe you should get a portion of their unlawfully gained profits.

In particular, the material includes both material under copyright, as well as trade secrets. Copyright law doesn't include a safe harbor for "but I'm a newspaper" or a generic "first amendment!" defense - while papers could publish short excerpts of the leaked info under fair use (17 USC 107), for news or commentary purposes, they could not, say, publish the entire script to the new Bond movie, relying on a defense of "well, we didn't steal it, and the first amendment says we can publish anything we want because we're the media."

Going further, many states' trade secret laws actually include explicit provisions about publishing trade secrets that were obtained unlawfully, even if you weren't the person who originally stole them. And while terrible law professor Eugene Volokh thinks that the Bartnicki case has a first amendment exemption, he's clearly never actually read it - SCOTUS specifically said that it doesn't apply to trade secrets, but for matters of public interest. Now, that may apply to things like Sony's CEO's salary, but it likely doesn't apply to things like advertising campaign plans or product release strategies.

So, if the media publishes the unlawfully obtained trade secrets or publishes the material under copyright in a way that exceeds the bounds of fair use, then they may be financially liable for Sony's damages. That doesn't put the horse back in the barn, since it's gone, man, but it does at least help pay for the new horse (and maybe a better lock).

Do three sentences really merit a TLDR?

Although you are correct about the fact that the job duties matter, rather than the simple title, and you are correct about the fact that companies will give you a title, declare that you're salaried and therefore exempt, and try all sorts of other tricks to avoid paying overtime, you're wrong about one crucial thing - there's also an exemption for programmers:

And that's what the article and thread are discussing - programmers. Here is the fact sheet from the DOL. If you:

• are compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour; and
• are employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field,

then you probably are exempt from overtime.

If the recipient is another person in that subculture, sure. So, no, screaming "I'll kill you, n00b" during a CoD deathmatch wouldn't be considered a real threat, but sending death threats over Twitter to a journalist or developer would be.

Yes, that's exactly it: preventing someone from making threats is no better than Sharia law.

Anyway, since we're in Crazytown and you're clearly the Mayor, there's no need to keep discussing this.

Would you like to try again, but with a comment that makes sense and is in some way relevant to the thread, rather than just ranting about biatches accusing you of harassment?

I don't know why this got "insightful" points. Let's see... First, the free speech protections in the first amendment have never been absolute: from yelling fire in a crowded theater to threatening to kill someone, there have always been reasonable limits. In fact, no limitation in the Bill of Rights is absolute - we don't allow prison inmates to have guns, you can't practice your human sacrifice-based religion, etc.

Second, this has nothing to do with "a court case between two individuals." See the title, Elonis vs. United States? That's a criminal conviction - Elonis is appealing because he was convicted of a crime. And the government certainly has "influence in a court case" where the government is one of the parties.

At least your signature seems to be correct. So there's that.

This case has nothing to do with whether "rap lyric threats" are free speech, but whether convicting someone for making a threat should require that the accused intended to make a threat, or whether a reasonable person who received the message would interpret it as an intentional threat. The former is very difficult to prove and a simple disclaimer would obviate it: "oh, those were just rap lyrics when I said 'I'm coming to your house this evening to cut your throat, you biatch.' Ha ha ha!"

The wider implication is in the area of cyberbullying and online death threats - if threats are judged from the perspective of a reasonable recipient, rather than the intent of the sender, then the "oh, everyone makes death threats online, they'd never follow through" defense fizzles away.

Leik speeling or grammatical?

(i) Announces self as male;
(ii) Admits self lacks knowledge in a particular field;
(iii) Makes wild generalizations anyway.

There's a reason they call it "mansplaining", y'know.

... unlike the grand jury proceedings, in which just the prosecutor presents inculpatory evidence and asks for an indictment. Or at least, that's the normal system. Here, the prosecutor didn't even ask for charges, meaning you had no one who was adverse to the cop.

Now you're lying about what I said, even though everyone can just scroll up and read it? Wow. Unbelievable. I never said that "the documents don't include the testimony of eye witnesses" and you know it, which is why you don't even use a quote here, even though Slashdot has a big ol' "Quote Parent" button. It's amazing.You actually think that you can get away with bullshiat like that?

What I actually said was that the documents don't include what you claimed, which was - and here I provide an exact quote, because I'm not a lying piece of shiat like you:

Those are your words. And my words were:

I never said that there were no eyewitnesses. I said that there aren't 7 of them saying what you claim they're saying. Instead, there are actually a bunch of eyewitnesses that say things very different from what you claim they said, including that Brown was surrendering. Heck, one eyewitness says that the cop shot him execution style in the head at point blank range. That's a far cry from what you're claiming.

Anyways, your misrepresentations of the witness testimony aside, you've now been caught in such a complete and obvious lie over just these last few posts that no one could possibly believe anything you write here, so I think we're done. Goodbye, hypocritical, lying troll.