Imagine for a moment that someone burgles your house, steals some electronic equipment, and then phones you a couple of weeks later to ask if you’ve got the manuals for it. (actually, fans of British sitcoms may well recognise this from a “One Foot in the Grave” episode).

That’s what TechCrunch’s statement that they’ve “spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about [posting the stolen documents]” feels like.

Now we know that TechCrunch didn’t steal them, and that the person who did decided to pop the docs in a virtual scatter gun, and that TC has milked and got a lot of mileage out of what are essentially fairly boring internal memos, but it once again raises an interesting question on what’s fair game to publish. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 17, 2009 @ 5:39 am