[Infowarrior] - Sony begins threatening news media

[Richard Forno]

Sony Pictures warns news organizations to destroy ‘stolen’ e-mails, documents

After days of silence, Sony Pictures Entertainment acknowledged a voluminous, embarrassing leak of internal e-mails and other materials on Sunday, warning numerous media outlets in a strongly worded letter against publishing or using the “stolen” corporate data exposed by unidentified hackers.

The materials, particularly e-mails, provided an extraordinary glimpse inside one of the world’s best-known corporations. The initial stories based on the materials went viral and absorbed days of coverage last week, illuminating the high-powered dealings, petty squabbling and ego that can define Hollywood.

The company threatened legal action against news organizations that failed to heed its request, a strategy some legal scholars say would have a rough time passing muster under the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press. Though no one has accused any news organization of participating in the theft, the letter appears to be a gambit to stop news outlets from reporting the documents.

Sony’s action came just as the hackers reportedly threatened another dump of stolen data. The hackers have demanded the company withdraw an upcoming comedy based on a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

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Sony’s ability to follow through with legal action is uncertain at best, legal scholars said last night. “The short answer is that publishing such leaked material, even if it was illegally extracted by hackers, is likely to be legal,” said University of California at Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh in an e-mail last night. He cited a 2001 Supreme Court case, Bartnicki v. Vopper, which he said “held that a publisher had a First Amendment right to publish illegally intercepted phone calls (when it wasn’t involved in the initial illegal interception.)” Volokh stewards the blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, which appears in the Washington Post. Here’s his post on this subject.

George Freeman, a former attorney for the New York Times who now runs the Media Law Resource Center, said Sony’s demands struck him as “a stretch.” He said newspapers and other publications have reported leaked corporate and government documents “scores of times,” and this instance appears similar to those.

“I can’t think of any instance where the innocent beneficiary of leaks would get restrained from publishing,” Freeman said, referencing the news outlets’ decisions to publish the Pentagon Papers. “If anything, there would be less a problem for media in printing corporate documents like these than printing classified documents, which the government has claimed can violate the Espionage Act.”

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/14/sony-pictures-warns-news-organizations-to-destroy-stolen-leaked-e-mails-documents/?tid=hp_mm