Theos-Talk Archives (July 2009 Message tt00278)

âNews is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is
advertising,â is something Lord Northcliffe, a newspaper magnate, supposedly
said.
.
This is the view of newsmen. Routinely newsmedia gets information which some
may consider stolen but newsmedia goes ahead and publishes them. Public is
the beneficiary.
.
Recently a lot of internal documents and emails of Twitter were published by
the Techcrunch website which is in the business of reporting news on
technology companies.
.
Techcrunch pointed out that "In the end, this is no different than, as an
example, this 2006 post where we posted confidential Yahoo documents showing
their valuation of Facebook in a proposed acquisition.

Nor is it any different than the WSJ publishing this internal Yahoo memo,
which was also âstolenâ in 2006.

And I believe it is significantly less of an ethical issue than Gawkerâs
posting of Sarah Palinâs private emails."
.
In the past, some people within the TS relied on copyright protection to
suppress publication of "political" letters sent to several members. Use of
Copyright protection is not going to work anymore, as the above Techcrunch
incidence shows.
.
The above developments send a message to all of us. Machinations and
disparaging comments, even when developed or made in the privacy, may get
discovered and get out on Internet. Then, it  is going to hurt the writer
with no easy defense. If we use the same standard for what we say whether in
public or private, then no one need to fear about disclosure of what we say
in private and the consequences.
.
Internet and newsmedia community is watching the developments in the above
Techcrunch/Twitter incident with great interest. Keep tuned in.
.
MKR
.
Visit theosophy.net


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]