Microsoft Judgment Revealed Early
from the oops dept
Just last week Reuter was accused of hacking because they happened upon the non-password protected site of a company that had put up its financial results early. The company claims that just looking at that page constituted hacking. If that's true, then thousands of people are apparently guilty of "hacking" the U.S. District Court, for getting early access to the judge's decision on the Microsoft anti-trust settlement. While this might not seem like a big deal, the implications are something of a concern. The decision wasn't even handed to the lawyers on either side of the case until after 4pm to prevent anyone from trading stock on the news. However, over-anxious webheads at the court apparently put the document online (with no password protection) at 2:40pm, giving folks a good hour and twenty minutes to profit away.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team