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.