No, It's Not Illegal For You to Download or Share Wikileaks - Granite Grok

No, It’s Not Illegal For You to Download or Share Wikileaks

wikileaks-logoThe left and corporate media (but I repeat myself) sent up a trial balloon the other day. They introduced a narrative to protect Hillary, the Democrat party, and the media. Copying or sharing content provided by Wikileaks violates the law because to do so you must be “in possession” of stolen documents. (But it’s OK for the media to have them and to decide what, if anything, you need to see.)

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Marc Randazza at Pope Hat provides all the legal meat you require to refute these assinine assertions, here.

  1. It is not illegal for you to read Wikileaks.
  2. It is not illegal for you to download documents from Wikileaks.
  3. You do not need to rely on “the media” to spoon feed you the documents from Wikileaks.
  4. The Olive Garden is not Italian food.

In 2001, the Supreme Court held in Bartnicki v. Vopper ,532 U.S. 514 (2001) that the press has a right to report on materials that might have been created or gathered illegally – as long as the media outlet took no part in the illegal activity. In that case, a radio reporter got ahold of the tape of an illegally recorded phone call. Since it was a matter of public concern, the press had a right to use it. So, the Wikileaks documents may have been illegally obtained in the first place, but once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. The press can report on it.

And then, you get back to the question of “who is ‘the media’?” How do we really draw a distinction there? Luckily, we don’t have to. The Same Bartnicki case that we discussed before makes it clear that we “draw no distinction between the media respondents and” a non-institutional respondent.” But, this was hardly revolutionary. See, e.g., Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991) (press gets no special privileges when it comes to laws governing communication); Henry v. Collins, 380 U.S. 356, 357 (1965) (applying New York Times v. Sullivan to non-media defendant); Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 67–68 (1964) (same).

So go ahead. Read those documents. Talk about them. Publish them on your blog or your Facebook feed. And do that no matter who is in office. It isn’t just your right, but it is your patriotic duty.

No, I’m not going to explain why Olive Garden is not Italian food. You can follow the link for that. (It is delicious, whatever it is.)

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