FC: Reuters reports info on Swedish firm's public website, gets sued

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 17:23:23 PST

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    [This is insanely silly. Intentia (the plaintiff) did not take the proper, 
    trivial technical precautions and instead put the info up on the web at a 
    predictable URL. Embarrassed at its lack of technical clue, it seeks to 
    invoke the law instead -- in a move that would set a terrible precedent. 
    --Declan]
    
    ---
    
    LAWSUIT ALLEGES SNOOPING ON PUBLIC WEB PAGES
    A small technology company in Sweden has filed a lawsuit alleging that
    Reuters violated the law when it obtained and published information
    from an earnings report on the Web. The data were on a Web page
    accessible by anyone who entered the correct URL. The Web page, though,
    was not linked from elsewhere on the company's site, according to the
    company. A spokesman from the company said the lawsuit could have
    important implications about what is considered public versus private
    information. If the court rules that the information Reuters obtained
    was public, he said, then potentially everything on a company's Web
    server could be considered public.
    Associated Press, 28 October 2002
    
    News coverage:
    
    http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000024985,20269450,00.htm
    
    http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/money/story/0,4386,151717,00.html
    http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1035389344290 
    
    
    
    
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