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I'll admit that the info is somewhat interesting. But I have absolutely no respect for Techcrunch anymore. For a company/blog that garnered a ton of respect ove

by geuis 17y ago

I'll admit that the info is somewhat interesting. But I have absolutely no respect for Techcrunch anymore. For a company/blog that garnered a ton of respect over the last few years for helping to promote interesting new startups, they have strayed far from that ideal. That they would accept information that was obtained illegally and then proceed to broadcast that to the world is dishonorable. They can't be trusted to be responsible any more. For any number of upcoming and existing startups whose founders and employees read HN, I can't imagine that they would want any kind of ties to Techcrunch after this. I know that I sure as hell don't.

icey 17y ago
Did you read the article? This sentence is in the first paragraph: "... we’ve spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that."
- tamersalama 17y ago
  The 'right' as in 'my right'? Where's Twitter on that?
- anatoly 17y ago
  There is no right way to go about doing that.
- greyman 17y ago
  But still, it's like when I would steal your own belongings, then contact you and "talking to you directly" that I will return some of them back to you, and use others for my own benefit, even if it might do harm to you. We are still talking about publishing stolen documents, whether they contacted twitter or not.
  - ajkirwin 17y ago
    That's a ridiculous strawman argument.
  - derefr 17y ago
    The information is out. It was sent to other people than TechCrunch, and those people will publish it. However, those people probably won't be as visible as TechCrunch. Thus, TechCrunch has decided to act as Twitter's PR department and publish, of the information they got, exactly the right subset of that information to make Twitter look good, hoping that once everyone hears the TechCrunch PR version, they won't be so interested in hearing the rest. If Twitter said "publish nothing", that's exactly what TechCrunch would do—but in this case that's not the best idea.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      To claim that someone else would have done it anyway is not a very good defense. It also totally ignores the ethics of the situation.
      - hymanroth 17y ago
        Agreed - it's a crap and immoral defence (sic). It's unfortunate bloggers don't have their own Geneva Convention (and no, that's not a tech conference in Europe)
      - derefr 17y ago
        Yes, it does ignore the ethics of the situation, because when information leaks to the public you no longer have an ethical decision to make, but a strategic decision of damage control. It becomes an exercise in pure game theory, as you can't assume that any given individual in the public will cooperate with you or be convinced by your arguments toward sympathy. TechCrunch will only publish what Twitter lets them. In practice, in terms of who gets to make the decisions, this is the same situation as if Twitter found out they had been exploited and contacted TechCrunch to "leak" some PR for them. If Twitter wanted to do their damage control through some other outlet at this point, they could just tell TechCrunch to publish nothing, and then pick another news site and send the documents they choose to them. If Twitter wanted to do nothing, they could tell TechCrunch to do nothing, and then do nothing themselves. However, in both of these situations, once the information was published (and it would be—news is one of the most competitive businesses in the world, and one of the most cut-throat), TechCrunch would pick it up, because it would then be public and already available. The only difference, in this case, is that TechCrunch can publish the information "first." But that doesn't matter, really; as long as the information gets out, does it matter who did it first?
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Yeah, quick translation: "We know we're in the wrong, and we're going to blackmail Twitter into saying our release is OK."
- tonystubblebine 17y ago
  One thing that wasn't clear to me until Arrington started talking about working with Twitter on this release, is that Twitter does have some non-legal leverage. I'm pretty sure they regularly give TechCrunch early or insider access to Twitter news. They could just as easily move that preferential treatment over to Mashable or GigaOm. At this point, the "news" organization that probably matters most to Twitter is CNN, not TC. As other people have noted, the actual documents released haven't amounted to more than a gigantic press release for Twitter. Now we know that they dream big and care about their employees. I'm sure that's killing them.
  - hymanroth 17y ago
    The documents are not so positive. They diss a large number of celebs, call GOOG and MSFT 'distractions' and really go to town on Marissa Mayer.
    - tonystubblebine 17y ago
      What's wrong with calling GOOG and MSFT distractions? I think almost every new company immediately gets hit by the biz dev people who want to start talking about deals. For the most part you just have to focus on yourself and your customers, so these advances can be really distracting. I guess the Kanye West stuff is a little harsh, I'll grant you that.
- justinweiss 17y ago
  For what it's worth: ev: "@TechCrunch @arrington "we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information" What?! By whom? That's not our understanding" (http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744 http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744)
  - icey 17y ago
    Well, I would say that does change things significantly. That's what I get for trusting what TC says in their articles.
  - dfranke 17y ago
    Alright, that's pretty damning. As of now, I'm jumping on the "let's ban Techcrunch links from HN" bandwagon.
    - TomOfTTB 17y ago
      I think this is probably something that looks worse than it is. I can't see them flat out lying. I suspect they've been talking to marketing who said something like "we really wish you wouldn't publish this but if you're going to please..." followed by some requests as to how the information is presented. They then expressed that sentiment as "Twitter has given us the green light". (Still a bit of misrepresentation but not the flat out lie it appears to be) I could be wrong. But in a world where the CEO of Twitter can so quickly call B#S* I can't envision a scenario where TechCrunch doesn't have some explanation
      - tptacek 17y ago
        I'm not sure how this could look a lot worse than it already is. If they asked really nicely and just annoyed Twitter into allowing this to be published, TechCrunch's actions are still appalling. There's no way around it: what TechCrunch is doing is incentivizing the kinds of attacks Twitter is dealing with. Twitter will survive this, but a lot of the kinds of companies represented on Hacker News won't.
    - zimbabwe 17y ago
tamersalama 17y ago
Exactly. Why would someone make a conscious decision of exposing confidential information EVEN if it was going to make it out with or without them. Selling stolen information is unethical/illegal/immoral.
- rjurney 17y ago
  There's a kind of company that does this. They're called newspapers, they've been around for 100s of years, and they're part of the foundation of a free society.
philfreo 17y ago
"They aren’t happy about it, but they are able to live with it, they say" They may have given the green light, but it seems like the alternative wouldn't have been any better.
jacquesm 17y ago
Let me second that. With some regularity confidential stuff passes my desk or inbox, and once or twice by accident I have come into the possession of things that were not intended for me. Do not treat others like you would not want to be treated is very much the motto in cases like this. Techcrunch is setting themselves up for a very big fall. Not only will nobody ever trust them again, if anybody will ever have a chance to give them a taste of their own medicine I'm quite sure it will be done if only to spite them. Talking to the person whose stuff you obtained illegally is not a reason to publish and saying 'but then somebody else would do it' is not an excuse either.
grellas 17y ago
The law is very clear that receiving and publishing stolen trade secret information is in itself a culpable act unless the publication is somehow protected by the first amendment. There is generally no first amendment protection for publishing confidential information about products, partnering relationships, strategy meetings, and the like. My guess, though, is that the first-amendment angle made it just murky enough to cause Twitter to make a judgment call to "work with" TechCrunch to limit damage and try to be done with this. I see it as basically extortion, however, with Twitter being coerced into giving grudging permission to let this stuff come out. What a massive embarrassment for Twitter. I have worked with literally thousands of founders and entrepreneurs over the years, and I don't know one that would not be thoroughly red-faced at watching this sort of stuff being splashed about the web (not because the information is damaging in itself but in having allowed this to happen).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Some of the information in that piece is definitely damaging for the relationships between twitter and 3rd parties, notably their attitude towards P. Diddy and the Google employees. Techcrunch must know that it is damaging, and that alone might be a reason for legal action. I know for sure that if I were in twitters position the long knives would be out if techcrunch would cross the line. For now, crime does seem to pay: http://alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com http://alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com
- eli 17y ago
  Trade secret law is more complex than you make it out to be (and depends on which state has jurisdiction), but assuming any of the documents they disclosed meet the legal qualifications for a trade secret, you may well be right.
- aschobel 17y ago
  @ev denied that they gave TC the "green light" '@TechCrunch @arrington "we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information" What?! By whom? That's not our understanding' http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744 http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744
- 17y ago
alain94040 17y ago
You can read a sensible viewpoint by Chris O'Brien of the Mercury News about the ethics of TC here: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2009/07/15/techcrunch-ethics-and-the-twitter-leaks/ http://www.siliconbeat.com/2009/07/15/techcrunch-ethics-and-... You may be surprised by his conclusion (I was).
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  I have a hard time accepting that documents about Twitter were mentioned in an analogy to the Pentagon Papers. And after that I have an even harder time agreeing with the conclusion that this is somehow newsworthy information which needed to get out. (in other words, even if we grant that there was no breach of relevant law in publishing the documents, we come back to one of my favorite phrases from my philosophy days: having the right to do a thing does not make it right to do that thing)
- barrkel 17y ago
  So in other words, if documents have "news value" (i.e. someone wants to read them) and they have been leaked (the only examples he cites are Pentagon Papers and peanut butter memo), then publishing them is A-OK. Both of those predicates are highly questionable in this case. In the first and most important instance, these are STOLEN documents, not leaked. By taking commercial advantage of these stolen documents TechCrunch is effectively profiting from theft. And that someone (perhaps even many people) would like to read a document, i.e. it has news value, is not a valid ethical reason (forget legality) to breach privacy, much less profit from theft. In my eyes, TechCrunch is little more than theft-condoning scum at this point.
pg 17y ago
Is it dishonorable if it helps Twitter more than it harms them? None of the stuff they've published is terribly damaging to Twitter, and the publicity helps them. Remember, Twitter and TechCrunch are pretty friendly. Till now TechCrunch tended to be attacked for being too nice to Twitter, not too harsh. So while you boil with indignation, Evan and Michael are probably still on cordial terms.
- dfranke 17y ago
  > Is it dishonorable if it helps Twitter more than it harms them? Yes, it is. TC's breach of conduct consists of publishing stolen confidential information, and then, apparently (see above thread), lying about having permission to do so. Whether this will ultimately reflect well or badly on Twitter is a complete non-sequitir to the question of honor.
  - SamAtt 17y ago
    Unrelated Life Lesson: Never say "above" or "below" on HN
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jfornear 17y ago
  I agree. Just take a look at every Twitter-related TC post up until this debacle. The first few commenters are always complaining about the excessive reporting on Twitter. Now randoms are coming out of the woodwork to thrash TC over this. Even HN seems to have a more positive outlook on Twitter now (namely because TC is the bad guy). Seems like a win for Twitter to me... Either way, I don't think these leaks can be considered trade secrets. What would a competitor really have to gain that would outweigh the massive amount of attention Twitter is getting right now? Notes from Twitter strategy meetings sound like they wouldn't be useful for much more than rough drafts of Gossip Girl scripts anyway. From everyone's reaction, you would think TC published the President's security detail's shift schedule and itinerary...
- ubernostrum 17y ago
TomOfTTB 17y ago
Let me say, I think what they did was immoral. So I'm not defending them per se. But there is a reality to this situation that at least mitigates things. In some situations morality only brings a result if everyone in the world acts morally. Like here, TechCrunch knows someone else will publish these papers if they don't. Given the hits they'd be worth it's an absolute given. So in judging the scale of their guilt you have to consider a subset of morality. Because if you're TechCrunch and you are deciding what to do with these documents you have to accept an immoral thing is going to happen. So the question for them becomes: Is it immoral to cheat your employees out of the revenue this information would generate because you want to stick to a moral code that you know will have no consequence? That doesn't excuse what they did but it's a mitigating factor. So while I'm not saying they're right in doing what they did I think saying things like "I have no respect for TechCrunch" might be a slight over reaction.

by geuis 17y ago

icey 17y ago

Did you read the article? This sentence is in the first paragraph: "... we’ve spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that."

tamersalama 17y ago
The 'right' as in 'my right'? Where's Twitter on that?
anatoly 17y ago
There is no right way to go about doing that.
greyman 17y ago
But still, it's like when I would steal your own belongings, then contact you and "talking to you directly" that I will return some of them back to you, and use others for my own benefit, even if it might do harm to you. We are still talking about publishing stolen documents, whether they contacted twitter or not.
- ajkirwin 17y ago
  That's a ridiculous strawman argument.
- derefr 17y ago
  The information is out. It was sent to other people than TechCrunch, and those people will publish it. However, those people probably won't be as visible as TechCrunch. Thus, TechCrunch has decided to act as Twitter's PR department and publish, of the information they got, exactly the right subset of that information to make Twitter look good, hoping that once everyone hears the TechCrunch PR version, they won't be so interested in hearing the rest. If Twitter said "publish nothing", that's exactly what TechCrunch would do—but in this case that's not the best idea.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    To claim that someone else would have done it anyway is not a very good defense. It also totally ignores the ethics of the situation.
    - hymanroth 17y ago
      Agreed - it's a crap and immoral defence (sic). It's unfortunate bloggers don't have their own Geneva Convention (and no, that's not a tech conference in Europe)
    - derefr 17y ago
      Yes, it does ignore the ethics of the situation, because when information leaks to the public you no longer have an ethical decision to make, but a strategic decision of damage control. It becomes an exercise in pure game theory, as you can't assume that any given individual in the public will cooperate with you or be convinced by your arguments toward sympathy. TechCrunch will only publish what Twitter lets them. In practice, in terms of who gets to make the decisions, this is the same situation as if Twitter found out they had been exploited and contacted TechCrunch to "leak" some PR for them. If Twitter wanted to do their damage control through some other outlet at this point, they could just tell TechCrunch to publish nothing, and then pick another news site and send the documents they choose to them. If Twitter wanted to do nothing, they could tell TechCrunch to do nothing, and then do nothing themselves. However, in both of these situations, once the information was published (and it would be—news is one of the most competitive businesses in the world, and one of the most cut-throat), TechCrunch would pick it up, because it would then be public and already available. The only difference, in this case, is that TechCrunch can publish the information "first." But that doesn't matter, really; as long as the information gets out, does it matter who did it first?
lallysingh 17y ago
Yeah, quick translation: "We know we're in the wrong, and we're going to blackmail Twitter into saying our release is OK."
tonystubblebine 17y ago
One thing that wasn't clear to me until Arrington started talking about working with Twitter on this release, is that Twitter does have some non-legal leverage. I'm pretty sure they regularly give TechCrunch early or insider access to Twitter news. They could just as easily move that preferential treatment over to Mashable or GigaOm. At this point, the "news" organization that probably matters most to Twitter is CNN, not TC. As other people have noted, the actual documents released haven't amounted to more than a gigantic press release for Twitter. Now we know that they dream big and care about their employees. I'm sure that's killing them.
- hymanroth 17y ago
  The documents are not so positive. They diss a large number of celebs, call GOOG and MSFT 'distractions' and really go to town on Marissa Mayer.
  - tonystubblebine 17y ago
    What's wrong with calling GOOG and MSFT distractions? I think almost every new company immediately gets hit by the biz dev people who want to start talking about deals. For the most part you just have to focus on yourself and your customers, so these advances can be really distracting. I guess the Kanye West stuff is a little harsh, I'll grant you that.
justinweiss 17y ago
For what it's worth: ev: "@TechCrunch @arrington "we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information" What?! By whom? That's not our understanding" (http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744 http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744)
- icey 17y ago
  Well, I would say that does change things significantly. That's what I get for trusting what TC says in their articles.
- dfranke 17y ago
  Alright, that's pretty damning. As of now, I'm jumping on the "let's ban Techcrunch links from HN" bandwagon.
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    I think this is probably something that looks worse than it is. I can't see them flat out lying. I suspect they've been talking to marketing who said something like "we really wish you wouldn't publish this but if you're going to please..." followed by some requests as to how the information is presented. They then expressed that sentiment as "Twitter has given us the green light". (Still a bit of misrepresentation but not the flat out lie it appears to be) I could be wrong. But in a world where the CEO of Twitter can so quickly call B#S* I can't envision a scenario where TechCrunch doesn't have some explanation
    - tptacek 17y ago
      I'm not sure how this could look a lot worse than it already is. If they asked really nicely and just annoyed Twitter into allowing this to be published, TechCrunch's actions are still appalling. There's no way around it: what TechCrunch is doing is incentivizing the kinds of attacks Twitter is dealing with. Twitter will survive this, but a lot of the kinds of companies represented on Hacker News won't.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago

tamersalama 17y ago

Exactly. Why would someone make a conscious decision of exposing confidential information EVEN if it was going to make it out with or without them. Selling stolen information is unethical/illegal/immoral.

rjurney 17y ago
There's a kind of company that does this. They're called newspapers, they've been around for 100s of years, and they're part of the foundation of a free society.

philfreo 17y ago

"They aren’t happy about it, but they are able to live with it, they say" They may have given the green light, but it seems like the alternative wouldn't have been any better.

jacquesm 17y ago

Let me second that. With some regularity confidential stuff passes my desk or inbox, and once or twice by accident I have come into the possession of things that were not intended for me. Do not treat others like you would not want to be treated is very much the motto in cases like this. Techcrunch is setting themselves up for a very big fall. Not only will nobody ever trust them again, if anybody will ever have a chance to give them a taste of their own medicine I'm quite sure it will be done if only to spite them. Talking to the person whose stuff you obtained illegally is not a reason to publish and saying 'but then somebody else would do it' is not an excuse either.

grellas 17y ago

The law is very clear that receiving and publishing stolen trade secret information is in itself a culpable act unless the publication is somehow protected by the first amendment. There is generally no first amendment protection for publishing confidential information about products, partnering relationships, strategy meetings, and the like. My guess, though, is that the first-amendment angle made it just murky enough to cause Twitter to make a judgment call to "work with" TechCrunch to limit damage and try to be done with this. I see it as basically extortion, however, with Twitter being coerced into giving grudging permission to let this stuff come out. What a massive embarrassment for Twitter. I have worked with literally thousands of founders and entrepreneurs over the years, and I don't know one that would not be thoroughly red-faced at watching this sort of stuff being splashed about the web (not because the information is damaging in itself but in having allowed this to happen).

jacquesm 17y ago
Some of the information in that piece is definitely damaging for the relationships between twitter and 3rd parties, notably their attitude towards P. Diddy and the Google employees. Techcrunch must know that it is damaging, and that alone might be a reason for legal action. I know for sure that if I were in twitters position the long knives would be out if techcrunch would cross the line. For now, crime does seem to pay: http://alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com http://alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com
eli 17y ago
Trade secret law is more complex than you make it out to be (and depends on which state has jurisdiction), but assuming any of the documents they disclosed meet the legal qualifications for a trade secret, you may well be right.
aschobel 17y ago
@ev denied that they gave TC the "green light" '@TechCrunch @arrington "we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information" What?! By whom? That's not our understanding' http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744 http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744
17y ago

alain94040 17y ago

You can read a sensible viewpoint by Chris O'Brien of the Mercury News about the ethics of TC here: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2009/07/15/techcrunch-ethics-and-the-twitter-leaks/ http://www.siliconbeat.com/2009/07/15/techcrunch-ethics-and-... You may be surprised by his conclusion (I was).

ubernostrum 17y ago
I have a hard time accepting that documents about Twitter were mentioned in an analogy to the Pentagon Papers. And after that I have an even harder time agreeing with the conclusion that this is somehow newsworthy information which needed to get out. (in other words, even if we grant that there was no breach of relevant law in publishing the documents, we come back to one of my favorite phrases from my philosophy days: having the right to do a thing does not make it right to do that thing)
barrkel 17y ago
So in other words, if documents have "news value" (i.e. someone wants to read them) and they have been leaked (the only examples he cites are Pentagon Papers and peanut butter memo), then publishing them is A-OK. Both of those predicates are highly questionable in this case. In the first and most important instance, these are STOLEN documents, not leaked. By taking commercial advantage of these stolen documents TechCrunch is effectively profiting from theft. And that someone (perhaps even many people) would like to read a document, i.e. it has news value, is not a valid ethical reason (forget legality) to breach privacy, much less profit from theft. In my eyes, TechCrunch is little more than theft-condoning scum at this point.

pg 17y ago

Is it dishonorable if it helps Twitter more than it harms them? None of the stuff they've published is terribly damaging to Twitter, and the publicity helps them. Remember, Twitter and TechCrunch are pretty friendly. Till now TechCrunch tended to be attacked for being too nice to Twitter, not too harsh. So while you boil with indignation, Evan and Michael are probably still on cordial terms.

dfranke 17y ago
> Is it dishonorable if it helps Twitter more than it harms them? Yes, it is. TC's breach of conduct consists of publishing stolen confidential information, and then, apparently (see above thread), lying about having permission to do so. Whether this will ultimately reflect well or badly on Twitter is a complete non-sequitir to the question of honor.
- SamAtt 17y ago
  Unrelated Life Lesson: Never say "above" or "below" on HN
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jfornear 17y ago
I agree. Just take a look at every Twitter-related TC post up until this debacle. The first few commenters are always complaining about the excessive reporting on Twitter. Now randoms are coming out of the woodwork to thrash TC over this. Even HN seems to have a more positive outlook on Twitter now (namely because TC is the bad guy). Seems like a win for Twitter to me... Either way, I don't think these leaks can be considered trade secrets. What would a competitor really have to gain that would outweigh the massive amount of attention Twitter is getting right now? Notes from Twitter strategy meetings sound like they wouldn't be useful for much more than rough drafts of Gossip Girl scripts anyway. From everyone's reaction, you would think TC published the President's security detail's shift schedule and itinerary...
ubernostrum 17y ago

TomOfTTB 17y ago

Let me say, I think what they did was immoral. So I'm not defending them per se. But there is a reality to this situation that at least mitigates things. In some situations morality only brings a result if everyone in the world acts morally. Like here, TechCrunch knows someone else will publish these papers if they don't. Given the hits they'd be worth it's an absolute given. So in judging the scale of their guilt you have to consider a subset of morality. Because if you're TechCrunch and you are deciding what to do with these documents you have to accept an immoral thing is going to happen. So the question for them becomes: Is it immoral to cheat your employees out of the revenue this information would generate because you want to stick to a moral code that you know will have no consequence? That doesn't excuse what they did but it's a mitigating factor. So while I'm not saying they're right in doing what they did I think saying things like "I have no respect for TechCrunch" might be a slight over reaction.