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

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.