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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

When twitter was hacked TechCrunch did everything they could to expose the valuable data and they paid the hacker.

Why should anyone even care if TechCrunch got hacked, it's only fair that when you condone hacking of other sites and profit from it that you just shrug it off when it happens to you.

TC pressing charges because of being hacked would be completely hypocritical of them.

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We’ve been asked if we wanted to purchase information in the past that would have made for some great stories and we have always declined. Our policy is to never pay for information.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/26/how-i-would-have-handled-th...

> they paid the hacker

This is not true.

People are wondering how much they paid, not if they paid.

Is Arrington on the record stating that they did not pay?

Even if, they still profited tremendously from the traffic, so the point still stands. You either are ok with black hat hacks or you're not, you can't be fine with it when it is other people and press charges when it's you.

edit:

If've found this response:

http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/15/our-reaction-to-your-reacti...

There is lots of handwaving there, but the issue of whether or not money changed hands is not mentioned at all, and it would have been a pretty strong point in their defense if it hadn't. The only words he uses is 'But if it lands in our inbox, we consider it fair game.", which suggests nothing preceded that, but that's speculative.

People wonder about lots of things that aren't true. I unzipped those files. We did not pay for them. "Landed in our inbox" should do more than suggest that nothing preceded it. Would you say that software just "landed on your desktop" after you paid for it?

Profiting from traffic and paying for stolen goods are two very different things, so I don't think the point does still stand.

Profitting from traffic from stolen goods is pretty unethical, for me it doesn't matter if you paid for it or not. Clearly the hacker did this either to damage twitter or to profit from it, and in either case you could have done the right thing. Claiming that others would have disclosed it (which is something TC did pretty loudly) is really funny, so you effectively have already admitted that it was unethical, but because others would have done it that made it 'right'. Anything for a scoop.

You could have gotten a good bit of mileage simply by reporting about the hack, instead you decided to do damage to others for your own profits.

It's funny how acceptable stuff like that has become, and how you seem to be claiming some kind of moral highground here for something that is simply sleazy.

Profitting from stolen goods, directly or indirectly is unethical, if you had any sense at all you'd have given twitter a warning that their files are out in the open and you'd have destroyed the data.

I hope one day you'll find the tables turned, we'll see how ethical you will think this is then.

And I'll be on your side in that one, just like I was solidly on twitters side in the other.

Giving people a platform to do damage and to profit from that is sickening.

First you said "they paid". When this was questioned, you said that people wondered how much they paid, not if they paid. And now you say that it doesn't matter if they paid?

Yep.

Because either way they gained from stuff that wasn't theirs to begin with and that was taken with malicious intent.

I wasn't aware that TC was on the record for not having paid, but that, as I said in my eyes makes little to no difference.

I wish sincerely that TC will have a helping of their own medicine and we'll see how they react, judging by this 'poll' I don't think they'll be as gracious as twitter was.

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