US government is entitled to all Snowden book proceeds, judge rules | Hacker News Reader

US government is entitled to all Snowden book proceeds, judge rules

arstechnica.com

79 pointsmikorym34 comments

If Snowden has no chance of getting any income from his book, let's boycott the official book and download unauthorized copies from Library Genesis instead. And perhaps, donate to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. But at least, don't buy the official book and send money to the U.S. Government.

What about the publisher, who took on legal risk publishing Snowden's book? If they don't make money, there is no incentive to publish this sort of book in the future.

Will the publisher get any of the money, even if people bought the book?

The ruling names his publishers as "parties necessary to accord relief, but [the US Gov] has not asserted independent claims against them". So if I'm parsing that right (IANAL), the publishers are required to remit Snowden's share to the government, but the ruling doesn't appear to require the publishers themselves to forfeit their own revenues/profits.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/snowd...

Donate money to them.

This is the standard model for DRM shenanigans, works well here too.

Isn't it a non-US publisher? Those of us who bought the book outside of USA, surely that money is out of reach?

What happens if you buy the book outside of the US?

> The judge also ruled that Snowden had breached his contractual responsibilities by giving speeches at the TED conference and other venues. Each of these speeches included slides with materials that were marked as classified.

There was another front page story today about a judge claiming that the wiki claims could not be tried because they could not confirm whether the government was indeed spying. Which is it: are the leaked documents real or fake? Awfully convenient interpretations

Appropriating Snowden's revenue streams is literally the only way the establishment can actually punish him in the foreseeable future.

Wikipedia is doing the right thing by pursuing the NSA legally, but they really have no chance at all, because of the legal framework upon which the NSA's power is built.

I see the connection you're pointing out, but I don't see any way anyone could legally act upon it. (Sans maybe a Congressional act)

I wonder if maybe one can buy the book and print it yourself or through Blurb [1] and then just donate the amount?

[1] https://www.blurb.com/

If you're looking in good faith for actual answers to the question, you should only trust answers that quote the opinions and filings from both cases (or at least link to them) that illustrate the difference, else you would find it more productive to search for those opinions yourself.

Every other answering reply is very likely to be armchair conjecture.

Here‘s a link to donate for Snowden:

https://edwardsnowden.com/de/donate/

Also I will be downloading an illegal copy of his book today. And I’m not even that big a fan of him.

EDIT: Removed some profanity, sorry

> And I’m not even that big a fan of him.

We are but vessels for our claim to fame.

You can see this with Nobel prize winners, rich tycoons, great writers, and so forth.

Often in mathematics, a thing is not named after the person who discovered it. I think that mathematicians as a joke even made a theorem about this and then didn't name it after the guy who pointed it out.

With Snowden, I think it was more the fact that he was the whistleblower. You could argue that he just did it for this reason or that reason. But he is now the vessel for that point in history.

Don't forget that he first tried to go about it the legal way. Escalate to higher ups, where he was promptly ignored.

I didn't know that. Did you know this before or is it in the book?

Haven't read the book. This is from when the story started breaking.

According to accounts he had a hardcover constitution at his desk. He used it to back up his arguments but again 'who cares nerd, get back to your work'.

Other things that pop to my mind was that he was given some super high clearance so he could do favors for his boss (doing their job) as they were too lazy. And of course no one cared then, nor they cared afterwards.

Reading about this whole story popped my bubble of ignorance how government agencies are run. They are run same as any big corporation, run by career BSers often lazy and incompetent. But they are protected by same type of people (naturally).

>'who cares nerd, get back to your work'

That's pretty much it. The first time I really understood Snowden was when he was on the Joe Rogan podcast (think of JRE what you will...). It really drove home the point of the profanity* of evil. Just people going about their daily business, not thinking too much about it.

*this doesn't seem to be the correct word here. If you're a native english speaker please tell me what's the right phrase to use here

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Possibly the most important point is that they are not preventing the publication, or even going so far as to deny its content; they are asking that the profits be awarded to them because the subjects of the book are confidential.

Better title "Judge rules Snowden signed contract to give all book proceeds to US government".

USG is not appropriating his proceeds just because he is accused of a crime, they have been given it by a judge because Snowden signed a contract to that effect. If he had signed a contract to give book proceeds to Elon Musk or Katy Perry then presumably the judge would have upheld that too.

Is it possible to donate to Snowden?

I don't know the legalities for U.S. citizens, but I'd welcome suggestions for other appropriate charities, too. I'm certainly going to donate a multiple of the book price to someone.

In the US, the EFF has been a long-time champion of freedom in the digital age. They're probably the most Snowden-esque nonprofit you can donate to, as they provide pro bono legal help in the defense of freedom in the digital realm (https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-assistance).

There's also the Wikimedia Foundation which has of course been responsible for the distribution of a lot of free information around the world.

Freedom of the Press Foundation[1].

[1] https://freedom.press/about/board

https://edwardsnowden.com/de/donate/

User Joe-Z posted a link: https://edwardsnowden.com/de/donate/

It's "nice" to see that judges immediately see a breach of contract but the illegality of NSA's actions are swept under the rug. Truly the land of the free to do exactly as they're told.

Why didn't his lawyers catch that? I'm sure he's had lawyers reviewing his contracts with publishers and whatnot, so surely they must be aware of his employment contract.

Isn't Snowden's book literally his auto-biography? How exactly does it contain classified material?

Well of course they did. This is one of those times where it's easy to see the real law of the land is whatever the government feels like doing. It's all a dog and pony show. What I find surprising is that Snowden didn't know that. He's not going to win a game where his competition makes up the rules as they go along.

Huh? He literally signed a contract saying he would forfeit to the US government any money from books containing classified material - and the judge is holding him to it. It’s right there in black and white.

The government promised to uphold the Constitution too, but that didn’t go all too well…

Perhaps the US government needs to gets its priorities straight, and investigate the leaked information itself instead, since the impact of that on the people is much more harmful.

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