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Comment by r109 | Hacker News Reader

This letter seems like a blanket that Sony's lawyers are laying out across @BikiniRobotArmy and pinning Twitter with a wall of federal and state law violation claims. Does anyone have information on what material @BikiniRobotArmy actually "published" ??? Did he upload the 26GB Sony dump into a Tweet? Did he upload a picture he found on Google Images? Did he retweet Greenwald?

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This could be it. Amazing what "celebrities" are charging for product placement.

https://twitter.com/BikiniRobotArmy/status/54688646593893171...

Might just be me but it seems likely Sony and these celebrities are in pretty clear violation of the FTC 2013 .com disclosure guidelines?

It's one thing to give celebrities clothes, etc and let them parade them around so that gullible consumers buy the product to pretend to be "fashionable" via known endorsement contracts.

It's quite another to pay a celebrity millions of dollars to say something and hide it as their own statement without disclosure.

Payola 3.0?

EDIT: Added link to FTC guidelines [pdf] http://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-rel...

This seems to be the most glaring issue here, and likely the reason for the scare letter.

Probably unwise of them to have used this strategy considering the Streisand effect.

Again just speculating, but this could also elevate the dump of the documents on Twitter by the individual into a press issue now since it is showing wrongdoing.

Rights of journalist to distribute illegally obtained documents in public interest I think was firmly established by SCOTUS in BARTNICKI v. VOPPER [0] and they go over the DMCA implications in the opinion.

[0] http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2171346211086974...

can anyone find the resulting paid-for tweet? i couldn't. We can't judge the "celebrities" on this e-mail exchange.

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