C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pa la guerre
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Flyonthewall might not get swatted after all
INTERNET GIANTS Google and Twitter have taken up the case of theflyonthewall.com, which was banned from posting research from Wall Street in an earlier court hearing.
US bankers Merrill Lynch, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, filed the case earlier this year in New York.
"This litigation confronts the phenomenon of the rapid and widespread dissemination of financial services firms' equity research recommendations through unauthorized channels of electronic distribution," said US District Judge Denise Cote.
"This dissemination frequently occurs before the firms have an opportunity to share these recommendations with their clients - for whom the research is intended - and to encourage the clients to trade on those recommendations."
A motion was granted in favour of the bankers and theflyonthewall.com was banned from publishing Wall Street research. But two knights in not so shining armour have intervened to save the day.
According to Reuters, Google and Twitter filed an action in an appeals court this week. They alleged that banning the research posts was "obsolete" in the age of the Internet.
"News reporting always has been a complex ecosystem, where what is 'news' is often driven by certain influential news organizations, with others republishing or broadcasting those facts - all to the benefit of the public," companies said in the filing.
It sounds like Google has a vested interest in sticking it to the man. In this case, it's the bankers, but we all know who is the real enemy of publicly disseminated information. That'll be News Corp sitting behind its paywalls in Murdoch's clutching at straws bid to save traditional print journalism from its imminent obsolescence.
Google and Twitter might be flexing their muscles in the vain hope that Murdoch will see the light and relent on his paywall business model. µ
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So if that research is 'temporarily copyrighted' then who puts it on the internet in the first place for google/theflyonthewall to get their hands on it before the people ordering the reports had a chance to react on them? Seems a bit odd, I mean twitter is what? 160 characters max? So those reports get leaked condensed to a mere 160 characters?
Basically this is a case where the law says you can't whisper rumors and twitter and google rightly say that is outdated since it's unstoppable for financial info like that to spread, and they don't want to end up a victim of various suits-by-weasels-to-make-money, seems fair enough to me and I think the judge will get that too, it's up to the firm to have their clients no spread it about but the information can't be locked down since that would fall under the insider trading laws and those are quite fierce.
So yeah I think google and friends have a point.
Starts with swine who make a living from financial shenanigans, then vultures swoop down and try to grab a bit.
The specifics of the case are sheerly for commercial gain, but in the process there's likely to be damage to the public's right to know breaking news.