Ethics

I noted last week that, in its online law school rankings, U.S. News had listed the third and fourth tier schools in rank order rather than in alphabetical order, as they always had done in the past.  Suspecting that U.S. News had made a mistake, I downloaded the screen shots to my computer.  And lo and behold, U.S. News corrected its error yesterday, and is once again listing the third and fourth tier schools only in alphabetical order.

Given that journalists don't hesitate to take advantage of mistakes of this sort, I was tempted to post the original screen shots on this blog.  Indeed, if this were litigation, there's a good ethical argument to be made for taking advantage of this sort of mistake.  (More on that issue from Monroe Freedman here.)

But this is not litigation.  People already pay too much attention to the rankings, so why give U.S. News more attention than it already gets?  On the other hand, there is something to be said for making the third and fourth tier rankings publicly available; as David Hricik points out, the alphabetical listing can have some perverse effects. 

So what do you legal ethicists think?  Should I post the screen shots?  And for you copyright experts, would U.S. News have the right to keep me from posting them?  I honestly don't know the answer, but I'd rather not got sued.  In the meantime, click below for a poll.