Intellectual Property Law

A hacker claims to have cracked the web site of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly and purloined a list of subscribers to the site, which includes their names, e-mail addresses, city and state, and the password they use for their registration to the site.

The attack was retaliation for comments that O'Reilly made on the air this week about web sites that published e-mails obtained from the Yahoo account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, according to a press release distributed by WikiLeaks late Friday.

The hacker sent WikiLeaks a screenshot of O'Reilly's subscriber list as proof of the deed, which WikiLeaks has posted online.

This week on his Fox show, O'Reilly slammed web sites, such as WikiLeaks and Gawker, for posting screenshots of e-mails, family photos and a list of contacts taken from Palin's private e-mail account.

"They're trafficking in stolen merchandise," O'Reilly said during one of his shows, calling for their prosecution. He also referred to a site that published the screenshots as "despicable, slimy, scummy."

In the video above, O'Reilly spoke with Amanda Carpenter, a reporter for Townhall.com who agreed with him and said that a web site that published such information was "complicit" in the hack of Palin's e-mail account.

"They think it's newsworthy, even though the information was absolutely, illegally obtained," she said.

Neither O'Reilly nor Carpenter mentioned the First Amendment protection that media organizations, such as Fox News and Townhall.com, are generally afforded for publishing newsworthy information.

That segment was followed the next day by a segment with Fox News anchor, Megyn Kelly, a lawyer, who explained why the First Amendment would protect the sites. (See video below.)

O'Reilly, disagreed with her, however.

"If your grandma sends you 50 bucks for your birthday and somebody steals the letter and gives it to somebody else and they take the 50 bucks, they're going to get charged as well as this person who stole the letter," he said.

Kelly explained that taking stolen money and publishing news were not the same.

"That's crazy," he said.

"No it's not crazy," Kelly replied. "Because . . . what if somebody obtained a document illegally that proved some massive conspiracy among the presidential candidates and they leaked it to Fox News and we knew it was stolen. You don't think we'd put it on the air? You're darn right we would. And it's not illegal."

WikiLeaks said in its press release that it had confirmed the authenticity of the list, but didn't mention how it did so.

Efforts by Threat Level to contact Fox News and some of the subscribers on the list to independently verify the authenticity of the list were unsuccessful.

See Also:

• Little or No Jail Time Likely for Palin Hacker
• Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy
• Group Posts E-Mail Hacked from Palin Account