Off the Map

Perhaps there is an answer to this question; if so, I hope you’ll post it in the comments for this post.  The question is with respect to the Wikileaks controversy:

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If Wikileaks would be considered for the felony offense of receipt of and possession of stolen classified documents, and forced to return what classified documents it has, would everyone else who has downloaded these documents from Wikileaks–including news agencies–be felony offenders?

I don’t know the legal implications, but look to music as a parallel: Napstering and Kazaaing and Limewiring were illegal (as I understand it).  Users of those software performed illegal music downloads.  Doing so has suscepted some users to terrible fines and dramatic court cases.

Is there a difference that makes a difference with respect to downloading illegal information from Wikileaks?  If I provided on my webspace the same music for download (as opposed to using the illegal file-sharing software for you to download it from), and you downloaded the music, would(n’t) that be just as illegal?

If it would, how is not your download of the classified cables also illegal?

Furthermore, harboring the classified information on your computer: Wouldn’t that be possessing stolen classified documents?

The general semantics parallels are hard to understand here.  With respect to the map-territory analogy, it’s hard for me to understand whether your download of the cables from Wikileaks is the download of a map or, instead, a map of a map.  If you download the cables, are those the cables, or a likeness of the cables?

Furthermore, aren’t the cables available on Wikileaks just likenesses of the cables to begin with?  So if you download the cables, aren’t you downloading a likeness of a likeness?

I would imagine the legal issue isn’t so much likeness as it is the information contained in the maps.  It would seem to me that it’s not so much illegal to have the maps as it is to have the information contained in the maps.  (It would seem, but … I’m uncertain that’s the case.)

My concern is that Wikileaks, therefore, would be inappropriately targeted for some sort of legal issue with respect to having these cables, but news agencies and Joe User wouldn’t be targeted should Wikileaks comply and hand over the information.  The information has already been set free in many ways.

Or at least I think it has.  To date, I haven’t downloaded the cables.  But I’m reading stories from news agencies that presumably have, and have read the cables, and have used the cables to create their stories.  News agencies, it would seem to me, are thus circulating classified information.  I suppose that happens, but news agencies are also possessing classified information.  If I were a criminal by being Joe User and downloading the cables from Wikileaks, then got a temp job at a newspaper that also had them, do I go from criminal to protected member of the media by sheer means of walking through a revolving door at my day’s job?  Do I go back to being a criminal when I get my timesheet signed?

See also: classified-documents, difference, file-sharing-software, illegal, law, likeness, map-territory-analogy, maps, maps-of-maps, similarity, software, wikileaks