MPR Blogger/Senior News Editor – Breaks Law?????
Bob Collins aka the Polinaut aka Senior News Editor at Minnesota Public Radio has had his mouse cord in knots all this week about the Republican Party’s CD on the Marriage Amendment. Collins has focused a huge amount, if not all, of his publicly funded news organization ‘on the clock’ time this week to cracking the code and accusing the GOP of wrong doing, when none had actually happened.
Well, MDE has been keeping a close eye on Collins, and it turns out that Collins himself may have been the one who actually broke a law. Here’s the timeline.
1. Bob Collins, an employee of MPR, gets a copy of the Party’s CD from a colleague Tom Scheck.
“Reporter Tom Scheck just gave me a copy of the CD the Republican Party is mailing out to voters in certain districts.” Source: Polinaut
2. To access the presentation on the CD, Bob Collins, an employee of MPR, must have agreed to the “Terms of Agreement” on the CD.
Included in the terms:
“4. You may not use, copy, or modify this Software or materials or any copy, modification, or merged portion, in whole or in part. You may not sublicense, assign, loan, rent, or otherwise transfer this Software to any other person without Our prior written consent. You may not reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, temper with or alter this Software.”
3. The “Terms of Agreement” that Bob Collins, an employee of MPR, agreed to specifically states that you may not “decompile” this software, yet Collins asks on his blog “Anybody got a good decompiler?” Source: Polinaut
4. In violation of the “Terms of Agreement” on the CD, Bob Collins, an employee of MPR, works with someone to decompile the CD.
“And let’s assume — and remember this is a hypothetical here — I [Bob Collins] had enough intelligence to decompile the program and figure out what data is being captured and sent. Could I do it?
Yes. Someone did.” Source: Polinaut
5. Bob Collins, an employee of MPR, claims he did nothing wrong.
The series of events I laid out above begs the question:
Maybe I missed something, but when did it become acceptable for the media to break into a computer database of a political party?
Are Collins and MPR above the law when it comes to copyrights and user agreements? (Sure we know they think they are since they are “members of the media”)
OK, maybe they were just willing to do anything for the story.
But considering their story, originally, was that the GOP had invaded/endangered the information privacy of the CD’s users, (which led to rapid accusations from the DFL of laws being broken by the GOP) I’d say that MPR is way off topic by.
This is just another example of how far the biased media in Minnesota is willing to go to stop the Republicans from winning the public’s support. The message on that CD is indefensible by the weak arguments for same-sex marriage, that Collins, his media cronies, and the DFLers use everyday, so they have got to keep you from hearing it. They were willing to do anything necessary to do that. Collins and MPR went as far as to perform acts that may have been illegal, just to block the message the GOP was going to send out to you.
I for one don’t have any admiration for MPR’s foray into blogging with Polinaut. I saw it for what is was on day one, a liberal media outlet repackaging its commentary that it couldn’t hide in the regular news coverage anymore. After this week’s degradation into manipulative partisanship investigations, MPR/Collins make the Star Tribune Editorial Page look down right Bush friendly.
So the burden is on Collins now. Did he break the law? If not who did? And did they do so with his knowledge, since he was the one who put the call out for decoders?
I bet there’s a warning light coming on in Polinaut capsule. The battery packs are getting low, and MPR is sending the order to Collins’ that the mission is over, and he is ‘Go’ for reentry. Bring her home in one piece before you crash and burn.
Again, No CDs were mailed out by the MNGOP. No information was obtained with out warning, except what was obtained by MPR.
