Is it legal to make a stock trade on non-public information that was obtained legally? Let's say you hear two executives of a publicly-traded company discussing, in a public space, an upcoming earnings report, impending product release, bankruptcy, or some other material information that is non-public. Is it illegal to trade that company's stock based on the non-public information you overheard? P.S. I don't actually have any such information, I'm just curious.
It should be legal (though I can't find an analogous case where the court has ruled that it is). There is a regulation summarizing the government's position (thus, what will be enforced in 17 CFR 240.10b, which prohibits use of "manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance" in stock trading. Section 240.10b5-1 says: The “manipulative and deceptive devices” prohibited by Section 10(b) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78j) and §240.10b-5 thereunder include, among other things, the purchase or sale of a security of any issuer, on the basis of material nonpublic information about that security or issuer, in breach of a duty of trust or confidence that is owed directly, indirectly, or derivatively, to the issuer of that security or the shareholders of that issuer, or to any other person who is the source of the material nonpublic information. The executives clearly have a direct duty of trust of confidence. Section 240.10b5-2 enumerates the following duties: (1) Whenever a person agrees to maintain information in confidence; (2) Whenever the person communicating the material nonpublic information and the person to whom it is communicated have a history, pattern, or practice of sharing confidences, such that the recipient of the information knows or reasonably should know that the person communicating the material nonpublic information expects that the recipient will maintain its confidentiality; or (3) Whenever a person receives or obtains material nonpublic information from his or her spouse, parent, child, or sibling; provided, however, that the person receiving or obtaining the information may demonstrate that no duty of trust or confidence existed with respect to the information, by establishing that he or she neither knew nor reasonably should have known that the person who was the source of the information expected that the person would keep the information confidential, because of the parties' history, pattern, or practice of sharing and maintaining confidences, and because there was no agreement or understanding to maintain the confidentiality of the information. In the hypothetical, (1) is plainly not applicable. (2) is predicated on having a relationship (which doesn't exist) and the information-having expecting you to keep the information secret (he doesn't know that you have overheard them). (3) is likewise not applicable. The basic rule is that you can't "misapproprate" information, but you can use information that falls into your lap (even from a person who has a duty to not disclose the information). This subsection starts saying "For purposes of this section, a “duty of trust or confidence” exists in the following circumstances, among others", which means they aren't necessarily giving you an exhaustive list. Still, there is currently no legal basis for prosecuting a person who overhears information from someone he has no relationship to, even if you are pretty confident that the information has not been made public.
Is this illegal? No, subject to some possible narrow exceptions discussed below. Do the social media companies have a duty under the First Amendment to not censor users? No. Indeed, usually, there is greater liability exposure for failing to censor content, for example, by failing to honor a "take down notice" under Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act based upon an alleged copyright violation, or for failure to censor content related to potential sex trafficking. The First Amendment to the United State Constitution (which applies to state and local government via the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution) is a limitation on the power of governmental actors only. This said, some state constitutions, such as California's, provide free speech protections not just from government action, but also in spaces that are privately owned, but are open to the public and constitute de facto public forums. The authority of California to expand its state constitutional protections to these private settings was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980). It is conceivable that these doctrines could be expanded to public Internet forums in the case of California based social media companies (e.g., Facebook has its headquarters in Menlo Park, California; so does its sister platform Instagram; LinkedIn is based in Sunnyvale, California; and Google is based in Mountain View, California). There are also laws that limit how employers can regulate employee speech in a labor relations context, although most of them don't have constitutional dimensions. It is conceivable that these doctrines could limit social media platform's authority to limit some kinds of speech by their own employees, or in situations where the social media platform looked like it was acting as a mere agent of some other employer controlled by that employer for all practical purposes. There has also been litigation related to free speech on social media regarding the rights of governmental account holders to exercise the same kinds of account management that is available to other users, implicating the First Amendment right to petition the government. The social media platform operator is not itself the primary target in these cases, but if it simply implements its terms of service neutrally with respect to all account holders, it could be facilitating a constitutional violation by its governmental account holders and could conceivably be held liable for aiding and abetting that violation of the law by a governmental account holder (in the context of a lawsuit for money damages this is a special subtype of something called a civil conspiracy).
To examine this further and answer your question, we need to look at Copyright (and fair use) as well as Defamation. Alas, I am unsure as to how taking legitimate headlines from around the world and attributing their source is 'fake news' - but I'll accept that it's 'fake news' for the purposes of exploring this topic. A lot of the potential (or motive) for a person or company to litigate against you will be context specific and detailed to how you have used their work and portray their journalists and characters - misquotes etc. As an exception to British copyright law, fair dealing is governed by Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which outlines three instance where fair dealing is a legitimate defence: If the use is for the purposes of research or private study; If it is used for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation; Where it is utilised for the purposes of reporting current events (this does not apply to photographs) However, where you may come into problems is: A statutory definition for fair dealing does not exist; it will always be a matter of fact, degree and interpretation in every fair use case. Nor is there a percentage or quantitative measure to determine fair dealing. The Intellectual Property Office lists the key factors used to determine the validity of whether a particular dealing with a work is fair as follows: Has the use of the work impacted negatively on the market for the original work? If the creator or owner has lost potential revenue through the re-use of their work, it is not likely to be fair. Was it reasonable and necessary to use the amount of work that was taken? Also: Fair use for parody, caricature or pastiche The UK copyright law on fair use of works for the purposes of creating a parody or pastiche is also listed in Section 30A, Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. References to all here. Guidance from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) states that fair use needs to be “fair and proportionate” and does not protect an individual from any other rights an author may have. Those other rights may involve claiming defamation if this material creates fake news and uses the names of real journalists or companies etc - and if they allege that your AI fake news has caused serious harm in any way to their reputation - they could sue you for breach of the Defamation Act 2013. All of this is entirely contextual however as to how your AI might display or make fake news and how Google caches it and displays it - and if it could be portrayed as 'real' or believable for example. You are also doing this at a time where 'anti fake news' law is evolving... and even though you say it's fake news for AI experiment purposes - it's a growing field of concern for many. (see here) Copyright law is a vast and evolving area - and nothing is clear cut. It really depends if a major news company didn't like what you were doing and took exception to it and issued challenges on many areas of law based on that.
Not all disclosures are disparagements, an NDA will typically cover the release of any private information, whether positive or negative. Publishing the company's future product plans might violate an NDA but would not be disparagement. Not all disparagements are disclosures, a negative opinion does not require the release of any private information. Making a blog post stating your opinion that the company's CEO is incompetent or that their products are overpriced is likely not disclosing any private information that would be covered by an NDA, but is disparagement.
Why do you think Oracle have not been protecting their trade mark? Using a trade mark to describe the product (“Written in JavaScript”, “Seeking JavaScript developer”) is not an infringement and the trade mark owner is under no obligation to, indeed, cannot stop this. Where they are required to defend their trade mark is when it is being used in such a way that there is the risk of confusion that the goods or services could be confused with the trade mark owner’s goods or services. Further, they are not required to defend all breaches, only enough to show that they are actively doing so. Also it is not important that the trade mark be associated with the trade mark’s owner. Do you know who owns the trade mark “Ben &amp; Jerry’s”?
Under United States law, it is not illegal to simply make an account on a forum where criminal activity takes place. The closest thing I can think of would be misprision of felony (AKA failure to report a crime), which requires active concealment (see United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5th Cir. 1977)). Simply observing evidence of criminal activity and not reporting it would not qualify. However, if that forum also contains material that is illegal to posses (such as child sexual abuse material), downloading that (even by simply viewing it using your browser) could be a crime. I would note that I am specifically not advising you whether or not doing any of the other things, like making and publishing tutorial videos on how to access such sites, is likely to get you into trouble with the law. If you want that sort of legal advice, you should contact a lawyer, as the advice is going to be very specific to the exact details.
Under U.S. law, this is only actionable is you make this statement knowing that it would not "support the continued creation of X" and that instead, you had already completely abandoned that product and you were, for example, planning to change lines of work and become a lumberjack instead. Even in that case, common law fraud is hard to show, because you would need to show how that statement which related to how the profits will be used, rather than what you are actually receiving, could cause you damages in that narrow transaction. But, many states have deceptive trade practices acts that protect consumers by allowing the attorney general, local prosecutor, or a private individual or class of plaintiffs to sue if representations such as these are made when they are known to be false. Typically, these lawsuits provide for minimum statutory damages, attorneys' fees award, and when cases are brought by a public official, injunctive relief (ordering the advertising with that pitch to cease) are authorized. For example, saying this when it is false would be actionable in California and Colorado. A fairly common fact pattern is that someone will sell stuff at an above market price saying that "profits will help me pay for my cancer treatments" when in fact the person doesn't have cancer. This could even constitute criminal wire and mail fraud, for example. Sometimes, competitors can also sue you under the Lanham Act (which primarily governs federal trademarks), for false advertising about something that could unfairly undermine their sales if what you are saying isn't true and is causing their sales to drop. On the other hand, if you sincerely believe that what you are saying is true when you say it, and your belief is not so unreasonable that no reasonable person could believe that under the circumstances, then what you are saying is legal. Usually this is true, and if it is, ultimately, you will be fine. Although nothing can prevent you from being sued on a non-meritorious basis. In between are cases where this is true (you will be supported, but perhaps only get 5% of the profits while the rest are garnished for a lawsuit), but your statements were still misleading at the time you made them and you knew it. Those cases get resolved on a case by case basis. Outside U.S. law, your mileage may vary. Legal regulation of commercial speech varies significantly from one country to another. These statements might not be O.K. for example in a Communist regime on the Chinese or Korean model.
You seem to have a solid understanding of the ePrivacy implications, but lack a fundamental insight: your organization does not have a right to achieve its mission or a right to disseminate unwanted marketing. But other people do have a right to not be subject to excessive marketing. Of course, reality is more complex, so it's probably not entirely impossible to do marketing. In your point 1, you note that some EU/EEA/UK countries distinguish ePrivacy protections between consumer and business subscribers. You can research the exact rules in the potential customer's country. This may allow you to email corporate/business accounts. I would strongly advise against messaging via Linkedin if there is a chance that the person is using that account for personal purposes like networking or hunting jobs, not just for conducting official company business. ePrivacy has markedly different rules for email marketing vs phone marketing. Whereas there are pretty strict rules for electronic messages and robocalls, manual cold calling can be OK from an ePrivacy perspective. However, many EU/EEA/UK countries have rules that go beyond ePrivacy, and may have a kind of do-not-call registry that you must respect. Of course manual calls take more effort than spamming emails, but recall the above point that you don't have a right to spam other people. Phone calls are probably the most appropriate approach when the company lists individuals' phone numbers on its website. This will at least give you a few seconds of attention with a real human, more than you can expect from an email that is likely to be caught by spam filters. Marketing via physical mail tends to have very lax rules. Note that every company/business that has a website will have to disclose its contact details including an address there, so this information is easy to acquire. However, chances are low that anyone would seriously engage with that marketing. You can consider alternatives to direct marketing, so that interested companies eventually come to you. Things like press releases, writing guest articles in industry publications, speaking at relevant conferences, working on search engine optimization, buying ads. On the GPDR aspects: GDPR and ePrivacy overlap, and it is necessary to comply with both sets of rules (GDPR likely applies here via Art 3(2)(a)). But where they potentially contradict each other, ePrivacy as the more specific law has precedence. For example, ePrivacy overrides the default GDPR legal basis rules when it comes to email marketing to existing customers (opt-out basis, no consent needed) or to using cookies (needs consent unless strictly necessary). Information that relates to corporations is not personal data, but information that relates to individual employees or to sole proprietors would typically be personal data. Since you are unlikely to obtain consent for using this data, you would need an alternative GDPR legal basis such as a &quot;legitimate interest&quot;. Relying on a legitimate interest requires that you conduct a balancing test, weighing your interests like marketing against the recipient's interests, rights, and freedoms. Core question in this context is whether the data subject can reasonably expect their personal data to be used like this, taking into account the nature of their relationship with you. Since there is no pre-existing relationship, claims of a legitimate interest are weak to start with. However, it may be possible to argue that when a company makes employee contact details available via its website (not LinkedIn!) then relevant marketing can be reasonably expected. I would rather not rely on such arguments, though.