Why Sony Is Threatening To Sue Twitter — And Why It Would Probably Never Win

Sony Pictures Entertainment's lawyer has suggested that Twitter is violating state and federal laws by letting one of its users tweet data stolen by North Korean hackers.  High-powered lawyer David Boies sent Twitter a letter Monday on behalf of Sony demanding that it suspend the account of a user called @BikiniRobotArmy, who tweeted screenshots of Sony's embarrassing documents. That letter threatened legal action against Twitter.

However, Yale Law professor Jack Balkin told me in an email message, "As to most of the leaked material on Twitter, Sony does not have a very good case."  Hacker group Guardians of Peace unleashed the documents several weeks ago as part of an apparent campaign to stop Sony from releasing "The Interview," a satire about the assassination of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un.

Boies has attempted to stop the spread of the leaked internal documents by asking the media to destroy the stolen documents. His letter to Twitter, posted online by the Wall Street Journal, claims Twitter violated several California state laws and federal laws.  One of those laws is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This 1986 law makes it a crime to access a computer without authorization. The law, which was used to prosecute Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, has been widely criticized for being too broad and outdated...