Chief Moose and his 15 minutes

I'm torn on this issue. Should Chief Moose be allowed to profit from a book that he is writing about his experiences dealing with the DC sniper? Or does the fact that he would be making money as a direct result of his public service poisition compromise his integrity?

Link to CNN story

On one hand I think that people should be able to write whatever they want, and if they can make money from that fine. But on the other hand, if the motivation to solve crime is only to profit from the movie deal, then we may have some sort of integrity issue down the line. Are criminals that are in jail allowed to profit from books that they write about their gruesome murders?

I don't see how it's any different from a politician writing his memoirs. I can't see how it could really influence his work, other than the time taken to write it, and it was probably ghostwritten anyway. Once again, I must fall back on the position that unless something affects someone else, it should not be ``illegal'', and the thing here that would affect someone else would be Moose not doing his job, which would seem to be a firable offense anyway, regardless of the circumstances that led him to it.

I don't think that convicted criminals are allowed to directly profit from their crimes in any way. At the same time, Kevin Mitnick just published a book. I don't know how much of it talks about his crimes.

Notoriety for Profit Laws

The article isn't clear whether this is merely violating the ethics rules of being a public official, or whether it is illegal. Moose's wife mentions jail at the end of the article but I'd be surprised if that's the real consequence. I absolutely believe it shouldn't be illegal for him to publish his book.

But I do think it's reasonable that he cannot keep his job as a public official if he did indeed agree to an ethics guideline that prevents him from making personal profit.

-Dylan

In reply to:

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On one hand I think that people should be able to write whatever they want, and if they can make money from that fine. But on the other hand, if the motivation to solve crime is only to profit from the movie deal, then we may have some sort of integrity issue down the line. Are criminals that are in jail allowed to profit from books that they write about their gruesome murders?

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The end of the statement has the most to do with what your asking, but the beginning was pretty interesting.

There is no way someone can be put in jail for writing a book. Unless it contained libel, or violated copyrights, or maybe even if it treasonously contained classified government information like nuclear secrets, then writing a book falls under freedom of speech. Of course he could be fired if his superiors thought it was appropiate. If this type of thing became a problem, then I would imagine voters would elect a police chief who would be willing to take care of it.

then I would imagine voters would elect a police chief who would be willing to take care of it.

And then he could write a book about how he cleaned up the system.

I would say it's more of a moral question: do you benefit from the tragedy? Well, I'd say it's better than the killers writing a book about it.

I don't see too much wrong with it. I don't think there's an impact on his job either.

There is no way someone can be put in jail for writing a book. Unless it contained libel, or violated copyrights, or maybe even if it treasonously contained classified government information like nuclear secrets, then writing a book falls under freedom of speech.

Would be nice if this was still true. But under current laws, I'd be thrown in jail for publishing a book showing how a common household marker will defeat a certain companies copy protection on their CD, or if I worte about how to protect your internet connection via a NAT device (in certain states). Need proof? Check out the PhD student no longer allowed to publish a thesis paper in Michigan here.

or

How about TechTV doing live segments "How to mod you xbox". They went into GREAT detail on everything and even showed modded xbox's running software.

Surprised they haven't received some major
flak for doing that.

Ironicially, it seems MS is not being evil with the DMCA. For me, I think the TechTV broadcast was a stunt to see if anyone would really go after a media company, instead of just a small time person. It seems the DMCA law is rather rubbery, with some getting away with insane amounts of things, while other are arrested by saying Adobe uses ROT13 encryption.

TechTV actually does that sometimes. They did one segment where they took their WIFI laptops out on the streets of San Fran and hopped onto people's wireless network connections. They showed you how to do it, several programs to try, and made it seem really easy and fun! Of course, they threw in what seemed like a tacked on statement that this whole thing was to show how easy it was to do this, and consequently these people should try to secure themselves.