While I'd be interested in knowing what got published, perhaps from a blog article, etc, I'm completely unwilling to download that file to find out.

At the same time, this is an incredibly direct source. It's not a long-winded blog post that editorializes.

Hopefully someone here can enlighten us, though.

Oh definitely. Also definitely an illegal thing to download which will probably have court cases going after it and IP trolls fiercely finding who downloaded it, etc.

I'm a big boy: I can ignore editorial commentary if I get to not commit a crime.

It's telling that even Hacker News users are so intimidated that they are afraid to click on a link. I find it surprising and a bit scary (but I don't live in the US).

Do you have days to spend talking to police and lawyers instead of working? I'd rather not.

It's not 'clicking on a link' that's the issue, it's making a copy of sony's website's source code, which is very possibly a felony.

How could it be any more illegal than reading wikileaks?

The government's PR branch has really done a number on you. It's absolutely legal to host or mirror Wikileaks, under any reasonable interpretation of the law; remember that the only way that the government can dig up a case on Assange is to try to label him as a co-conspirator in directly obtaining the information. Just distributing the material is protected -- it's the same thing that newspapers do all the time.

EDIT: On reflection, I shouldn't sound so confident, because I'm not a lawyer. But that's my understanding.

Mirroring Wikileaks is not illegal, First Amendment... highest law in the land.

Copyright is an exception, unfortunately.

Oh, you mean like these?

http://boingboing.net/2010/12/03/wikileaks-blocked-bu.html

This part of the reason why I suggested a way to quickly and easily upload dox from intrusions like this to be searchable and viewable online here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615226

It's only 54 mb, I can email it to you if you want. It's just a bunch of php with some xml. For example, here's admin_accesscontrol.php:

http://pastebin.com/GSgdgeuT

It's not the size, but the legality of downloading copyrighted material in something that's surely going to be a criminal investigation.

Fair enough. I highly doubt they'll target people who simply download the file, but then again I can afford to take that risk. Others may not be able to.

Can't you just force outbound encryption and disable upload? You'd only be receiving the file, not redistributing it.

Okay, I'm kind of interested in finding out how bad the code really is now, but...

It's mostly just "TODO: FIX ME" every 10 or so lines.