Should big firms be allowed to censor news content?

[Alexander Turcic]

Mobileread was contacted by Microsoft Anti-Piracy some weeks ago regarding a particular (slashdotted) post on Microsoft's upcoming Windows Mobile 2005. This post contained a handful of screen shots, some new information and a projected release time schedule, along with a source link to Neowin.

While we agreed to take the news down (really, we could hardly afford a lawyer, nor was the matter important enough to us), some other news sites such as Weblogs Inc., parent company of Engadget.com, decided to not remove a similar content on the future of Windows Mobile.

Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., argues that he did not steal any information and was simply reporting on information that he had found elsewhere on the Web (more about it here). -- Is it really that simple? What do you think, should Microsoft have the right to remove leaked proprietary material from news sites, or should news sites have the right to report news that have appeared elsewhere on the Net before?