>The fact that you did not commit the initial theft does not put you in the clear. Source: a lawsuit that I won with exactly that theme.

In terms of criminal law, it is favorable to me. Source: I was criminally accused and have a court judgement clearing me of wrongdoing for possessing information that was stolen by 3rd parties and published online before I obtained it.

>So from one aspect of the law you are in the clear, from another this is an open-and-shut case of copyright violation

I am satisfied that merely possessing stolen information and not distributing or profiting from it is not a copyright violation if the source code can even be copyrighted.

>But just like downloading copyrighted material is illegal so is downloading copyrighted data from a source that you know does not have the option to legally give you a license to copy or use that data

I have not agreed to be bound by any licenses from Cisco before downloading the data nor did I necessarily know what it was before downloading a zip from a file sharing site.

I'm happy to discuss this over email if you want me to reach out for debate.