My guess is that some idealistic bright young thing at WSJ said "We should let people submit stuff to us anonymously" and envisioned it as a simple file upload with a submit button. And because laws exist and lawyers at big companies (and small ones) tell you whether to use one square of toilet paper or two, they said "you must add this copyright thing or it's not gonna fly". And the idealistic bright young thing thought "That's not quite as cool as an anonymous document dump, but it's a document dump... I guess".

Then the internet (the market?) told the WSJ, we do not agree to your lawyers' terms and conditions and another good idea was defeated. Big corp: you can't remove the core values from a product and expect the idiots will flock to it because you are Big corp and should be taken seriously.

Doesn't that pretty much invalidate the notion that the site is in fact a "leak" site? If I own the copyright, I'm not leaking, I'm releasing information!

Maybe this is just a fancy new way for government officials to release phony "leaked" stories without attribution?

My understanding in the United States is that the federal government can't copyright. I'm not sure how this affects other governments, but the must own the copyright issue shouldn't apply to US government documents.

I'm pretty near certain that is the case. But this is probably more about lawyering than anything else: "Your Honor, to our knowledge the submitter of the document owns the copyright and any infringement is born entirely by them."

It would be a good way to publish something that has no value.

Pro-tip: If you mail the documents to them you don't have to click an accept checkbox.

I could think of a better place to mail whistle blowing material - namely John Young.

Send them to as many places as you can. Then you don't end up with the Wikileaks problem where they delay publishing to suit political goals.

This makes me wonder if there's a loophole in their source protection pledge.

If you were to check the box asserting copyright, and if the whilstleblowee were to file a John Doe suit against you for copyright infringement and then subpena your identity from the WSJ, would they comply with the subpena?

Yes.

"Al Jazeera and the WSJ both say they reserve the right to identify leakers to law enforcement if pressed to."

Ha ha ha, oh wow. So much for "WikiLeaks competitor".

It's like the Zune of document dumps.

Totalitarian honeypot?

sounds like Wile E. Coyote is running ACMEleaks, waiting for the roadrunner

conglomerates and altruism don't tend to mix

That's just CYA.

It concerns me a lot when someone asks me to sign something with a lot of boilerplate or "it's just CYA.". Even if it's for a friend, you never know when the company's going to be sold or your friend isn't in charge any more and all of the things you signed will be in the hands of someone you've never met. Words are important, whether they're in computer programs or legal documents.