Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs"

An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post earlier today revealing that Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again revealing that Apple's lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied 'we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don't deal.' A third post gives details of Apple's lawyers' next response, going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has calmed down a bit.

god

[Anonymous Coward]

apple seems WORSE than other companies when it comes to this legal bullshit

thats enough for me to say NO to future purchase of any apple products!

Guys... It's probably a joke.

[Jugalator]

Read the comments on the "I'm feeling a bit better" page.

One from the real Steve Jobs:

Joel said...

        RSJ just responded to my email, saying, "I think this is a joke."

        I'm a bit annoyed by this, since I was defending you, and now look something of a fool.

And another who had mailed the same:

Diogenes said...
I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to [e-mail], and actually got a response.
Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course) ...

I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.
Steve

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html [blogspot.com]

On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:
What, praytell, are you talking about?

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.
Gary Baldwin

The amazing part to me here is that Steve Jobs is replying to mails in person. With a short delay, at a Christmas-y time like December 22nd...

Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being...

[Jugalator]

It is. [blogspot.com]

Re:sounds like some laws must have been broken

[jamar0303]

I believe that Apple will back down rather quickly now. The Reality Distortion Field can't be so strong that people won't notice Apple essentially stalking this guy... right?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Not shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

The younger geeks don't remember why Apple lost out the 1st time around. They're the King of Control. The champion of "our way or the highway". The locked it down when no one else did, and their prices were insane.

Apparently the older geeks don't remember it so well either.

Everyone locked down their systems back in the day. The one architecture which ended up winning out over all the others ended up being the one which was most practical and profitable to reverse engineer without permission from the original company. But the PC didn't win out because it was open, it won out because it was opened by direct force from outside despite the best efforts of IBM to keep it as closed as possible.

Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being...

[Beardo the Bearded]

You Speak Slander or write Lines of Libel.

Re:EFF?

[ntk]

Dude, it's a joke. We'd never say that. We'd probably not take the case, either, because there's really nothing there that would affect online rights or set precedents in general. But we'd at least try and point him in the right direction for finding out his rights, and maybe seek out an affordable lawyer for him. We might even gently ping the lawyers at Apple to explain what a costly publicity nightmare this would be for them.

Speaking personally, I do prefer Daniel Lyons when he's writing fiction like this, to when he's acting as a journalist and penning articles talking about the dangers of anonymous blogs [forbes.com], and how you should shut them up by using the DMCA or by suing them [forbes.com]. That wasn't funny advice to give to businesses, and could have got them in non-fictional legal trouble real fast.

Re:I'm just glad...

[stephentyrone]

Apple doesn't "do this bullshit" either. If you bothered to actually do any research, it would be obvious this story is fake. (The fact that it's posted on the "FAKE steve jobs" weblog should be a big smoking clue, too). It's more like: 1 - 14. Various defense contractors 15. Sony (willful evilness) 16 - 99. Members of RIAA/MPAA, Utility companies, etc 100. Microsoft (stunning incompetence) 101 - 499. Energy companies, smaller defense contractors that you've never heard of 500. Google ("don't get caught doing evil, or turning over bloggers to totalitarian regimes") 1000. Apple ("Oh noes, they sued a blogger!!11one")

Re:It's a hoax.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Honestly, the line I'm taking here is "don't dismiss it until you know it's false", but a good portion of the people commenting here are willing to dismiss this out of hand, despite the fact that Apple have a history of pulling this kind of shit"

No, actually, they don't. They don't have any history whatsoever of suing satirical sites. Given the URL (you know, "FAKE STEVE JOBS"), it ought to be fairly fucking obvious this is FAKE, even if you don't read the site regularly, and KNOW that it's a satirical blog.

For fucks sake, the number of dipshits all-too-eager to say "I told you so, Apple are evil" is just amazing. It's like there's some sort of pressure building up on them day after day - good news for Apple (pressure rising), good news for Apple (pressure rising), good news for Apple (pressure almost at overload), possible bad news for Apple (BLOW THE HATCHES! PRESSURE RELEASED!) AAAAhhh that feels better.

Wankers, all.

Re:I really think it might be a good idea ...

[peragrin]

you need to find a good butcher. i can easily get real bacon in the usa, you just can't get it prepackaged.

Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being...

[ceoyoyo]

Yes. Hoax is really a better word.

Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being...

[G Fab]

You're wrong. The distinction is actually quite important. When you lie about someone in voice, your body language, etc, can make the lie less powerful. You can see if the seaker is pissed, and often far fewer people hear the lie. The lie doesn't usually persist, but must be recalled. It's not as bad. Even on TV, it's less likely to be recorded and repeated (and if it isn, there are machinisms for calculating damages).

When you write something, you are making a permanent record. You're preserving a fact about someone that could be around for 100 years. It's harder to delete, it's harder to ignore, it's harder to forget. No indications of your tone to see if you're pissed or joking. Your statement will be taken at face value.

Thus, Libel is more serious, usually, than Slander. There are exceptions to that, but the distinction is valid.