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Apple Pushes to Unmask Product Leaker
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Apr 21, 2006 05:38 AM
from the say-what-you-must dept.
from the say-what-you-must dept.
Zack Wells writes "Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters?
Apple claims they should not. Its lawyers say in court documents that Web scribes are not 'legitimate members of the press' when they reveal details about forthcoming products that the company would prefer to keep confidential. That argument has drawn stiff opposition from bloggers and traditional journalists.
This is related to a case of an Apple news site, PowerPage.org, who leaked information about a FireWire audio interface for GarageBand that has been codenamed 'Asteroid.' The subpoena is on hold during the appeal.
In the lawsuit, filed in late 2004, Apple is not suing the Mac news sites directly, but instead has focused on still-unnamed 'John Doe' defendants. The subpoena has been sent to Nfox.com, PowerPage's e-mail provider, which says it will comply if legally permitted."
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Apple: Apple Loses This Round In Blogger Case 95 comments
smart2000 writes "A decision has been handed down in O'Grady, et al. v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, the case commonly referred to as 'Apple vs Bloggers', in previous Slashdot posts. While like any court case it is complex, the short of it is that O'Grady won this round." From the article: "Apple has failed to demonstrate that it cannot identify the sources of the challenged information by means other than compelling petitioners to disclose unpublished information. This fact weighs heavily against disclosure, and on this record is dispositive."
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Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be stupid of them to alienate their biggest fanbase - but that's precisely what they're doing. Seems more like a personal vendetta then a business....
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Concerning the difference between an online and a paper-press journalist, you get the question, what is a journalist? The one who gets paid for it? Do you have to register somewhere? Freedom of speech should count for everyone equally anyway.
From a practical point of view: Maybe bloggers that get troubles like this should subscribe to the journalist unions (or collective), just to have increased protection from the gr
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't wonder. The reasons are many, and obvious.
1) People were damaging their machines trying to follow the recipes on the web for booting XP; 2) the availability of Boot Camp removes one standard premise that coporate IT drones routinely use to veto Mac purchases; 3) Apple wanted to lower the sales barrier for individual buyers who have one or two Windows apps that they must run, for whatever reason: Virtual PC costs a couple hundred bucks, Boot Camp doesn't; 4) it provides a compelling sales advantage against the Dells and the HPs of the world, since they can't offer Mac OS.
So, cram your stupid conspiracy theories back where they came from.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Insightful)
And unless Apple starts selling OEM compies of Windows with their machines, Apple users will be forced to pay full retail price for Windows, which is...a couple hundred bucks.
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Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Interesting)
If, god forbid, I ever needed a copy of windows, I'd pick it up for twenty bucks from any Linux user I know who got it with his Dell and never wanted it in the first place. First sale doctrine and all that.
-jcr
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do what you want at home... no one cares (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
esp the section that reads in part
The acts specifically excluded:
A computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product; or
Parent
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Funny)
If you want me to kill this guy I will. I have made a shank out by gnawing the
edge of my iPod nano.
Just issue the fatwa by the usual channels, i.e. pulse position modulated in
the beat of the next song I download from iTunes.
We should defintitely try to silence trolls who portray us users of the One
True OS as insane fanatics.
Hal.
Parent
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you care to guess what product secrecy is worth to Apple, in dollar terms?
They're exercising their fiduciary duty to find and stop these leaks.
-jcr
Re:Apple needs to be careful here. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see that you left out trade secret law, which is what this case is all about.
-jcr
Parent
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)
But I have to ask if that person had gone to a newspaper where would we be legally?
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just people who want to have their say, and you believe that a bad thing? You apparently don't believe they should have their say.
You do realize, I hope, that eventually (probably not so long from now) all news media will be distributed primarily over computer networks?
Do you understand the implication of this? How do you define "journalism"?
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what exactly is the difference between a 'blogger' and a 'journalist'?
A journalist is merely a person that records information, usually for publication.
Certainly, a typical blogger often writes more opinion than fact. However, the same can certainly be said for a great many 'real' journalists and contributing writers for many publications, both online and offline - none of whom would be raked over the coals by Apple for being given leaked trade secrets.
Just because someone has the backing of a large media conglomerate, publishing house, or broadcaster, doesn't make them more of a journalist than a freelance writer with their own website.
Parent
Seeing as you are a blogger I understand your bias (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fairness in freedom of speech? (Score:4, Interesting)
That was changed.
Being that the online world is intensly different to RL, i would have suggested that certain aspects of everything should be governed differently on the net as in RL
Different countries have different laws...prephaps we should think of the net as a 'different country' in its own right, as opposed to an extension of the host country? And thusly, apply a separate set of laws.
Product of Intellectual Property System (Score:4, Insightful)
Imaging scenario. Company X (Apple in the story) develops new cool product. Employee A leaks (for money or for fun) info about the product. Patent holding companies/competitors Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc start patenting *everything* possibly related to the product. Product comes on market. Patents as usually get granted and competitors start sueing company X.
What Apple (or any other company) can possibly do to avoid such situations???
Some things I don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole case still has me puzzled. Apple apparently was working on a product to provide a firewire break-out box for use with their GarageBand product. Someone inside Apple (or outside and on an NDA) leaked it to an Apple rumours website, which published it. Apple then fired off a lawsuit against John Doe, and decided to drag the website(s) in question to court to get them to reveal the identity of the source of the leak.
All well and good, except one thing: where is the product? Whatever happened to this GarageBand break-out box? It has never materialized, and it's what -- a year-and-a-half later? You can't tell me that Apple suddenly decided to cancel this product just because news of it got leaked to the web. So far as I'm aware, it isn't like any of their competitors have such a product on the market, or that the leak has caused them any actual harm.
It makes me wonder -- did this product ever really exist to begin with, or was this some sort of fake product "trap" to try to find the source of product leaks to rumour websites?
Or is this product still in development, to be released at some later date?
Something about all of this just doesn't strike me as right (besides the whole freedom of the press, and confidentiality of sources issues). It isn't as if this is the first Apple product to be leaked to the press. Perhaps this one was leaked well before Apple was ready to announce something? Does Apple think it knows who is leaking this information, but wants sufficient proof to fire them? Does "Asteroid" even exist (and it sounds like a useful product to me -- with GarageBand '06's new Podcast creation features, even I'm starting to think of interesting ways I can put something like this to use)?
There is something more to this that Apple doesn't want us to know. I just can't quite pinpoint what is going on...
Yaz.
Re:Some things I don't understand. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Some things I don't understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see... A minor product like that, unlikely to ever generate even a whole percentange point of Apple's revenues? It's entirely possible that such a product got cancelled. It's even possible that anyone on that product team is now seeing their career at Apple stalled under a cloud of suspicion until the big mouthed asshole is identified and canned.
If you were a manager at Apple, would y
Re:Some things I don't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple has had products incredibly close to production and scrapped them. Steve Jobs did acknowledge a year or two ago that Apple almost released a pda-like device again but scrapped it along the way. the super secret R+D lab must have tons of devices that have never seen the light of day (at least not yet).
i do agree that Apple seems REALLY REALLY hellbent on finding this specific leak. nobody but Apple insiders would know why. maybe that pool of people have possible access to other upcoming products that are a lot more important. maybe it was all a ruse to flush out a leak, maybe they are just pushing it on principle. it seems weird though. it will be interesting how it shakes out. i can see how leaking company design secrets is not seen the same as letting a reporter know that Company ABC is dumping toxic waste into a stream or leaking info about Enron's shadiness.
Parent
And in further news... (Score:5, Funny)
Should public laws protect the self-interested? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trade secrets leakage are probably NOT covered by first amendment freedom of speech. If the general public are protected by leakage, then yes. But if the only people this serves are self-interested, then should the laws designed to protect the public apply?
I hope they do get the same protections (Score:5, Insightful)
Take two cases:
1) What we have here. A source leaks information from a company to a website (blog), who then publishes it. The website operator (blogger) did nothing wrong, they violated no law. The person leaking it broke an NDA, but that's not their concern. They should then be allowed to pretect their source because they are acting as a journalist, they are reporting the news to the public. Doesn't matter that their day job is clerk at Walmart, they are acting as a journalist in this case, thus should be protected.
2) A person decides to leak some major secrets to a journalist for a major newspaper. However that journalist decides they don't want to publish them, but would rather to go a competitor and sell those secrets. It all gets found out and goes to court. Here, the journalist shoudl not be able to shield their source. Doesn't matter that they work as a journalist, they weren't acting as one. They were not reporting the information to the public, thus no protections.
The protection should be in the act, not in who you are. Otherwise we are down a dangerous road to the government being able to decide who is a member of the press and who isn't. Publish something they (or their big donors) don't like? Oh look, all of a sudden your journalist license is revoked. You aren't allowed to protect your sources anymore and oh look, here's a subpoena for their names as well.
We should give anyone who acts as a journalist the same protections as it relates to the reporting of informaton to the public.
Re:I hope they do get the same protections (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, maybe that's what you want the law to be. Here's what the law [gpo.gov] actually says:
In other words, if you receive what you know to be stolen trade secrets, you're in violation of the law. There's nothing in the law that I can find that exempts some special "journalist" class.
Parent
Legally permitted?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Was that supposed to be legally compelled or is the email provider anxious to give up their information?
Re:"online journalists receive the same rights" (Score:4)
That is EXACTLY what Apple is trying to get decided by the lawsuit. Many other people, including print journalists, disagree with you and Apple on this matter. If a "sixpack blogger" (your definition) is not a journalist, at what point does a blogger become a journalist? Rocketboom is distributed as a daily video program by TiVo, do you consider rocketboom.com to be journalism? What about Slate.com? Was Joshua Kucera's (now defunct) blog considered journalism? When a newspaper starts publishing a "sixpack blogger's" blog as a daily feature, does that blogger then become a journalist? Is the writer for a school district (printed) newsletter considered a journalist, what if the local paper reprints an article form the newsletter? If a "sixpack blogger" wins an Edward R. Murrow Award, is he still not a journalist? Was Richard Saunders a journalist? [Richard Saunders published Poor Richard's Almanac, and was a pen name for Benjamin Franklin, who might have been considered a blogger in his day]. I do not believe that defining what a "journalist" is, is as easy as you and Apple wish it could be.
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