Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs" 346
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 (Score:1, Informative)
thats enough for me to say NO to future purchase of any apple products!
Guys... It's probably a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
One from the real Steve Jobs:
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.
I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, 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
Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sounds like some laws must have been broken (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not shocking (Score:1, Informative)
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... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:EFF? (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's a hoax. (Score:1, Informative)
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 ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being... (Score:3, Informative)
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.