Apple argues for blogger records | Tech News on ZDNet — If Apple gets its way ALL BLOGGERS will be subject to a different and severe set of rules preventing open discourse. This is bad news.
Although a lower court ruled last year that Apple should be able to gain access to electronic records of the enthusiast sites, a three-judge appeals panel in the State of California Court of Appeal, Sixth Appellate District, peppered Apple’s lawyer with questions. The judges wanted to know whether the information at issue represented a genuine trade secret as well as whether journalists’ right to protect their sources outweigh Apple’s right to protect its trade secrets.
“You don’t really claim this is a new technology?” the presiding judge, Conrad Rushing, asked Apple’s lawyer. “This is plugging a guitar into a computer.”
George Riley, the outside attorney representing Apple, said the company maintained that the details and diagrams of a product code-named “Asteroid,” a music breakout box, which is used to plug a guitar into a computer, represented “a very serious theft.”
It’s not clear when the court will make a decision.
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.
AdvertisementThat argument has drawn stiff opposition from bloggers and traditional journalists. But it did seem to be sufficient to convince Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg, who ruled in March 2005 that Apple’s attempt to subpoena the electronic records of an Apple news site could proceed.
“Unlike the whistleblower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials, (the Macintosh news sites) are doing nothing more than feeding the public’s insatiable desire for information,” Kleinberg wrote at the time.
Yes. Let’s stop that desire to get information. Information will ruin the country.
Kleinberg: Advocate of a dumbed down and stupid public?
I’d be more likely to agree with the judge if the bloggers were divulging actual trade secrets. E.g., schematics and such. But, dispite court cases to the contrary, I simply do not understand how merely discussing future products could be considered divulging a trade secret.
I’m an Apple user, I love my G5. OK now that I cleared that up, I really hope that Apple doesn’t continue down this confrontational path that they’ve set themselves on.
What Apple has going for it is that they’re not the ‘evil monster’ that some people profess MS to be, and the more they act like this the more that image (as false as it might be) will blur, and they’ll be left without any good will.
It’s hard for me to be able to jusify paying 1.5x (or more) for a computer in order to get an Apple, and thus support them. I really don’t like that they’re being aggressive as they are, it might very well make me not willing to spend the premium next time I need to get a new computer.
This 1st Amendment argument makes no sense to me — we have anti-libel laws in this country, does that mean that freedom of the press has been stripped away from the people? No, all it means is that as with all other rights, there are responsibilities that are required when exercising them.
If a website, like ThinkSecret, publicly solicits confidential information (as they do) from people who are most likely bound by contractual NDA agreement, and they then post that information for all the world to see, they shouldn’t be surprised when Apple comes along and asks who told it to them. It’s pretty hard for Apple to enforce a contract when they don’t know who violated it, thanks to all these people hiding behind their dubious claims of 1st Amendment protection.
This is a civil suit anyway; it’s not as if Congress, or any other governmental body (what the amendment actually protects people from in the first place) is shutting them down or preventing them from publishing news or rumors. But if you do publish a rumor, you should also be responsible for the effects of publishing it… and we aren’t talking about whistle-blowers either here.
One other item that I take objection to is this idea that there is such a thing as a legitimate member of “the press”, thus implying that everybody else is illigitimate.
There are two freedoms at issue here, the right to verbal speech and the right to published “speech” (i.e. the printing press; hence freedom of the press), but this idea that “the press” is some elite group that has special rights and privilages above all the common folk is completely nonsensical; every one of “the people” should possess and enjoy equal protection under the 1st Amendment.
On the other hand, can you really trust blogs?……
I have a large problem with “news” blogs or anyone soliciting protected trade information. When you start soliciting trade secret information, and if you can prove they were, you’re walking on very, very thin legal ice. If it were another company soliciting this information, everyone would be like “look, Apple was wronged!”
Well, publishing this kind of stuff, in violation of NDAs, is exactly that because everyone has the information now.
If this was murder, enron-esque happenings, discrimination, etc (all with evidence, I would hope), it would be one thing, and I would vehemently defend the bloggers. It’s not. It’s trade secrets, and those secrets being out can ruin someone, large or small.
If you’ve ever owned a business, you know that small innovations can be dealmakers, and it’s not about schematics but ideas. Someone will, inevitably, copy your product/service… you need to be in at the right time, you need to have it be better, and at the right price point.
“I have a large problem with “news” blogs or anyone soliciting protected trade information.”
Well, that’s fine and it’s your right to have opinions. But in this case can you explain why it’s illegal for a blogger to talk about a future product but not a “real” journalist?!
And please explain to me how talking about a future product is a trade secret. The entire tech industry has been trying to come up with an answer to the iPod for YEARS and have been unable to do so. Considering that, how is someone going to crush a new product by Apple with only a month’s notice?!
You could have complete plans for the ipod. Go out and try to build ipods, market them and sell them. The value is in manufacturing. All of which is done by somebody who is most likely earning slave wages in some far away place. The rich guys at Apple have nothing to do but brow beat people for the hell of it. Just my opinion, although it’s possibly illegal since it involved thinking which isn’t allowed today. Screw Apple.
It should not be illegal for a blogger to talk about a future project they think might happen. Speculation can be fun, makes for interesting reads, etc. John speculating about OSX is a perfect example.
The point of a trade secret is to maintain a service, or turn it into a product or service. They many times are one and the same.. if you weren’t going to use it for a competitive advantage, you don’t need to keep it secret.
And, let me remind you that the value of a product is most certainly not manufacturing… you can knock off any product very quickly, and people do… see this, an iPod knockoff, from MacNN, March 10th, 2005:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/03/10/ipod.shuffle.knockoff/
Manufacturing is the easiest part of the equation. All it takes is money.
I wonder where they got the idea they could protect themselves from competition by shutting down all commentary. Perhaps the McCain Feingold campaign finance law? They’re even looking to expand that to blogs as well.
If this was murder, enron-esque happenings, discrimination, etc (all with evidence, I would hope), it would be one thing, and I would vehemently defend the bloggers. It’s not. It’s trade secrets, and those secrets being out can ruin someone, large or small.
Tell me you are joking. Please. In a criminal case you believe the blogger does not need to divulge the information. In a civil suit, bloggers can have no immunity?
This case is about someone, supposedly an Apple employee, spreading information Apple considers secret. At it’s worse, this a dispute between Apple and it’s employee. There is no crime involved. If there was a crime, I have less sympathy for a journalist protecting his sources. The public good requires that society, ie. “the People”, prosecute and punish those who break the law. With this case, there is no public interest, only Apple’s and it’s supposed employee.
So whose rights are more important. Apple’s right to hire and fire it’s employees by forcing outside businesses to assist them at there expense? Or the Blogger journalist to run a news enterprise without interference from an outside entity?
Investigative journalism can require some level of anonymity (Watergate is the perfect example). That is the kind of case I refer to when a reporter should withhold sources.
I ask, what true public good is knowing Apple will have a box to let you plug in your guitar? Very, very little. As to the functionality, it’ll be reverse-engineered as soon as it’s produced. Therefore, the only real advantage they have is their secrecy and time to market.
And I agree, MFFF, this should be a matter between Apple and the employee. However, they don’t know the identity of the employee.
So look at Apples’ side; Option 1) Go through your own server records and subpoena everyones personal email services (complete fishing expedition), Option 2) Subpoena the email records of someone you KNOW has the name, or Option 3) Allow the leak, and hence make your NDAs defacto void because people know you won’t enforce them, severely hurting your business (and endangering the jobs of the thousands that work for you).
Not one of the solutions looks like a good one. I ask, what should Apple of done? What would of been the responsible (and practical) way to find the person that broke their contract and alledgedly could owe damages?
“Therefore, the only real advantage they have is their secrecy and time to market.”
I’ve already explained how that is nonsense. From #7. “The entire tech industry has been trying to come up with an answer to the iPod for YEARS and have been unable to do so.”
If no one has been able to unseat the iPod for years after being able to buy and dissect actual Apple products, exactly how could a company beat Apple to the market based solely on a vague description from a blog?!
And here’s the real guts of the issue. A “real” journalist would be allowed to make those vague descriptions without turning over his sources, but a blogger cannot. Why does the harm suddenly disappear when a “real” journalist is involved?!