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Apple Sues To Stop Leaks
citizen_bongo writes "MacCentral reports that Apple has filed suit against unnamed individual employees of Apple and of other companies who were trusted with Apple trade secrets. The suit names 25 "Does" and surely will increase if Apple "uncovers" any more people in the conspiracy. This comes after the leak by ATI on the new Apple product line and the leaks surfacing about the Cube weeks before the MacWorld Expo." The irony is that if Apple's legal hadn't gone after the sites with Cube images, everyone woulda ignored it or thought it a hoax.
...is the worst part of Apple. I love Apple, but their legal department has been responsable for trying to quash anything Apple related that they cannot control. Try going to www.adcritic.com, and doing a search for the word 'Apple'. You will find that all of their ads have been taken down, due to Apple's Legal department. In an era where advertising in the form of leaks has created much revenue, Apple's legal department is going to help them slide back into obscurity.
Therefore I urge you not to do business with Apple until they check their lawyers at the door and recognize the proper purpose of a legal system.
The proper purpose of a legal system is not to enforce a non-disclosure CONTRACT?
It's time to punish Apple for these tactics. If they spent half as much time and effort trying to develop their products as they do trying to squash ordinary rumours, maybe MacOS X would have shipped by now. The rule of law exists to protect against egregious offenses that threaten life or property. There is no way you can possibly tell me that rumours and leaks threaten Apple's property.
The rule of law ALSO exists in order to enforce non-life threatening or property threating agreements or contracts between two adults who otherwise are engaged in a normal business relationship. It is up to those two parties, not us nor the court system, to gage the degree of damage done when one of two consenting adults entering a contract decide not to carry out his part of that contract.
To assume that the law should not extend to governing contracts is to assume that contracts are worthless constructs, and that our society should behave as "who can fuck you before you can fuck them."
At which point, if this is the society you are advocating, then an employee of Apple has no recourse when Apple decides to take away his last month's pay.
I'm sorry, but the non-disclosure CONTRACT is just that: a contract. Just because some people can't be bothered to honor a contractual agreement they've entered because they don't appreciate the agreement doesn't mean they should be forgiven when they violate the contract. And just because we think this particular contract may be silly doesn't mean we should not enforce it: otherwise, other contractual agreements (such as sales contracts and work-for-hire contracts) may also be effectively null and void.
They may as well sue to stop taking a leak. It'd do just about as much good.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Try MacAddict and this News.com article.
It appears that Apple is only suing so it can force the various leaks to rat on their links. I guess they want to try to kill the entire food chain. Oh well.
The subject line here says it all, my dear sir. Fuck having the best economy in the world if you don't have the right to enjoy basic freedoms. Besides which, you're wrong about this:
> if i sign a paper, of my own free will, that you can tie me up and beat me for
> money, then that's the law, pal. likewise an NDA.
You cannot under any circumstances make a legal contract to do an illegal thing. Such a contract is non-binding and not legally enforceable. That's why indentured servitude is illegal, why contracts to provide sex are illegal (except in parts of Nevada), and contracts allowing someone to do bodily harm to you are illegal. Of course, bodily harm can be done to you in the course of a job, and if you've signed a liability waiver then you can't sue over such injury, but you cannot have a legally inforceable contract such that one party is specifically allowed to do bodily harm to another in and of itself, without that merely being a chance of harm in a hazardous job. I'd explain the finer points and look up a case reference or two, but I don't feel like explaining this--it's easier to explain sex to a virgin than to explain the law to a non-attorney.
But getting back to the main issues, yes, Apple can and if it wants to be stupid (and it seems to want to be *extremely* so) does file suit for NDA violations, but it CANNOT and SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT to file suit against the media outlets which ran the leaks. And that's who Apple is always threatening--news sites, the media, *the press*, who have explicit First Amendment rights to run stories on Apple's upcoming products if they wish to. That's who Apple is always threatening, and *that* is why they're evil. A third party has no obligation to obey an NDA, and the press has no obligation to reveal its sources. You obviously care about money more than freedom, and I pity that.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
So a few weeks ago Apple sue a rumor site or two over the Cube and every scream bloody murder and tell Apple "the rumor sites are innocent, they didn't break any NDA. They just got info from people who broke NDAs, but getting the info itself is not illegal. You should sue the people who broke the NDA."
So far it makes sense. It was stupid of Apple to sue the rumor sites.
Now Apple does the right thing, i.e. suing the people who broke the NDA contracts and people are screaming bloody murder again.
Guess what? if the NDAs are not enforced, they become useless. If they become useless, companies will stop using them and bye-bye to early software & hardware seeding. Yep, Apple has hardware seeding too.
Well, they must have a pyromaniac at the company. Yesterday, Macintouch.com had users reporting macs catching on fire.
"We've had two reports of fires in recent Mac models, raising some concerns about leaving the computers unattended."
from Josh Barton:
"First, the hard drive in one literally caught on fire during the night. I came in to the office to the pleasent smell of burning plastic and electronics to find some fire damage to the inside of the computer. Thank goodness a thick piece of metal stopped the flames before they burned through the plastic of the computer and started a major fire."
from David Shenk:
"On Friday afternoon, May 26, my Powerbook G3 (333/Bronze) spontaneously caught fire while I was typing in my home office. It was a very small fire and I put it out in a few seconds, but there was real smoke and it was quickly melting the case on the bottom."
"I've gotten a strong indication from Apple that they will not be reporting it to anyone. Further, they informed me today that what happened to my computer is now considered 'proprietary' and 'confidential,' and that I am not entitled to any sort of explanation."
from Ty Davison
"Well this wasn't fun. New Pismo PowerBook 500-MHz trying to go into FireWire Target Disk Mode so that the hard drive would show up on my friends B&W G3/300. New FireWire cable connected in FireWire port 1 of both machines. The Pismo enters Target disk mode (FireWire logo on the screen) but no hard drive icon on the G3. I shut the PowerBook down. I change the FireWire cable to port 2 in the G3. I pull the FireWire cable out of port one in the PowerBook, and I get a crackling sound and SMOKE out of the FireWire port 2 as a plug the cable in. (And the PIsmo is off!)"
Get your bread ready, cos we're making toast! Solves all of those winter heating problems! Nothing beats the smell of melting macs in the morning!
;)
Brings new meaning to the term "firewire", eh?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Are you saying that people who violate non-disclosure agreements should not be sued?
Or are you saying that Apple does not have the right to do anything in secret?
From the referenced url: a 500 MHz G4 is roughly equivalent to an 800 MHz PIII or Athlon
Still sounds like the G4 offers more bang for your buck.
Way to take a fragment of a sentence out of context. You must work in marketing. If you had bothered to read the sentence you are misquoting you'll note that it only applies to photoshop. You'll also note that there's a reasonably large set of benchmarks on the page.
You should also note that an 800mhz athlon is only $220 or and that you can assemble an 800mhz athlon workstation for less than the price of a 500mhz g4 and that you can get a better video card in the system too.
--Shoeboy
Even though it turned out that apple was working on the iMac instead, Apple Legal still asked rumors sites to remove material about the "network appliance" that didn't exist.
It's probably a little more complicated than this. Larry Elisson (Oracle fame) is very much inclined in a NC machine. He's on the board of director of Apple. He's a good friend of Jobs.
So, Apple may have been working in an NC in the past, but at some point in time, they realised that they couldn't effectivelly penetrate that market at that time (at least until Apple gained it's reputation/credibility back--this is back when Apple was "doomed").
So, they turn around, add a hard drive and bingo, the perfect home setup (3.7 million+ buyers confirms this). but, if you inspect this machine carefully, it's written NC all over it.
Dont beleive me? Fire up a packet sniffer, and boot an iMac holding down the "n" key. It tries to boot off a "netboot" server (a well advertised feature of MOSX). The interesting thing is that the iMac identifies itself as "MacNC".
Apple's intent in this lawsuit, as far as I can gatter, is it's need (yes, need) to protect itself against leaks of would-be product that could end up not being marketed as such, or released at all for various reasons. It's quite damaging for Apple if the bulk of it's followers expect a quad-processor machine (as rumored) when actually none were meant (or fit) to ship. Same thing for the "squeesable" mouse (another false rumour), or it's wireless mouse//keyboard (something that might have proved difficult to market at this time if, for example, Apple thought it sucked too much life out of ordinaty batteries, and decided to wait a bit).
More information on the lawsuit is available on MacSlash, including a discussion with a legal clerk at the San Jose courthouse where charges have been filed.
It appears that Apple has subpoeaned Yahoo to get the IP address of a Geocities user who posted pictures of the Dual G4 and mouse. Check out the story for more details.
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MacSlash: Your Daily Dose of Mac News and Discussion.
CNBC today revealed on air that one of the John/Jane Does (most likely the primary John/Jane Doe) that Apple is chasing after in their suit is a message board poster named "Workerbee" who posted on the Yahoo APPL message board as well as AppleInsider's Future Hardware message boards, and who posted pictures (on a Geocities website which disappeared today) of Apple's multiprocessing mobo and an early version of Apple's new optical mouse long before either were announced. Louismg on Raging Bull's AAPL stock board compiled a list of links to Workerbee's posts earlier today which can be seen here. The accuracy of Workerbee's posts on a wide variety of Apple hardware projects (Mouse, keyboard, Cube, MPs, iMacs, etc.) leads to the obvious conclusion that he or she must be an Apple employee. In one of his or her last posts before disappearing, Workerbee confirms the ZDnet story that Apple has a cinema-screened Powerbook packing a G4 ready to roll soon, and might even have been the source for the scoop.
Nobody needs an admission from Jobs to know that Apple doesn't do market testing -- the iMac's mouse already told us that.
Once upon a time Apple tried to make products that the public would find easy to use. Now...I get the impression they're more about making products that are pretty than making products that are easy to use.
-- dR.fuZZo
And you are flapping your nether gums and know nothing of which you speak. Apple has had an SMP API in the OS since before the 9600, and has been developing it steadily for nearly a decade. OS9 uses that extra processor itself, it just can't make SMP available to Apps not specially written to use the API. But the daddy App, the finder, does take full advantage of dual processors. Apple has chosen not to make a big deal of MP until OSX is shipping because OSX will bring SMP to all carbonized Apps whether they are written to take advantage of SMP or not. That will be a HUGE deal. Imagine that on YOUR operating system! Today, on OS9 Photoshop isn't the only production app that takes advantage of the Mac's MP libs, MediaCleaner uses them, SoundJam uses them. Apparently even Q3A can use them. Today Apple has MP boxes shipping because in just a month or so OSX beta will be out, and all the beta apps that will come with it will be FULLY SMP aware. Imagine that on YOUR operating system.
Man, maybe it's time to quit getting your panties all in a wad over something as simple as Apple protecting its business interests. Businesses do far worse than Apple to maintain their trade secrets. I've had to sign NDAs, and if I broke them, I'd expect to get my ass sued. I don't care if it was something as simple as a rumor. A contract (which is what an NDA is) is a contract, and if you violate that contract, there are expected legal recourses.
It's just like an open-source zealot to jump on the "Quick, let's punish them! Boycott their products and fill their President's inbox with complaints!" Get over it. There are far more important things to worry about in the software community than whether companies are going to punish their employees for violating agreements.
And you should at least understand that MacOS 9 doesn't support dual procs. If you aren't using photoshop, you can't see or use that second proc. Oops.
If you'd like to explain how my 8 proc xeon server keeps from melting, but a dual athlon couldn't, you go right ahead.
--Shoeboy
If Mattel didn't file a lawsuit and restraining orders, most people would not have heard of CPHack.
If Mattel didn't file a countsuit for libel against me, most people would not have heard of it, and it would have been over by now. And there would not have been the press coverage (two newspaper artcles, two on-line articles, or any TV appearance.)
Fight Spammers!
Make no mistake, apple is a cult. You don't break the rules, you transgress against the will of the founder.
I understand that mac users are forbidden from visiting http://www.jc-news.c om/parse.cgi?pc/benchmarking/xplat/ppc-x86 and learning the truth about how the g4 really stacks up against the p6 and athlon.
Those who break the rule are required to say 10000 "hail steves" and an "our founder".
--Shoeboy
What Apple likes to call "leaks" are what other companies call "expected". Whenever you have a new product or concept in the pipeline, people start talking about it, a few employees drop hints to friends in the media, and then the rumour mill generates this positive expectaion about a product. Normal companies consider it a part of the advertising process, because it's better to build up anticipation about product releases than to just dump them on an unsuspecting world. Publicity is good.
But look at what Apple is doing thanks to that fruity control freak Jobs. The leaks in question happened, most of them, a few days before the product announcement--that's to be expected, and had a positive impact for Apple in that it got people excited and made them anticipate the big revelation, so that on the day of the expo people got online just to see the new Apple products, who otherwise might naver have bothered. That's free advertising. It's a common thing in all industries, and to sue the press and Apple's own fan base is utterly insipid--and that's who these John/Jane Does are going to turn out to be, people who love Apple and wanted to share these great new products, to tell people "look at your favorite tech or Apple sites on expo day, because there's big stuff brewing."
And no, Apple has no right to keep a secret. Case designs released with too little time for a competitor to steal them are not trade secrets. The fact that new products will (would have) carry Radeon graphics is not a trade secret. NDA or not, what Apple is doing is morally and ethically wrong, and business-wise it's completely unsound--foster fan sites, don't make them hate you due to cease-and-desist letters the very night before you're going to announce the fucking product anyway. What complete and utter assholes. Freedom of the press guarantees that as long as the press doesn't sctively induce the breaking of an NDA, that they can run whatever info they want about Apple as long as it isn't libelous. Apple wants to fuck with our fundamental freedoms, then we should fuck Apple right back.
I used to be a big fan of Apple, but now I'm looking forward to other PowerPC based boards. I would never, never, buy a new Apple computer now, after all this misbehaviour. Jobs has just proven that he's still about 12 years old in terms of maturity, what with his lawyer-whoring and his retribution against ATI for minor leaks just a few days before the official announcement. All credit for Apple's coolness and revolutionary nature in the old days will now be given by me to Woz, and I'll just consider Jobs no better than a good car salesman--good at his job, makes a lot of money for his lot, but is still a sleazy piece of scum underneath. If I ever buy any more Apple hardware, it'll be used, so that not a cent goes directly to Apple. If you beleive in freedom of the press, I hope you're with me on this. Cool hardware and a great GUI isn't worth my soul or my principles. Someone ought to start an anti-Apple-lawyer-whoring site and post about it here and elsewhere, in order to get attention to the fact that what Apple is doing now is at least as bad as what IBM was doing back when that famous, unforgettable commercial aired. Way to kill the spirit of your company and its fans, Jobs...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Apple has always had their own way of doing things. They amaze me because they have no product research like other companies do -- Jobs has admitted that they don't do focus groups, etc. (Wish I still had a link around to back that up. I had always suspected it, and I was delighted to read confirmation a while back.)
Apple makes the products THEY think are neat. It just so happens that that set overlaps with a set of products that are desireable by the public. It's this overlap that keeps them in business. Sometimes, a truly neat product will fail to intersect the set of salable products, and then you have the Newton.
Enough of their products are innovative hits that I can see why they would want to keep them secret. Suing a bunch of EMPLOYEES will have a chilling effect on other folks with loose lips. It would make me shut up for sure.
In the entire computer industry, there is only one company where outsiders actually care what the new models are going to look like.
.28 DPI any more. Functionally, for most people, computers have leveled off, and in that situation, style starts to sell. Apple knows they are in the catbird seat in that department, and are going to make damn sure they keep their advantage.
Did anyone care what the Compaq iPaq looked like? The new Dell Latitude? The new Sun? The new AS/400? Those companies would beg to have fan sites printing rumors and unauthorized pictures about their new products.
It's never happened before that there's any interest in this sort of thing. Compare this to the auto industry, where every mag has a future model section. Why? Cars are a lot more than Consumer Reports ratings, MPG and HP.
Face it, the market's getting saturated, and you can't just sell product by being a "100% clone" or 1166 Mhz or
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
It's quite ironic that so many people in this thread have attacked Apple for ethical issues in this situation, as we are overlooking one very important point: these people that work in Apple and leak secrets, do you think they just do it for the fun of it? Do you think they do it without compensation?
How ethical is it for some entry-level employee who happens to work in Cupertino to take photos or screenshots of new Apple products (something (s)he had no part in creating), and hand them over to rumor sites in return for whatever compensation? That is stealing for personal gain. It's that blantant. Even if the personal gain is merely being "the one" to leak it. And you do realize that many of these sites make money from these leaks, right? They also do so for personal gain. This isn't an "information wants to be free" issue. It's a "make me some quick cash without having to do any real work" issue.
Despite the fact that some people will always hate Apple because they make a one-button mouse, you have to realize that there are a lot of people that work at the company that really are incredibly passionate about the work they do, and are really looking to improve computers as a whole. When an individual going to ruin all that work for everyone, that's simply disrespectful. How do leaks affect Apple, you ask? Apple was able to get considerably more eyeballs looking at the iMac and stories written on it because it was unexpected. Apple has every right to do this. Sony does similar things. Humans like surprises. At the very least, it breaks up the static in an otherwise very dull and stagnant industry.
This is not the US government covering up the discovery of an alien species. This is not a free speech issue. This is theft and sale of private information. Should Apple just let this go unchecked? Just ignore the problem and allow random people to announce Apple's products before Apple does? And sometimes it doesn't stop there. Sometimes these sites discuss products that MAY ship, and the mainstream press picks up on this and critiques them. In these cases, Apple gets grilled for things it hasn't even done yet.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. We have a double-standard for privacy issues on the internet. Privacy of a person is paramount, but privacy of a group of people (an organization) is irrelevant. Some people really truely feel that any information that belongs to an organization should instantly and immediately be the property of anyone with a TCP/IP connection. That doesn't make any sense to me.
For once, can we step back and look at this from a non-slashdot-centric perspective? Can we look a little deeper, and realize that there are maybe more factors to take into consideration when running a successful multi-billion dollar company than we realize?
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Can the 'packaging' of a computer be considered a trade secret? If the employees had leaked information regarding a new chip design, then sure, but can the 'packaging' of a computer be considered a trade secret? Since Apple's strategy seems to rely on surprise announcments, they may have a case. Also, if the employees have signed NDA, then Apple's got them.