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Think Secret's Nick dePlume Revealed
Nick dePlume has a name, after all. Apple filed a lawsuit against the pseudonymous founder and editor of Think Secret, who correctly predicted two just-announced Apple products and has been the subject of several cease-and-desist letters from Apple in the past; dePlume's identity has now been revealed. Reader willibeast writes "The Harvard Crimson reports that 'Apple Computer, Inc. is suing a Harvard undergraduate who runs a popular Mac information website for disclosing details about unreleased Apple products, including two unveiled at this week's Macworld conference. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas M. Ciarelli '08, known on the internet as Nick dePlume, has run the site, thinksecret.com, since age 13.'"
Well, Nick dePlume will have to find out via his website contact page, which offers tipsters "complete anonymity," and urges visitors to submit "news tips" and "insider information".
Who knows? Maybe he'll get another insider tip reassuring him that Jobs was quoted as saying "Just pull a lawsuit stunt to scare the shit of this kid, bwahahaha."
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
What Apple should be doing is finding out who is suppling Nick with this information. He isnt just pulling this stuff out of his ass.
Oh wait.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Great public relations coup, Mr. Jobs.
Remember when you and the Woz were just kids in a garage?
Apparently not...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Aw, come on now. I was under the impression that Nick's identity has been widely known and documented over the years as Nick Ciarelli. After all, even in 2003, eweek had stories co-authored by Nick Ciarelli and Matthew Rothenburg.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Yeah, right.
From the article:
"Usually you would want to sue your enemies and not your friends," said Gary Fine, a Northwestern professor of sociology and expert on rumors. "I can't think of an instance in which a corporation would sue its own fans. I haven't heard anything like this."
Hasn't this guy heard of the RIAA?
Tell me, Apple (or rather article author even). You're worried about market advantage 'being measured in nanoseconds'.
:(
I can see no case where disclosing information a week early would do irreperable harm to the company.
Sure, you could argue customers will hold off buying products if they know the next generation is around the corner, but I tell ya....you're an idiot to buy ANY Apple products directly before a MacWorld expo.
If you're going to buy, you buy directly after an upgrade. Or at least wait until the next expo comes around.
So far as the competition...sure, I suppose a Dell or an HP could counter the MacMini, or the iPod Shuffle or whatnot, but really.
I can't help but think Apple is suing over an issue of pride. They want to know who the leak is, so they're going after the person posting the information from the leak(s).
That being said: I hate lawsuits. Period.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
A man who has been predicting the end of world was issued a cease and desist order today. The world rejoiced at the threat to humanity being ended. In other news, the government has begun issuing cease and desist orders to individuals predicting war, famine, plague, and other such sundries as part of their "early prevention system"
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
How did he induce these people to provide tips? It is not like a college undergrad is going to pay people off. Apple really contradicts themselves when later they blame the ability of people to place "anonymous" tips on his website. Doesn't sound like they are being "induced" but rather lured by the option to remain anonymous.
True, I think it is wrong that employees are violating their C.A.'s, but it is not Ciarelli's fault. Find the employees that do it, and fire them. Don't go after a kid that discovers where you leak...
For years, liberals and pinkos have rattled on and on about supposedly "superior" computers produced by the California lefties at Apple Computer. I will explain why this company is nothing more than a front for the International Communist Conspiracy, aided and abetted by their liberal fellow-travelers in the American computer community.
This so-called "company" was founded by a pair of dope-smoking phone service thieves from Berkeley, a hotbed of Communist activity even today. "Apple Computer" supposedly went on to pioneer a graphical interface - actually developed by the good American patriots at Xerox - and develop its own hardware monopoly, just as its Communist creators would impose a state monopoly on all computer-using Americans.
For a short time, this Red front tried to infiltrate the American business community by facetiously engaging in free trade practices, but this only served to disillusion its enthralled socialist followers who complained about a supposed drop in quality. What they really couldn't stand, like all liberals, was choice and capitalism. They only returned to "Apple" when it returned to its old crypto-Stalinist practices.
"Apple Computer" is nothing more than a liberal-backed fifth column intended to subvert the American computer industry, and ultimately bankrupt good capitalist companies such as Microsoft and Intel. "Apple" isn't the only front group run by the International Communist Conspiracy. "Sun Microsystems" engages in similar monopolistic practices, trying to enforce a single hardware and software standard on all users, instead of the choices offered by Microsoft. Worst of all are the smaller Red fronts using the communist Linux operating system, with names like "Mandrake" (a French front, of course), and even really obvious ones like Red Hat! Linux is distributed under a Commie license that forces developers to give away the fruits of their labour, just as Marx ordered all good Communists to work as much as they could for a pittance in return in an illusory equal society.
All of these so-called companies are just fronts for Communists and liberal fellow-travellers. Remember, when you buy Apple or download Linux, you're supporting Communism. Good Americans support real freedom-loving businesses like Microsoft, SCO, and AMD.
Laugh at me now, remember me later when you're all forced to used slow computers with horrid, fruity interfaces foisted upon an enslaved public by the commissars who used to fester in American business under the liberal myth that they were an independent company that loved capitalism called Apple Computer.
""California is one of approximately 44 or 45 states that have adopted [the] Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That statute makes it wrongful to acquire or publish without authorization information you know or have a reasonable basis to know is a trade secret of another," Milgrim said."
I envision a commercial where a Linux pengiun is running from a bunch of long-hair hippies in business suits. The pengiun escapes into a building and throws a sledgehammer at a screen showing a big Apple logo.
The article says Apple is suing 19-year-old Nick Ciarelli. But surely they are actually suing The DePlume Organization, LLC, the limited-liability corporation that claims copyright to everything on the site? It seems unlikely that Ciarelli himself will suffer financial liability for this.
Breakfast served all day!
Yeah; because everything on that website is wrong. It seems that even if his information is negative that it still turned out to be true. Doesn't that mean something? Oh; that's right; Apple Zealots - my bad.
Seriously though; if someone is going to feed you information you have the right to do what you wish to it. If Microsoft was in this position this website would be all over it; screaming about how a they are going after the little guy. But when Apple comes into the picture, they get some kind of negative force-field aura that dispells all the bad (and true) information about them.
I'm f#$king magic!
Get your priorities straight QuantumG.
If you want to complain about what Apple is doing, restricting free speech is the wrong target. Apple is protecting itself, legally, forthrightly, and up front, according to the law.
Someone violated an NDA to tell Nick DePlume these 'trade secrets'.
Apple is trying to get out of Nick DePlume the identities of those who violated those NDAs.
To put it abstractly, Apple and a third party signed a contract. Said third party violated the contract without Apple's knowledge. Apple finds out about the violation from Nick DePlume. Apple then tries to find out from Nick DePlume who violated the contract.
If there is anything scummy in what Apple is doing, it's in not being gentler and more friendly towards 19 year old Nick, but that's not what you're complaining about.
GPL Deconstructed
so wait a second..
i'll post my OWN trade secret to some guys mailing list and then I can sue him in the states? wtf you need patents for when you have such more powerful tool in your portfolio then, why bother patenting anything when you can just say that it's your trade secret and forbid anyone from talking about it?
someone 'published' the information to him - or are all the websites that reported on this quilty? would slashdot be quilty if i posted my own trade secrets on slashdot?
or maybe he'll just say that he pulled it out of his ass and say that "look, i've made so many predictions that at least once in 10 years i'm going to be right about something".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
All he did was pass on information that was passed on to him from an insider in violation of that person's contract. You can hardly call what he did "prediction." Really he just passed on information that somebody else had given him. No educated analysis required.
Not only that, but Apple probably wouldn't be giving him such a hard time if he'd tell them who leaked the information to him.
There are many financial news websites posting articles about Mac mini and iPod Shuffle. After reading them, I can better understand just WHY Apple took the action it did against Think Secret.
In summary, the articles stated that the stock price of Apple ran up more than 7% in the days preceeding Mac World in anticipation of the leaked rumors of a $500 Mac and a flash iPod. Further, the stock dropped about 6% during the key note primarily because Apple sold "only" 4.5 million iPods. More than the 4 million many analysts predicted, but less than the 4.6 and 4.8 million other analysts had.
Now, if the share price of Apple can drop 6% because the wildly sucessful iPod "only" clobbered-the-shit (technical term) out of the competition versus some analysts estimating it would clobber-the-ever-lovin-shit, imagine what would have happened if Apple had NOT released the said rumored products.
Further, imagine how big the POSITIVE impact would have been if the Mac mini had remained a secret until Jobs' announcement.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
$50 says that Apple had plans BEFORE these "secrets" were published to announce them at MacWorld. So the judge is going to look at this and wonder why, if it's such a secret, they announced it to the largest gathering of journalists, developers, and customers in the world.
I suspect Apple may win their suit and be awarded $1 in damages. If Nick's smart enough to file a countersuit, he's liable to win and be awarded $1 in damages and attorney's fees.
Actually, no. "A whole bunch" is a major overstatement.
Just saying ...
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
MacWEEK alum 1989-2000
would slashdot be [g]uilty if i posted my own trade secrets on slashdot?
If you divulge your own trade secret it is no longer a trade secret. If you divulge somebody else's trade secret you've broken the law. This entire situation is dependant on the assumption that the informant who sent the trade secret to Think Secret was not authorized to divulge the information. If that isn't the case, neither the informant nor Think Secret has done anything wrong. It would be pretty hard to prove either way...
...until somebody looses an i.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And the idea that a journalist can be ordered to reveal his source of information is against the first ammendment.
Is it now? Where specifically in the First Amendment does it mention anything about journalists protecting sources? The First Amendment proscribes government interference with the freedom of the press - it does not give the press a magic pass to avoid any and all consequences of something they may report. According to your reasoning, if I publish your entire credit and medical history online, I should be able to do so without any fear of repercussions, and furthermore it would be your fault for not protecting your information better. Give me a break.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Whether pre-announcing a product is to a company's advantage largely depends on that company's position in the marketplace. Microsoft now pre-announces products because doing so tends to "freeze the market", because companies will often hold off on buying an existing third-party product that Microsoft will be shipping "real soon now". Microsoft often uses pre-announcements as a form of FUD to solidify their market position.
A company in Apple's position has a different calculation to make. Certain pre-announcements are just going to tell companies with greater resources (like Microsoft) what innovations they should start copying.
Companies that aren't the market leader will often play their cards close to the vest, just so their bigger competitors don't figure out a strategy to beat their hand. When Microsoft was a small shop, they weren't crowing from the rooftops about Windows 1.0 months before it was released. It wouldn't have been to their advantage, because they didn't have the dominance they do now. Things have changed.
Shame on Google.