Judge Finds For Apple in ThinkSecret Case

An anonymous reader writes: "In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company's upcoming products. The San Jose news piece has the most detail on the ruling while Mac Daily News has some background on the case, and Gizmodo vociferously expresses an opinion on the lawsuit. We've covered the case in the past as well.

Comments

This is not about journalism or blogging

[jarich]

It's about a company protecting their secrets from being rebroadcast on a world-wide medium.

It's not about journalism or blogging.

Re:This is not about journalism or blogging

[johansalk]

You're both wrong. It's not about secrets, blogging, journalism, or free speech. It's about breaking conctractual agreements, and "contracts are promises that the law will enforce".

Good, otherwise all NDAs are pointless

[varmittang]

If they didn't win, then all NDAs are pointless because you could just put an anonymous post on some website and not get in trouble for it.

Dangerous precedent

[coder.keitaro]

such protections apply only to "legitimate members of the press."

So now we have the courts deciding who is and who is not a journalist? We have them deciding what is legitimate journalism and what is not?

This is the beginning of an "authorized" press with greater freedoms than for anyone who dares to publish outside of it.

It scares me a lot as it could easily be abused to restrict free speach online.

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Sentry21]

We already have people to decide who is and is not a journalist - for example, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and so on. This is how real journalists get press passes, by the way - they join the associations, which check their credentials, and issue passes.

I doubt this 'blogger' is a member of any professional journalism organizations. I doubt they have any formal training, or indeed any training whatsoever. I'm curious as to how 'journalism' can be confused with some guy writing something and distributing it to the masses. If I print flyers and distribute them on the street corner, am I a journalist? No. If I tape posters to streetlamps and hydro poles, am I a journalist? No.

Journalism is a profession that requires both skill and responsibility. To call bloggers 'journalists' is akin to calling an MCSE an 'engineer'. The word is far from the truth, and if being called a journalist requires nothing more than a voice, then the single most important career possible in an open and democratic society suddenly means nothing. When a loud voice and a sense of self-righteousness can be considered equal to understanding of ethics, unbiased reporting, and facility with the language, then 'journalism' is suddenly just a word, and all the respect it once deserved is lost forever.

These people are not journalists, they are not reporters, and they are not worthy of anyone's respect. They are helping someone who broke an NDA escape due process, something that I doubt any good journalist would be willing to do - but then, any good journalist wouldn't have posted the details in the first place.

This is not a free speech issue. This is a legal issue. Someone signed a contract saying they would not disclose the information they learned, and then they broke that contract. No one is speaking as to the blogger's right to post, they are only speaking as to the source's right to leak, which does not exist. This has nothing to do with rights and everything to do with contractual obligation, and the person who leaked this information should be revealed, as they can not and should not be trusted with sensitive information by any company, ever again.

Here's an example to put this into perspective: my company deals with a lot of personal information for thousands of clients. Do I want to hire someone who has, in the past, broken their contractual obligations? Do I want them leaking the spending habits of important clients to the press, putting my company and my business in danger?

Slashdotters are always talking about privacy issues, but the only things stopping me from leaking the (very) personal details of thousands of people onto the internet is my sense of ethics and an NDA. This person obviously does not have a sense of ethics, and if an NDA is worthless when hidden behind an 'anonymous tip', then you can all kiss your privacy goodbye.

Hmmm...

[BrokenHalo]

There is no question here of the blogger in question "obstructing justice". Seems to me that Apple is guilty here of some fairly heavy-handed treatment, given that the blogger in question is essentially just passing on rumours, which is pretty much stock in trade for any journalist, whether "legitimate" (by whatever legal definition applies) or not.

I am aware that there is a large proportion of Mac fanboys here on Slashdot, but Apple's antics lately have borne a striking resemblance to some of those from Microsoft, and I see no particular reason why they should be applauded.

MOD PARENT UP! Now!

[rjung2k]

I wish I had mod points, because the parent post needs to be staple-gunned to everyone's forehead.

Look, guys, I get a big hard-on for the Constitution of the United States, but I' getting sick and tired of all the critics following this case claiming that any sort of victory for Apple is a threat to free speech, or that there's no difference between ThinkSecret.com and CNN.com, yadda yadda yadda. Being a journalist is not just starting a web site and pronouncing yourself as one -- that's as meaningless as buying a box of bandages and starting a medical practice as Dr. Nick Riviera.

If anything, bloggers and "news sites" might be comparable to freelance op-ed writers, free to write whatever they want on whatever topic they want. That does not automatically give them the rights and privileges of journalists, just like being the webmaster of whitehousenews.org gives you instant access to the White House Press Pool.

(An exception, of course, is if you're a conservative shill using an alias and working for a fake news organization while moonlighting as a gay escort... but the Bush Administration clearly uses a looser set of ethics than the rest of us...)

Re:Apple, here is an easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does a subpoena to reveal a criminal ammount to crucifixion?

Think Secret solicited NDA violators to leak information about upcoming Mac products, and got somebody to do so. Right there, they were violating California law, and Apple could have pressed charges, but they instead took the high road, and merely demanded the identity of the scofflaw who committed industrial espionage against their company be revealed, so they could purge him from their company.

The publisher of Think Secret chose to withold that name, in spite of having no legal (or moral) leg to stand on whatsoever.