Apple Pushes to Unmask Product Leaker

Zack Wells writes "Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters? 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. That argument has drawn stiff opposition from bloggers and traditional journalists. This is related to a case of an Apple news site, PowerPage.org, who leaked information about a FireWire audio interface for GarageBand that has been codenamed 'Asteroid.' The subpoena is on hold during the appeal. In the lawsuit, filed in late 2004, Apple is not suing the Mac news sites directly, but instead has focused on still-unnamed 'John Doe' defendants. The subpoena has been sent to Nfox.com, PowerPage's e-mail provider, which says it will comply if legally permitted."

Comments

Re:I hope they do get the same protections

[dangermouse]

1) What we have here. A source leaks information from a company to a website (blog), who then publishes it. The website operator (blogger) did nothing wrong, they violated no law. The person leaking it broke an NDA, but that's not their concern.

Yeah, maybe that's what you want the law to be. Here's what the law actually says:

Whoever, with intent to convert a trade secret, that is related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce, to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner thereof, and intending or knowing that the offense will, injure any owner of that trade secret, knowingly-- ... (3) receives, buys, or possesses such information, knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization; ...

In other words, if you receive what you know to be stolen trade secrets, you're in violation of the law. There's nothing in the law that I can find that exempts some special "journalist" class.