Slashdot Mirror
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."
Apple gets so much attention, publicity & free defense from the bloggers.
It would be stupid of them to alienate their biggest fanbase - but that's precisely what they're doing. Seems more like a personal vendetta then a business....
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
One thought came to my mind. In all, I can't imaging any other explanation why Apple would want to throw money on such litigations.
Imaging scenario. Company X (Apple in the story) develops new cool product. Employee A leaks (for money or for fun) info about the product. Patent holding companies/competitors Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc start patenting *everything* possibly related to the product. Product comes on market. Patents as usually get granted and competitors start sueing company X.
What Apple (or any other company) can possibly do to avoid such situations???
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
This whole case still has me puzzled. Apple apparently was working on a product to provide a firewire break-out box for use with their GarageBand product. Someone inside Apple (or outside and on an NDA) leaked it to an Apple rumours website, which published it. Apple then fired off a lawsuit against John Doe, and decided to drag the website(s) in question to court to get them to reveal the identity of the source of the leak.
All well and good, except one thing: where is the product? Whatever happened to this GarageBand break-out box? It has never materialized, and it's what -- a year-and-a-half later? You can't tell me that Apple suddenly decided to cancel this product just because news of it got leaked to the web. So far as I'm aware, it isn't like any of their competitors have such a product on the market, or that the leak has caused them any actual harm.
It makes me wonder -- did this product ever really exist to begin with, or was this some sort of fake product "trap" to try to find the source of product leaks to rumour websites?
Or is this product still in development, to be released at some later date?
Something about all of this just doesn't strike me as right (besides the whole freedom of the press, and confidentiality of sources issues). It isn't as if this is the first Apple product to be leaked to the press. Perhaps this one was leaked well before Apple was ready to announce something? Does Apple think it knows who is leaking this information, but wants sufficient proof to fire them? Does "Asteroid" even exist (and it sounds like a useful product to me -- with GarageBand '06's new Podcast creation features, even I'm starting to think of interesting ways I can put something like this to use)?
There is something more to this that Apple doesn't want us to know. I just can't quite pinpoint what is going on...
Yaz.
Journalists should receive protections for when the information is in the public interest, which is different to whether certain (fanatic) members of the public are interested.
Trade secrets leakage are probably NOT covered by first amendment freedom of speech. If the general public are protected by leakage, then yes. But if the only people this serves are self-interested, then should the laws designed to protect the public apply?
I think the point you are 'missing' is that of the two different roles involved - it took two people to raise this. One is the employee, who signed the contract with apple; he ore she therefore has to treat stuff as confidential. If those contracts were rendered moot, even security of government agency could not rely on having dealt out who wants to be loyal and who doesn't. Once Apple can legally (read: in court) prove who it was he well get fired, so what.
The other thing is indeed if bloggers are journalists/press. Along with it come privileges and responsibility. I for one doubt the responsibility if you refer to the 'blogosphere'. The privilege of not disclosing sources is therefore fairly questionable and I think it is good if a court rules on that. However this turns out: I think the court should definitely explain this and how to put the responsibility onto bloggers to have them use press privileges - and what makes them fail the criteria and make them fall back on being just "free speech", for which you can not claim everything beyond personal views (and they should appear as such).
Something to tell apart journalistic work (and responsibility) by whoever does it from the noise of the ranting link farms the blogosphere mostly is would be a great help. And the responsibility does indeed include to not publish whatever info you have if it greatly puts single persons or companies (etc.pp.) to an unfair disadvantage to others.
"As much as bloggers like to be considered the new form of journalism they aren't, they are just people (often with overinflated ego's) who want to have their say."
Just people who want to have their say, and you believe that a bad thing? You apparently don't believe they should have their say.
You do realize, I hope, that eventually (probably not so long from now) all news media will be distributed primarily over computer networks?
Do you understand the implication of this? How do you define "journalism"? Do you propose that freedom of the press should no longer exist once inking letters on flattened, processed dead trees is obsolete?
Ok, hear me out on this. While I'm certianly one of the first to laugh at bloggers that seem to think they are real journalists and are the same as newspaper reporters, I do think they should be afforded the same protection. Why? Because we don't want the government deciding who is and isn't a member of the press. Press protections should be a function of what you are doing, not who you are. If you are reporting news (even if it's trivial news) you should be protected, even if you don't work for a paper. If you aren't, you shouldn't, even if you do.
Take two cases:
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. They should then be allowed to pretect their source because they are acting as a journalist, they are reporting the news to the public. Doesn't matter that their day job is clerk at Walmart, they are acting as a journalist in this case, thus should be protected.
2) A person decides to leak some major secrets to a journalist for a major newspaper. However that journalist decides they don't want to publish them, but would rather to go a competitor and sell those secrets. It all gets found out and goes to court. Here, the journalist shoudl not be able to shield their source. Doesn't matter that they work as a journalist, they weren't acting as one. They were not reporting the information to the public, thus no protections.
The protection should be in the act, not in who you are. Otherwise we are down a dangerous road to the government being able to decide who is a member of the press and who isn't. Publish something they (or their big donors) don't like? Oh look, all of a sudden your journalist license is revoked. You aren't allowed to protect your sources anymore and oh look, here's a subpoena for their names as well.
We should give anyone who acts as a journalist the same protections as it relates to the reporting of informaton to the public.
As much as bloggers like to be considered the new form of journalism they aren't, they are just people (often with overinflated ego's) who want to have their say.
So what exactly is the difference between a 'blogger' and a 'journalist'?
A journalist is merely a person that records information, usually for publication.
Certainly, a typical blogger often writes more opinion than fact. However, the same can certainly be said for a great many 'real' journalists and contributing writers for many publications, both online and offline - none of whom would be raked over the coals by Apple for being given leaked trade secrets.
Just because someone has the backing of a large media conglomerate, publishing house, or broadcaster, doesn't make them more of a journalist than a freelance writer with their own website.
I agree that the fact that I have a Live Journal does not grant me journalistic privledge, but at some point a blogger does have such privledge. Otherwise, you simply make an arbitrary distinction as to rights based on the medium on which the story is presented. If I print out the story, does the author have privledge?
By your definition Kos (of Daily Kos fame) is not a journalist because he never was a "real journalist", assuming that means someone who publishes in a printed medium. Is that what you wish us to believe?
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.
so now the caveat to freedom of the press is: print what you like, so long as what you print is evidence of a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or a government employee who reveals mismanagement.
If someone is able to obtain a press pass to an event by company A, company A considers them a journalist.
Further, if a blogger can get a press pass at MacWorld or WWDC, more power to them- they are journalists.
Otherwise, they are not, and they don't have a company behind them to protect them from lawsuits.
$0.02
One individual, buying a cd-key from a dell owner, no one will come after you- but the grander market here, the one that the GP post is referring to- is the large, corporate, lawyer controlled, and sometimes silly- business market.. where 1000 pcs on 1000 desks can get a licensing lawsuit going.. and if they try to purchase 1000 xp cd keys from dell linux users, that lawsuit is smoking depending on which court you live near.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine
esp the section that reads in part
The acts specifically excluded:
A computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product; or
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The difference *I* see is that the supposed anonymity of a blogger - working from their home behind the front of whatever service they use , using whatever handle they choose - allows them to lash out irrationally. Journalists on the other hand are tied to their real name and to a paycheck. They can hide sources but they can't hide who they are and who they represent. There is a missing layer of credibility in the blog system, and yes there are journalists who lose their credibility but generally when they do they also lose their paycheck and their post.
The real problem here is that real journalists shouldn't have a lot of the rights that real journalists have... If they didn't, among other great things, we wouldn't neet to worry about the distinction.
If a journalist (blogger or otherwise) won't reveal the name a of a law breaking source, the journalist should be heald accountable in proxy. Combine that with the appropriate laws to protect whistle blowers, and we won't need a double standard to distinguish journalists from regular people. We'd also get the added benefit that journalists would no longer be able to make shit up and then say they used an anonymous source.
What is the point of slander, trade secret, or classification laws if they can be circumvented just by telling a journalist instead of some randome Joe?
Secondly: Third parties outside the employer-employee NDA do indeed have a legal obligation, namely to not entice said employees to violate the law. Whether O'Grady actually engaged in such enticement, directly or indirectly, is for a court to decide, but there is no question that such enticement is itself illegal.