Apple Pushes to Unmask Product Leaker

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday April 20, 2006 @09:38PM from the say-what-you-must dept.

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."

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Re:Am I missing something? by asylumx · 2006-04-20 22:15 · Score: 0, Redundant

While you have a point, keep in mind that in this particular case Apple is not trying to fire anyone, but instead has decided to sue. Even stranger is that they aren't going after the entity, but the individuals!

I personally haven't heard of a lot of cases where someone has sued over simple breach of a confidentiality agreement. Then again, I don't follow the courts much, I'm not a big fan of all the BS lawsuits we have to put up with here in the US.