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.
Over the last few years I've seen companies fire employee's over their blogs, its not exactly a new idea. Ok in this instance the person used a online news site to 'get the information out'. It seems pretty clear whats going to happen. This employee probably broke a confidentiality agreement as well, these aren't things whicvh you can choose to ignore because your excited about your campanies new product. 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.
But I have to ask if that person had gone to a newspaper where would we be legally?
The differences in laws that are applicable ONLINE and in RL are quite significant. I remember a time when if an online shop published the wrong price on thier ecommerce website that they were abound to honour orders placed for goods at that price.
That was changed.
Being that the online world is intensly different to RL, i would have suggested that certain aspects of everything should be governed differently on the net as in RL
Different countries have different laws...prephaps we should think of the net as a 'different country' in its own right, as opposed to an extension of the host country? And thusly, apply a separate set of laws.
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
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.
...the San Jose Quicksilver reports that according to court filings, "Segway" Delmonte Jr. said that an Apple director, former vice president Al Gorithm, told him to leak the information, saying that he had direct authorization from Steve Jobs to do so. Under Apple law, Jobs has the legal right to declassify documents, but Delmonte said this was the only time he recalled in his experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the CEO's authorization that it be disclosed.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
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.
Was that supposed to be legally compelled or is the email provider anxious to give up their information?
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
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?
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
A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.
Reporters are one type of journalist. They create reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet. Reporters find the sources for their work, their reports can be either spoken or written, and they are generally expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve the public good.
Depending on the context, the term journalist also includes various types of editors and visual journalists, such as photographers, graphic artists, and page designers.
Origin and scope of the term In the early 19th century, journalist simply meant someone who wrote for journals, such as Charles Dickens in his early career. In the past century it has come to mean a writer for newspapers and magazines as well.
Many people consider journalist interchangeable with reporter, a person who gathers information and creates a written report, or story. However, this overlooks many other types of journalists, including columnists, leader writers, photographers, editorial designers, and sub-editors (British) or copy editors (American). The only major distinction is that designers, writers and art directors who work exclusively on advertising material - that is, material in which the content is shaped by the person buying the ad, rather than the publication - are not considered journalists.
Regardless of medium, the term journalist carries a connotation or expectation of professionalism in reporting, with consideration for truth and ethics although in some areas, such as the downmarket, scandal-led tabloids, the standards are deliberately negated.
"Journalists are journalists, sixpack bloggers are ... guess what, they are _not_ journalists..."
That is EXACTLY what Apple is trying to get decided by the lawsuit. Many other people, including print journalists, disagree with you and Apple on this matter. If a "sixpack blogger" (your definition) is not a journalist, at what point does a blogger become a journalist? Rocketboom is distributed as a daily video program by TiVo, do you consider rocketboom.com to be journalism? What about Slate.com? Was Joshua Kucera's (now defunct) blog considered journalism? When a newspaper starts publishing a "sixpack blogger's" blog as a daily feature, does that blogger then become a journalist? Is the writer for a school district (printed) newsletter considered a journalist, what if the local paper reprints an article form the newsletter? If a "sixpack blogger" wins an Edward R. Murrow Award, is he still not a journalist? Was Richard Saunders a journalist? [Richard Saunders published Poor Richard's Almanac, and was a pen name for Benjamin Franklin, who might have been considered a blogger in his day]. I do not believe that defining what a "journalist" is, is as easy as you and Apple wish it could be.
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.
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.