Slashdot Mirror
Apple Loses This Round In Blogger Case
smart2000 writes "A decision has been handed down in O'Grady, et al. v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, the case commonly referred to as 'Apple vs Bloggers', in previous Slashdot posts. While like any court case it is complex, the short of it is that O'Grady won this round." From the article: "Apple has failed to demonstrate that it cannot identify the sources of the challenged information by means other than compelling petitioners to disclose unpublished information. This fact weighs heavily against disclosure, and on this record is dispositive."
Oh, now I get it. I was so brand confused. I thought that other Apple company was suing bloggers. Like most people when I think Apple, I instantly think Beatles. ;)
I8-D
BZZZT!
Quote from the ruling, via Wired:
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
My educated lay guess: First, the ruling is based in part on the California Constitution Journalist Shield, so in CA they are protected as journalists. Other jurisdictions with shield laws/amendments would consider the ruling advisory, not binding, but would probably be influenced by its arguements. In areas without specific shield laws it would again be advisory, and with more limited use due to the more limited protection of the First Amendment alone; I suppose it might give a basis for arguing against prior restraint in publication for a blog. Of course, that would imply someone would come to try and get a court to order prior restraint on a blog, an idea which would probably make most judge judges call for the Advil.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Actually, the court said that they didn't want to rule on what qualifies a person as a "journalist" but would rather focus on the activity. That's a quite sane and reasonable approach.
I'm currently in the midst of a case where the city of Chicago is aggressively pursuing a subpoena of a writer I work with for our online reporting on police misconduct in conjuction with a federal civil rights lawsuit (see The View From The Ground). One of the questions in these cases always centers on whether or not the writer is "really" a journalist. This court sets a useful precedent in arguing that the spirit of shield laws is intended to protect the activity of making and distributing "news" and not "journalists" per se. Of course, there's no federal shield law, so our situation is different.
Following the court's logic in this case, you have to wonder how much "journalism" (as in material that appears in newspapers, magazines, etc) is protected by shield laws.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
SteveJobs: What happen ?
AppleDrone1: Somebody set up us the bomb.
AppleDrone2: We get signal.
SteveJobs: What !
AppleDrone2: Main screen turn on.
SteveJobs: It's you !!
O'Grady: How are you gentlemen !!
O'Grady: All your secret are belong to us.
O'Grady: You are on the way to destruction.
SteveJobs: What you say !!
O'Grady: You have no chance to survive make your time.
O'Grady: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
AppleDrone2: Steve !! *
SteveJobs: Take off every 'Mac' !!
SteveJobs: You know what you doing.
SteveJobs: Move 'Mac'.
SteveJobs: For great justice.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The whole ruling is interesting reading, but towards the end (page 62 and forward) we find these very interesting lines, which I suppose sum up best why Apple lost the case:
"The publication here bears little resemblance to that in Bunner, which disclosed a sort of meta-secret, the whole purpose of which was to protect the plaintiff's members' products from unauthorized distribution. Here, no proprietary technology was exposed or compromised. There is no suggestion that anything in petitioners' articles could help anyone to build a product competing with Asteroid. Indeed there is no indication that Asteroid embodied any new technology that could be compromised. Apple's own slide stack, as disclosed in sealed declarations which we have examined, included a table comparing Asteroid to existing, competing products; there is no suggestion that it embodies any particular technical innovation, except perhaps in the fact that it would integrate closely with Apple's own home recording software--a feature reflecting less a technical advance than a prerogative of one who markets both hardware and software.
The newsworthiness of petitioners' articles thus resided not in any technical disclosures about the product but in the fact that Apple was planning to release such a product, thereby moving into the market for home recording hardware.
[..]
Publishing a computer manufacturer's proprietary code may thus be compared to publishing a miller's secret recipe for a breakfast cereal. What occurred here was more like publicizing a secret plan to release a new cereal. Such a secret plan may possess the legal attributes of a trade secret; that is a question we are not here required to decide. But it is of a different order than a secret recipe for a product. And more to the point, the fact of its impending release carries a legitimate interest to the public that a recipe is unlikely to possess."