Apple Ordered to Pay Blogger Legal Fees

inetsee writes "Apple has been ordered to pay legal fees for two web sites that reported on an in-development Apple project code named 'Asteroid'. According to the article on WebProNews, Apple was ordered by a Santa Clara County court to pay almost $700,000 in legal reimbursement to AppleInsider and PowerPage after the court agreed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation legal team that the web sites 'qualified as legitimate online news sites' engaging in trade journalism. Apple had claimed that it had a right to protect its trade secrets, but the EFF successfully argued that 'Subpoenaing journalist sources is not an acceptable means of discovery.'"

Comments

Worried about Apple...

[popo]

Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?

This isn't flamebait... (I love my Mac) its an observation that IMHO
over the past year Apple seems to have been far more agressive at implementing
"control" measures through legal means -- not as bad as MSFT, but a far cry f
rom the "We want everyone to love us" attitude of the past.

My question is: what changed? And is this the Apple of the future? Or
is this a result of some shift in management attitudes. (Or a case of
money and power corrupt, no matter who you are?)

Re:Worried about Apple...

[oohshiny]

Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy

Apple makes nice products, but the notion that they are "the good guy" is a fiction created by their marketing.

For example, in the 80's, they legally threatened many people over GUIs and they deliberately broke standards like SCSI. They have done more for establishing DRM than Microsoft. They keep ripping off ideas from other companies and open source, and they don't give a damn about stepping on other people's trademarks or open source project names.

Overall, Apple's record is decidedly mixed.

My question is: what changed?

Only your perception, really.

If anything, Apple has actually become significantly nicer over the last couple of decades, and their products have improved as well.

Re:Worried about Apple...

[squiggleslash]

They've never been "the good guy". They've gone through periods of being "the innovative guy" without doing too much evil for people to dislike them, but they're also the pioneers of the "look and feel" lawsuits that caused immense damage in the 1980s, and, especially concerning the Macintosh, have always had an absurdly controlling and proprietary attitude towards it. Even their attempts at open source have either been forced (Objective C was originally closed, and NeXT were forced to open it by the FSF, likewise WebKit et al are open because they're required to be by licensing), or with legal catches and a less than forthright approach (such as Darwin, and the evil APSL.)

They're the (mythical) Mussolini of the computer world, revered by many for making the trains run on time, but with a slap of dictatorial control most of us steer away from.

Apple's strength is its ability to package together interesting new products that inspire much of the industry. That's it. It's not a charity, indeed it makes IBM look warm and cuddly.

Re:Worried about Apple...

[elrous0]

The truth is that I don't think they ever were the "good guy." I think that's just an image they successfully cultivated. It's unfair that they've been held up this way all these years, while MS got kicked in the head as the "bad guy."

And before I get modded down or flamed, yes, MS has done a lot of bad stuff, no doubt. But, as a person, Bill Gates has done a LOT more "good guy" stuff than just about anyone else in his position ever has. How many billionaire CEO's have ever given as much to legitimate charities as Bill Gates? How many others have decided to give their entire $multi-billion fortune away when they die to a charitable foundation? Guys like Gates and Warren Buffet deserve at least a little "good guy" cred for that.

-Eric

whoo eff

[tomstdenis]

this is why I support them. /me proudly wears my eff hat....

Re:Hallelujah!

[Todd Knarr]

Well, first off disclosure of trade secrets isn't a crime. It's a civil tort, specifically breach of a non-disclosure agreement. Of course the Web sites in question hadn't signed any NDA with Apple, so they couldn't have breached the (non-existent) agreement. Under the law the burden of keeping a trade secret secret rests on the company that owns it, not the general public.

And there's a couple of things. First is the fact that Apple couldn't show that the Web sites in question knew their source was breaching an NDA. Second is the rule that says you can only subpoena a journalist in the way Apple wanted to if all other avenues of investigation have been exhausted. As the judge observed, Apple could have questioned it's own employees about whether they'd disclosed the information and to whom, and done so under penalty of perjury to add weight to the questioning. This could've revealed the names Apple was looking for without requiring anything from the Web sites. Apple choose not to pursue internal questioning, and the judge ruled that their mere desire not to demoralize their employees wasn't enough to justify putting the burden on someone else.

Re:Hallelujah!

[elrous0]

Being able to protect your source that broke the law isn't good for *anybody*

Horseshit! Just about every major scandal that ever broke in political or business history has been the result of some leaker willing to break the law and/or risk his life. Think it was legal for Mark Felt to leak information from classified meetings and secret FBI files to Bob Woodward? And how many business scandals have been exposed by an honest insider willing to break his NDA or steal documents (like Brown & Williamson)? How many WOULD have been if someone had been willing to break the law sooner (Enron)?

-Eric

hooray for lawyer bashing

[caitsith01]

IAAL. If you don't like it, you have a few options other than bitching about lawyers:

1. educate yourself about the law and represent yourself if you think it's such a low-value service
2. act politically to get the laws simplified
3. act politically to develop mechanisms to resolve disputes in a non-litigious manner
4. act politically to get the state to provide substantially more assistance for litigants who aren't wealthy
5. go back to stabbing each other with pointed sticks to resolve disputes (this might be quite effective for class actions)
6. modify human behaviour so that people no longer fight with each other

Note that if you consider these options unfeasible, 1 is caused by your own lack of ability, time or skill, 2, 3 and 4 are political problems which are in your own hands as much as they're in anyone's, and 5 and 6 are wired into us by evolution (or God/magical pixies if you're from the bible belt).

Otherwise perhaps you should consider that litigation is an extremely complex, difficult and time consuming activity requiring a very high level of expertise to conduct with any degree of competence. Large law firms do not make vastly more money than collectives of doctors, engineering consultancies, other groups of professionals, or large corporations.

In my view there is a tendency to regard lawyers as a rip-off simply because of the nature of the service, fighting it out to establish one's rights in circumstances which are frequently viewed as unfair or unnecessary, rather than the much more palatable "help me doctor, I'm sick/dying" or "help me, engineer, I need to build X".

The lawyers didn't create your dispute. You and the other litigant did.