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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.'"
I lament the fact that acquiring justice, or clearing your name from a SLAPP, requires so much money. I think that there should be punitive damages in addition to legal fees when companies go after individuals in this way.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
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?)
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I realize that this comment isn't going to win me any friends in Apple-land, but it's good for everyone (Except maybe Apple shareholders) if Apple's wrongdoings and attempts to intimidate news outlets into not carrying the news are exposed to a wider audience. A lot of people out there (including many slashbots) see Apple as the Brave Crusader out to kill the Microsoft dragon, but this view could not be farther from the truth. In reality, Apple is just another corporation, really not significantly better or worse than any other. They really are the lesser of two evils in the Mac vs. PC war.
A lot of people have cited Microsoft wrongdoing as part of their motivation to purchase a Macintosh. As this is basically an ignorant, knee-jerk reaction given Apple's own history, I theorize that these are the same people who don't believe a corporation has done anything wrong until it is proven in court. I hope that I am right, because this sort of thing has a chance to dent Apple's wallet, which is the only stimulus to which corporations really respond.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
this is why I support them. /me proudly wears my eff hat....
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I was once attacked by a big company... We settled quickly, and my legal expenses were about $6K. I suppose, it could've become 10 times that, if it lasted longer, but $700K?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And here I thought there wasn't any money to be made off blogging anymore, turns out you just need to be the blogger's lawyer instead of the blogger. I wish there was any amount of common sense I could display that'd earn me $700,000.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Well that's one way to look at it, the other is Apple loses 700k. Maybe they'll think twice before trampling the rights of others next time.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
OK, I certainly don't live under a rock, but $700,000 in legal fees? Holy crap! Maybe IT wasn't the right field to get into!!!!!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
'Subpoenaing journalist sources is not an acceptable means of discovery.'
This sounds like it has some pretty big implications on freedom of the press, making it easier for journalists to keep their sources confidential (important if you want to keep your sources!)
=Smidge=
Step 1: piss off Apple
Step 2:... ugh, even I'm tired of this joke *sigh*
-John Mark
Hyperic Community Outreach
Hyperic Community Manager
That's less than 1/10 of 1% of last quarter's revenue. Why are they going to think twice?
Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?
Um, who ever said they ever were a good guy in this matter? They never licensed their technology to outside companies, it took people kicking and screaming for them to even allow third party hardware before the 1990's. Try finding a non-Apple printer for a Mac before 1990 - doesn't exist. Apple has always protected their financials (see: iPhone and Verizon deal) and their IP/Technology. It's not a bad thing, it's just how they've always done business. You could argue that the reason the PC gained such a market share over Apple is because IBM didn't engage in litigation as much and allowed the third party market to flourish. Ironically, it's that loose control over the PC that's allowed it to gain the nasty reputation for the Wild West that is has now and that Apple capitalizes on with its newer commercials.
Isn't that what an iPhone is going for these days? Seriously, $640k should be enough for anybody.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Shareholders don't like lawsuits. If you repeat 700k enough times it starts to sting. What's worse, there could be other troubles for Apple if the government decides they're an unlawful business (e.g. rampantly violating the civil rights of others).
... oh wait ... how is that bad anyways?
That and now they get to continue reporting on every little detail of Apple
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I want to know more about "asteroid"
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
There are five ways that stealing/revealing a trade secret can be considered a federal crime under US Code Title 18 Part 1, instead of merely a civil matter.
Trade Secret law is not based on NDAs. It is a distinct section of US intellectual property law.
That just plain isn't true, and I don't know what made people start thinking that all of a sudden.
Shareholders don't like lawsuits.
Almost any large company will be engaged in multiple lawsuits at any given time. It comes with the territory.
If you repeat 700k enough times it starts to sting.
Apple just settled with Creative for $100 million and it wasn't big news.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Actually, journalists have been subpoenaed for sources and some have gone to jail for refusing for hundreds of years. See my other posts in this thread for a reference.
You're just plain wrong.
Why do you hate america?
Geez.
Bahahahahahahahahaha
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There was no constitutional issue raised here. If forcing the blogger to talk was the only possible way to find out who leaked the trade secret, the judge probably would have sided with Apple. This wasn't a constitutional decision, it was a procedural decision.
Of course you're probably one of the people who holds the misconception that journalists have ever had the right to protect a source who broke the law. They never have.
First, let's fix a typo:
Basically, this is a ruling that says you can brag about your crimes to a reporter, and they can publish your account, and they are free to cover up your crime.
Second: yes, for a civil suit, that's true.
The fact that there weren't any Apple ][ clones was due more to the big diversity in personal computer models at the time than any trade secret. If you wanted to build a computer in those days, it was easier to put together an S-100 machine than to try cloning an Apple. But every detail about the Apple, from the ROM listings to the video chroma waveforms, was widely known even published in magazines like the good old Byte, R.I.P.
There are numerous ways to skin the related math. Comparing myself to Bill Gates, Gates wins hands down in terms of total amount donated, or percentage of holdings donated. On the other hand, I slaughter him with regard to scarcity of personal holdings remaining after all donations.
There's humor in my point above, but seriousness too. Bill Gates has not had to live without anything purchasable that he's wanted, whereas I've had to live without quite a lot of things that by varying degrees are "essential". Doesn't make me a better person than Gates, but conversely his pain-free, involved-as-he-wants-to-be actions don't make him a better person than me.
This line of thought applies when comparing Gates to other execs as well. How many of these execs have as much money as Gates to start with? How much did they have left when their donations were tallied up? How much in excess of some arbitrary standard of living/possessing did those amounts clock in at? All these questions are fundamentally aimed at discerning how much was really "given" in a way that cost the giver something, vs simply rearranged. If a corporate exec donates a billion dollars and keeps ten million for a lengthy retirement, how does that compare to a starving child who gives away a piece of bread and dies as a consequence? Who gets more "good guy" karma points?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Maybe they'll think twice before trampling the rights of others next time.
Or, to put it another way, this sets an important precedent.
One of the ongoing problems the legal system has is that, once a computer is involved, all precedent goes out the window, and all legal precedent is null and void and needs to be re-established. A lot of legal procedings can be explained once you understand this.
This case illustrates this rule by showing that a "blogger" isn't considered a "journalist", presumably because they use a computer and the Net to publish rather than a printing press. The judge's decision sets the important precedent that a journalist who publishes online is indeed a "journalist", and the involvement of computers and the Net doesn't negate that.
Of course, there's the qualification that this was done by a California court, so courts outside that jurisdiction will continue with the premise that the involvement of a computer invalidates all precedent. We can hope that Apple decides to appeal this to a Federal court, and that court decides similarly that a blogger can indeed be a journalist.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Don't sign NDA's if you don't want to abide by them.
I doubt that the bloggers were unaware of the fact that the information they were publishing was under NDA. That said, they also didn't sign the NDA. So bravo for them for not laying down and giving up their source. I hate rats.
It's definitely in Apples interest to protect their secrets, and you can't blame them for trying to do that- they just went about it the wrong way.
Does anyone have a mirror of what details were even released? I mean, should the bloggers have shown a bit of candor in what they published? It's not like they're exposing Apples hidden baby killing factory, they're publishing information about unreleased products.
Furthermore, if they were to repeat the same thing, or even similarly enough, the next time may likely be $1400k... or $2100k if the judge doesn't believe they learned their lesson.
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.
Read Pynchon.
Ignore this post; moderator box got focus and for some reason "underrated" rather than "off topic" got focus and was submitted as I tried to cancel out. Posting here to undo.
(Am happy to hear Apple's legal dudes got nerfed in the court. We need more stories like these..)
ISO certified == THX certified
As an AAPL stockholder, I'd prefer to let Steve Jobs decide the timing of announcing new products, not some Web site trying to sell banner ads, claiming free speech.
Funny how the same /. crowd that though it was OK to have bloggers register with the US Government now become First Amendment absolutists when the law negatively impacts the intellectual property of the patent holder on AAC.
Now, go ahead and mod down that with which you disagree...
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I've always said Jobs is dangerous. We gotta be happy that things now are as they are (Mac has a mere 2-3% market share, and as for consumer products like iPod - let it thrive, no much harm done, it's just a fancy nice mp3 player).
Bill Gates' original vision was to spread computers into every home, and make hardware a commodity platform, make the real product the software that makes this hardware useful.
Job's vision is more sinister though: this guy believes in perception, in hype, in marketing, and in easy to use and swallow products fed to the masses. A control freak.
Isn't it crazy how much work they've put on the iPhone (and deliver a nice, albeit expensive product), only in the end to cripple it by not allowing to tap its power with custom software? This is pure Jobs right there.
And you can be sure Apple's strange behavior towards rumor sites is coming straight from Jobs.
And there's a site that said the product was a Apple hoax deliberately created to catch where the leaks are coming from. Possible, but we have a real world example of what possibly really happened:
Did you know that months before Microsft announced the Tablet PC platform Apple was getting ready to release their own Tablet Mac? Well, just because they couldn't be first to the market and grab that "mindshare", Jobs scrapped the project. I bet he's now waiting for the Tablet PC idea to die and be forgotten, before he tries again.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Or, to put it another way, this sets an important precedent.
One of the ongoing problems the legal system has is that, once a computer is involved, all precedent goes out the window, and all legal precedent is null and void and needs to be re-established. A lot of legal procedings can be explained once you understand this.
This case illustrates this rule by showing that a "blogger" isn't considered a "journalist", presumably because they use a computer and the Net to publish rather than a printing press. The judge's decision sets the important precedent that a journalist who publishes online is indeed a "journalist", and the involvement of computers and the Net doesn't negate that. Actually, that's what the original (overturned) judge said - that all journalists are subject to the law, and that it doesn't matter whether Apple mentioned "Bloggers" in their claim. See http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183776&
Or do you actually believe the real journalists would have given a damn if they hadn't come for them too?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I *used* to be an Apple fanboi... less and less lately :(
y s-eviltm.html for my latest discovery about Apple...
See http://anonymouslemming.blogspot.com/2007/01/alwa
Who has to answer for breaking a NDA is the person that did so, not the person reporting the disclosure, they did not sign anithing with Apple.
I know that your clearly unbiased point of view is making your blood boil, but frankly we can afford that in the interest of allowing free dissemination of important information by whistle blowers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or do you actually believe the real journalists would have given a damn if they hadn't come for them too?
I get the impression that most "real journalists" see the Net as just one more medium. Many are working on the Net now, and most see it as part of their future. And many are aware that in the early days of radio and then television, the same sort of thing happened. They had to fight in court to establish that using radio or TV didn't disable their journalistic credentials. It took court action to establish that all the previous laws about "freedom of the press" applied to journalists whose words were sent out via radio waves rather than ink on paper. The current battle to extend this to digital packets isn't materially any different.
Those who tout the greatness of their nation seldom contribute to it.
Heh. So true. That's right up there with "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Or, as Mark Twain observed, it's often the first.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
It appears that bloggers are able to publish trade secrets of technology companies and hide behind the protection given to the press, even if it is obvious to any reasonable person that the information is stolen and confidential in nature.
Apple is no "worse" than any other company of any type intending to protect its trade secrets.
Who has to answer for breaking a NDA is the person that did so, not the person reporting the disclosure, they did not sign anithing with Apple.
/. crowd when it comes to IP? I am actually a helluva lot more objective than 90% of the anti-IP zealots here, for whom open source is a religion rather than an experiment. I hate what Microsoft is doing with Vista's EULA; the difference is, I believe in the law and freedom of contract. If you don't like MS, use Linux, don't tell MS how to write it's contracts, and don't make up the law how you want it to be. What makes my blood oil is being an AAPL stockholder and having financially disinterested nincompoops trying to force their jihadist viewpoint on a stock I hold in the name of ideology.
Of course, the Web site contributes to the disclosure and therefore loss of the trade secret. That's like saying a getaway driver in a car doesn't rob the bank, so he should get off scott free!
I know that your clearly unbiased point of view is making your blood boil
As opposed to the fair-and-balanced
but frankly we can afford that in the interest of allowing free dissemination of important information by whistle blowers.
The legal system is sophisticated enough to discern between whistleblowers and gossips. There are already laws protecting the former. That's a strawman.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
While there are going to be some here who value AAPL stock over the intersection of confidentiality and journalistic freedom, happily the courts, at least this time, do not.
At a time when blogging is rewriting the practice of journalism by handing individuals the power formerly reserved to wealthy media companies, American law needs more such victories.