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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 : )
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.
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.
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
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.