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Think Secret Shutting Down
A number of readers are sending in the news that the Mac rumors site Think Secret will be shutting down, as part of the (secret) settlement of a lawsuit Apple filed in 2005. Apple had claimed that the blog, published since 1998 by college student Nick Ciarelli, had revealed Apple's trade secrets. The only other detail of the settlement that has been revealed is that Think Secret was not forced to reveal any sources.
The New Apple, making Microsoft look less evil everyday...
I think Apple tries pretty hard to keep that from happening. You can speculate all you want, the case that Apple really went after Think Secret for involved very specific information about an unannounced product. It wasn't just a lucky guess by a well informed guy, it was obvious that he had received information from someone "on the inside."
I have no doubt that Apple has all sorts of restrictions on what their employees are allowed to discuss, and you surely sign all sorts of agreements when you go to work there. But people being people, sometimes an individual or two just can't keep secrets to themselves, and feel the need to share it. I'm not sure what else you expect Apple to do to prevent it, maybe replace all their employees with robots?
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
How is what thinksecret was doing in any way damaging to apple? I work in the marketing field. ALl of my peers and I agree that while we don't exactly buy into the apple lemming philosophy, they are absolutely GODS of marketing. Take a product like the iPhone....which is NOT revolutionary in any way, shape, or form...let apple's marketing department put their spin on it and before you know it, you've got people camping outside of stores to buy A CELLPHONE!
Most of us honestly thought that thinksecret was secretly owned and operated by apple...that would make sense. Thinksecret, really, was doing a service to their marketing goons. They were creating hype about products without giving TOO much information, and they were doing it for free.
R.I.P. thinksecret.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
It isn't. Which is how sites like AppleInsider, MacRumors and others get their information, legally.
However, ThinkSecret has been known to "entice" Apple employees into breaking their NDAs with Apple and give it certain priviledged information. Apple sued ThinkSecret in an attempt to find out who at Apple was breaking their NDA. They lost, mostly because it was proven that Apple did not do a sufficiently good job at their internal investigation, and thus, ThinkSecret shouldn't be forced to give up their source. (This makes sense, when you think about whistleblowers). From all we can speculate, said source is probably still working at Apple, since we've not heard of any lawsuit filed for disclosure of priviledged information.
If Apple did find the source, ThinkSecret could find itself under another lawsuit if it can be proven people were paid for espionage. But I suspect the terms of the settlement involve immunity for ThinkSecret from further lawsuits related to this matter.
ThinkSecret isn't exactly innocent in the whole affair. After all, Apple went after them, and none of the other sites like say, Gizmodo, Engadget, MacRumors, AppleInsider who report on rumors obtained through the grapevine and are often wrong. ThinkSecret's "rumors" often turned out uncannily accurate.
Google may not be evil,
But Apple surely is - especially this year!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Actually, it was an Apple fan site and it was profiting from corporate espionage.
The point is Apple has a right to not have its company secrets told to everyone. It will never be your right to know that information. It's just plain arrogance (and stupidity) to think that it is.Well, sort of. The law supports Apple in that anyone releasing these secrets, enticing others to release them, or knowingly publishing them for profit is breaking the law. As to a fundamental right of Apple, well they are a corporate entity and don't have "rights" just granted privileges. It is debatable whether corporations should have this particular privilege.
This is pretty touchy ground with a lot of complications. In general the first amendment trumps an individual's right to keep facts secret. It has, however, been altered to go the other way for businesses... with exceptions granted by whistleblower statutes for government corruption, public health, and other overriding public interests. It may well be that the laws will change and these corporate privileges will be revoked. It is interesting and reflective of the culture in the US that while most of the world recognizes an inherent, individual right to privacy, the US does not... but the US does grant that privilege to corporations.