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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.
I really hope Nick got some money in exchange for agreeing to terminate his site. In any case, thank you for your years of work on behalf of the Mac community, Nick.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Maybe it's the "Sorry, comments have been disabled for this story" at the end of TFA?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
But since the "issues" he had with Apple, the content on thinksecret wasn't really much beyond what someone with an Apple Developer Connect membership could access. To many articles on the latest seed of this or that. Before that ThinkSecret sometimes had some real gems every now and then (and was plain wrong lots of times also)
We are all packets in the Internet of life!
There are two issues people tend to go after here: the "I thought trade secrets weren't protected!" issue and the "OMG First Amendment!" issue. Both objections have serious problems.
Let's deal first with trade secrets. The revelant federal law is quite clear, and lays out some pretty stiff potential penalties for both Think Secret (who almost certainly knew they were receiving an inappropriately-disclosed trade secret, and thus would have triggered the statute) and the person who talked to them (who almost certainly misappropriated a trade secret or improperly transmitted one, and thus would have triggered the statute). 10 years' federal imprisonment or $5m fine is nothing to sneeze at, so we're talking about something that -- from the standpoint of the law -- is a pretty serious offense.
Now, as for journalism and the First Amendment: Think Secret originally attempted to claim the traditional right of journalists to protect anonymous sources, but there's serious doubt about whether they ought to receive it. The traditional protection afforded to journalists' sources exists to ensure that information which is important to, or which impacts the public good will be brought to light. But in this case the information does not serve any high and lofty public purpose: this isn't Watergate or the Pentagon Papers, it's some company's product lineup. And while we have freedom of the press, that's not the same as carte blanche to break the law: if you're going to wrap yourself in the Constitution, you need to go to the judge with something better than "Well, we really only did it because we can, and because we thought it'd be cool." Think Secret didn't have anything better to tell the judge than that, and so the judge (rightly) laid the smackdown on them.
The result is that they've been backed into a settlement which puts them out of business. Whether this means Apple is the next Google is the next Microsoft is the next IBM is the next Dark Lord Sauron, I don't know. But Think Secret basically screwed themselves, and have no-one to blame but themselves.
Truth: Nobody is forcing you to get a green iPod nano, and that $50 also gets you twice the storage capacity.
Consumer truth: He *wanted* a green, 4GB iPod nano. Not a silver one, not an 8GB one. This is a case of Apple forcing the customer to the extra $50 just for a different color. In the manufacturing process, it doesn't cost Apple a single penny more to slap on a green case versus a silver case. It'd be one thing if the faceplate was interchangeable, but I don't own an iPod nano so I wouldn't know.
Which you do by making sure your employees know you'll do what it takes to find them and sue them if they release such information. Apple sued for the names of the leaks, not to shut down the publication. In the end, Apple did not get those names, but the publication shut down, so everyone lost.
When did speculation and reporting on rumors get deemed as private information?When you're profiting from information you solicited from people who you knew or had a reasonable expectation to know where violating their confidentiality clauses. There are trade secret laws to this affect in almost every state.
All I know is CNN is screwed.CNN is probably very careful not to do this very thing, except in whistleblower cases, where there is government corruption, a danger to public health, or an overriding public interest for the information to be released. What new gadgets Apple is working on, does not qualify for whistleblower protection.
The Osborne Effect: what happens when consumers are so 'well informed' about upcoming products that it puts the company out of business.
Let's also consider Microsoft's long-standing "Real Soon Now" policy for killing competing products. 'Inform the consumers' that MS will release something "just as good" in the near future, and that it's silly to go with another vendor when all your business software is currently from MS, and you can pretty much wipe out a company with a good product.
Beyond that, consumer markets have this thing called 'first mover advantage'. There's some serious dollar value to opening up a new market so fast that the competition has to run like hell just to get a shoe in the door. Leak the specs for an upcoming project far enough in advance, and any company in an even vaguely similar line of business can have a me-too product ready to go on the shelves about the same time as your debut. The end result is that nobody makes enough money to make the new market seem worthwhile, and the whole thing lapses back into nothingness in about six months.
There are lots of cases where a large number of people who make 'well informed' decisions in their best interest end up making things worse for themselves and everyone else. See: The Tragedy of the Commons.
Besides, the whole idea of 'informed, rational consumers' is pretty much fantasy anyway. If such creatures existed, most people wouldn't have some gadget in their kitchen that they haven't used even once since they bought it. We also wouldn't see billions of dollars every year rewarding the software industry's de facto policy of 'whoever has the longest list of bullet points wins'.