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Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs"
An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post earlier today revealing that Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again revealing that Apple's lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied 'we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don't deal.' A third post gives details of Apple's lawyers' next response, going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has calmed down a bit.
to boil a few of those kinds of attorneys in oil, just as a warning to others.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It could just be a satirical fiction based around the ThinkSecret situation.
Aren't US Banks and financial institutions legally obligated to protect your private information such as the terms of your mortgage and the details of your bank and investment accounts?
I'm just glad that Apple isn't a big secretive powerful corporation that threatens to sue small people, pushes DRM, or anything evil like that.
I'm sure someone is going to mod me for flamebait, but I never understand the people who insist Apple is the greatest company of the fan of the planet when there is plenty of proof that Apple is a corporation (for better or worse) on par with most corporations.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'm always confused by Apple on matters like this; a lot of these people are key in building & maintaining hype in Apple products. If Apple (apple legal?) had their way, it seems like there'd be... well... Apple.com and a few keynotes every year as the only way people would learn details of (and think of?) new products.
I'm a big Apple fan & I love their approach of using/contributing to open source software where it makes sense to improve their products - but their marketing and PR people seem at odds with their engineering attitude (especially with their solution-oriented attitude recently with iPhone, Apple TV compared to their key skill as a superb platform (NB. this point was blatantly stolen from Wil Shipley's blog)). I know PR people think about things completely differently from engineers but you'd think that was a company attitude, not just with the people making the magic
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
From the article: ...he feels it is his duty to inform me that Apple's lawyers have identified at least three posts in my archive that they "deem to be actionable."
Since when was parody actionable?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
One from the real Steve Jobs: Joel said...
RSJ just responded to my email, saying, "I think this is a joke."
I'm a bit annoyed by this, since I was defending you, and now look something of a fool. And another who had mailed the same: Diogenes said...
I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, and actually got a response.
Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course)
I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.
Steve
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html
On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:
What, praytell, are you talking about?
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.
Gary Baldwin The amazing part to me here is that Steve Jobs is replying to mails in person. With a short delay, at a Christmas-y time like December 22nd...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I really do hope this is a joke, Apple doesn't have much to gain pulling a stunt like this...
It is.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
thats enough for me to say NO to future purchase of any apple products! yeah, me too!!
At least, until the iPhone comes out in lime green...
This would be the same Dan Lyons that faked a take-down note from Apple in order to stop writing Fake Steve Jobs before his management found out about it. He didn't want his management to know because technically he was violating his contract with Forbes, but fortunately for him they didn't mind.
Not exactly a paragon of virtue himself... and not above conducting business in public when it suits him, and in private when he can get away with it.
This guy also thought SCO was a sure winner and wasn't very polite about the Linux community.
Apparently, the guy tried to contact EFF and was turned down (see bottom of the link) because the EFF didn't like some of his posts.
Assuming that this is true, this doesn't shed too good a light on the EFF. Isn't the EFF supposed to help bloggers that are being attacked by large corporations, regardless of what is posted on the blog and, in particular, of whether the person likes the EFF? At least, isn't that what people who donate to the EFF expect it to do?
So, yes this being a parody does factor into it, but mainly because Mac users expect that Apple will respect the creativity of its user base and the whole industry around it.
C'mon people, think! It's the FAKE Steve Jobs blog. Did it occur to you that the stories there might be FAKE? This is satire, and you're all fools.
Guys,
Dan Lyons had me fooled, since he was not in character as FSJ, and really did sound scared. I sent an e-mail to SJ about it, expressing the concerns that any shareholder would have if this situation were true, and he replied.
He told me, quote:
I think this is a joke.
Steve
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, they did recently make a little girl cry
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
But then buying Apple products is the same except it starts with a new house and works it's way back to the dress, car, and kitchen appliances which can only come from the same company that built the house.
I am constantly amazed with the people who flock to Apple when they do the same thing at the hardware level that Microsoft does at the software level and that is product line lock in.
The major reason Apple lost the numbers war to Microsoft is that Windows and it's related products were allowed to run on any IBM PC clone while Jobs wanted to control every aspect of the Apple and sued out of existence the very people who were trying to clone an Apple and extend the user base of Apple and Apple-like products. Microsoft doesn't really care about pirated software in third world countries as long as the computers are running Microsoft products. They have a foot hold on future sales when the dust clears from law suits and the users are socialized into thinking that Microsoft is the only product they can use. As long as it's not Linux/x386BSD/Apple they are willing to tolerate pirating because it extends the base of users of MS technologies.
While Apple may make a better product overall (remember Mac OS is FreeBSD under the covers) they will always be only a niche market because Jobs is a worse control freak than Gates. --
Too lazy to create a sig...
(1) Even Apple's lawyers don't just whip out kid's college fund numbers.
(2) The EFF would never say that.
(3) If Lyons has a contract to continue the blog, then his employer would most certainly be fielding the lawyers, because if anything were actionable, they'd be liable too. (duh) So his "I've already paid a ton for a lawyer" was another giveaway.
What's hilarious is that Real Steve Jobs (or at least someone acting on his behalf) took the time to reply to a few angry readers who emailed him.
Nice posts though. FSJ rocks.
So if I started a Fake Bill Gates blog and made up crap like this about Microsoft lawyers, would you boycott Microsoft? If I started Fake Linus Torvalds and pretended to make kernel devs look like assholes, would you boycott Linux?
Actually, scratch that. Linux kernel devs *do* look like assholes.
I do think it's kind of cool that one unsubstantiated blog rumor can make it to the front page of slashdot, and then get people to swear off buying products from a company. I hope that the small company I'm working at will someday be as loved/hated as that!
I think Fake Steve Jobs has stepped over the line from hilarious satire to nasty slander. Libel? Whichever.
If it's a joke, which it appears to be, I think Apple would be completely justified in going after him.
I don't know that Apple lost because they "locked it down". If Apple's intent was to control all the world's computers and have to service any small company with a device and a driver of questionable stability, then, sure, they lost. But look at the two companies today . . . one is huge, incredibly rich and unwieldy with a product that people universally hate while the other is the darling of intelligent and thoughtful people everywhere. You ask, "if all these people love Apple why ain't they richer?" Simple. The majority of people in the world are not thoughtful and tasteful. McDonald's, Walmart, Dell. Case closed. Keep in mind, Jobs is a multi-billionaire . . . that's billion with a "b". Ya know, a thousand times a million? And he was pretty darned rich and beloved long before he ever sold a single Mac, so if he's crying about Gates' billions then he's a lot more shallow than I gave him credit for. I think, other than getting run out of Apple by Scully & Co, he's had a pretty good run and even getting canned turned about to be good, Pixar made him richer than Apple did, didn't it and in his spare time he created the future of the Apple OS in NeXT. What do you do in your spare time? Yes, Apple is a corporation. Anyone who thought they were a commune singing kumbaya over their circuitboards is an idiot. They're in business to make money and they do. They're something like 2nd or third most profitable company in the last decade in the US and maybe the world. Yes they're A-holes with the lawyers sometimes, but who in the corporate world isn't? It comes with the territory. And Apple's business model is based in part on its secretive nature. So while I don't like it, it's not like it affects how my iPhone docks so beautifullly with my Mac. When Jobs sells me a product I am smart enough to know what I'm getting and what I'm not getting. When GE sells me a fridge I know that changing the condenser or the coils will void the warranty. Same thing with Apple products. If I want to hack and tinker, I'll buy a PC. Not only are they more tinkerable, but tinkering is often required to get the gd things to work properly. I like appliances, they do what I expect them to do and they don't require rebooting - much. I'd be very happy if Macs booted instantly, never crashed and did everything that Apple said they would do, but then Macs are a lot closer to that ideal that Windows is and that's a quality I love. so, sue me . . . . JoeL
Sorry I have to call your bullshit.
Apple didn't lock anything down that hasn't always been locked down. Do you think Windows is an open specification? And Mac prices were only insane because RAM was insanely expensive. Apple shipped 32-bit color workstations in the 80s which PC tards compared to 256 color PCs and decided the Mac was more expensive. It was not. Compared to an equally equipped PC, it was the same price. The only difference was that Apple didn't sell cheap low end boxes that were obsolete at purchase (until they changed their strategy and started on the low end with the Mac LC in 1990). It also provided the OS for free.
You can look through old PC mags from the 80s and find $8-10,000 Macs, but you can also find $10-12,000 PCs like IBM's PS/2 line, which had similar high end equipment. Macs had SCSI when PCs had Centronics parallel ports and IDE.
Closed/Open didn't have any impact. Microsoft ripped off the Mac system software and then monopolized the PC market with exclusive contracts that prevented any alternatives from emerging. It's Microsoft that has jacked up the price of software. They set the price of Office at $500 and kept adding apps to it to kill off competitors. They set the price of the OS at $150 when most OS were free. Then they delivered shitty products for 15 years, and now their OS costs $300 or more.
Apple certainly screwed up under its mid-80 to mid-90s CEOs, but the errors were (perhaps) keeping the OS unlicensed and not making any effort to sell to consumers. Apple's past and present control is its greatest strength, and why Macs offer a much better experience. The uncontrolled environment in Windows is why PCs suck, and Linux offers little to help in that regard. It will offer a much cheaper replacement to Windows however.
Microsoft is everything about what's wrong in technology: non-interoperable, infatuated with adware, spyware friendly (WGA, Alexa), a proponent of onerous DRM (HD-DVD, WMV, PlaysForSure, Paladium), and enemy of open source development, and a price hiking monopolist. They also have no taste and deliver third rate products.
Your deluded, Dvorak-brainwashed generation will have to die off before technology can make any progress.
The New Apple Patent: WGA Evil or iPhone Knievel?
Is it true that Apple is racing to duplicate Microsoft's infamously evil WGA, or is it possible that Apple's patent describes something entirely different that leaps over the heads of industry pundits and performs a spectacular arc over the rows of broken down vehicles underneath (some of which may be on fire), to land a new platform and win applause for doing so?
Parody is a right that comes with responsibility like any other. When you step out of character on your parody blog and say you're being sued, and give nasty details, if you're lying that's not parody anymore, it's just lying.
Shame on the lot of you. This is supposed to be a smart crowd here. Don't let your bias get to the point where you just look foolish. It's xmas, it's the weekend, but Apple lawyers are firing off quick replies that are increasingly brutal despite their previous emails all going directly public via FSJ? Come on, nerds, use your brains.
You Speak Slander or write Lines of Libel.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
And the fact that my post even after an hour and a half still hasn't been modded flamebait or troll is a fair indication around here of Apple's status presently on slashdot. Right now, I don't think that they've lost enough of the status to be permanently damaged. But the reality is that when you base you're business around the fanatical devotion of your users, they can choose other systems, and that passion for macs could very well turn into a large scale vendetta if pushed too far.
Obviously I don't think that Apple is anywhere near there yet, but if they do lose their gilded status, it is going to cost them big time, where it hurts most, the stock price.
I was shocked personally, that they went with the iphone rather than taking advantage of MS' weakness to boost the numbers of macs being sold. Macs have a definite advantage of stability, largely due to the control that Apple has over the platform, there are a number of people that would love to have that sort of stability and interface design. Throwing the opportunity away on a product that would be just as popular in 6 months is absurd.
It appears, from various comments above, that this is a joke by Daniel Lyons, in very poor taste. Given how widely Slashdot is read, I think there should be a prominent clarification in the headline and story, IMMEDIATELY, that the story is dubious.
Apple does enough things that genuinely warrant criticism. Inventing a story like this, and publicising it as fact, is unconscionable.
Steve Jobs is a narcissistic cunt.
It isn't libel if it's true!
...and it's not even April.
Not only has he baited those of us who read the FSJ blog, but he has also baited every Microsoft fanboy and Apple fanboy who read his blog, who don't read his blog, and now Slashdot.
If the Internet ever gave out trophies, this guy deserves at least 5. Maybe 6.
Acting under the assumption that this is indeed a hoax:
I believe Fake SJ was attempting to point out how incredibly believable this scenario has become, due to Apple's declining public image. Five years ago, if someone had pulled a stunt like this, no one would have believed it. Today, people were emailing Real SJ, without any doubt that Apple would sue a satire. The absurd has become reality.
The corner of a round room
Relatively recently?
I remember back in the System 7/8 days when in a 0.0.x update they modified the CD-ROM driver to no longer work with non-apple CD ROM drives. All you had to do to "fix" it was go open the driver in ResEdit and change two bytes, but still.
Apple has always been about proprietary, closed in, locked down platforms. They've generally wanted to be Microsoft, but control the hardware too. None of this is new---nor should it be surprising.
No, I think only Apple and IBM had a chance to do it. There were lots of other companies in the game. I just didn't see them as real contenders come the time when computers really started to get into everyone's home and office/desk, and it really forced one to win out.
My first computer was a TRS-80 at school, and an Colecovision Adam at home. Dude across the street from me had a 64 that we messed around with. Another friend had a 2e. Another friend had a Vic. I know there were plenty home options in the 80's. But by the late 80's early 90's we were seeing computers crop up on desks at work, and having experience with the software and OS was becoming a requirement for the workplace. Basically one had to win. For that reason, and for 3rd parties to focus on. IBM dropped the ball with OS/2. Apple kept everything locked up too tight. And Wintel was really the best, and most open, option at the time. That's all I was saying.
I still can't believe how many people believe this is real.
I agree. Whenever any Apple-using friends of mine trot out the line that "Apple is a better company than Microsoft", I just point out stuff like this. And they'll reply: "You fell for that and call us stupid?"
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I think Fake Steve Jobs is funny, but, in the end, a lot of it is trolling. Listen to his talk at Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLpxX9vqr5c
He says that intentionally introducing little errors (Lissabon vs Lebanon etc.) and watching the angry letters and corrections roll in is "better than sex".
The video is well worth watching, though, also for some other insights into how the business publishing world works (e.g., Icahn placing stories that paint a bleak picture of Motorola in order to get rid of Zander).
He may well have invented this entire legal stuff as a publicity stunt. If so, he may have crossed the line.
Humans are simple creatures, we need the world defined in goodies and baddies, that often means having to make the choice of the lesser of two evils, and not always getting it right.
Godwin time perhaps, in WW2 who are the goodies and who are the baddies? You have the axis and the allies. Well Japan and Germany clearly belong in the baddies groups, these are evil nations whose people have not a single redeeming quality. The role of Italy and and Austria is slightly more complex. Italy often seems to be able to shrug of the worsed of the holocaust.
But the goodies? The US of A? Hitler went to the east for lebensraum, the americans trekked to the west and killed the people already living there. What is the difference between a sign that says "Geine Juden" and "No Blacks"?
England? Talk about a country bend on taking over the world, it made an empire out of astraucities. The soviet union/russia? Well at least Stalin could never be called a racist, he had entire populations wiped out of all sorts. Equality of a kind I suppose.
Yet we must pick and in popular culture that often means we gloss over the "truth" to present one side in a better light. You might have noticed that in the recent WW2 tv series Band of Brothers absolutly no mentions is made of the US army policies regarding blacks or those with ancestors from Japan?
Part of the final solution was to deport jews to remote areas where they could be controlled/wiped out. Explain to me the motivations between Indian reservations and the rather diminsied population figures of native americans?
In WW2 there were only baddies, just that some at that particulair time were not as active as others and depending on your own background some weren't intrested in being very bad to you at that moment. Why string up a jew when blacks are so much more fun?
Yet we need to have a hero, and so we make one, by putting on blinders.
Steve Jobs is a figure in IT, there are many others, but he can be very closely linked to Bill Gates, an obvious baddy (although once seen as a hero freeing us from the evil IBM, a company that is now often seen as a goodie).
What really is the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates apart from income? It is a well known part of computer history that it was Steve Jobs own (what is the word, incompetence, arrogance) that handed Bill Gates the PC market. Apple, IBM, Commodore, Atari etc etc all screwed up at a crucial point leaving Wintel to rule the market. A lot has been written about it already, including on slashdot.
But just imagine that Steve Jobs hadn't made what ever mistake it was he made and that Apple had come to rule the PC market, what then? Would it have been any better? Imagine that the holocaust had never happened, would the US be the evil country for its treatment of blacks, would it have continued like South Africa? How much did the realization of the holocaust change american opinion on its own treatment of a part of the population?
Apple has never been any more open with its software then Microsoft has. While MS software has always been bug prone, I have to say that the most crashy PC I have ever seen was running OS9. Supporting DRM, are we talking about Steve "Disney" Jobs here? Sony is often a villain when it comes to consumer rights, but when did Apple ever fight a legal battle FOR fair use?
But we need a hero, and so we make one, reality be damned. The sad part is that we got real heroes in IT, Stallman in front, but that person is WAY to much of a hero. People often insultingly try to compare him to Jezus but I personally see that as a rather important clue as to real heroes who truly stand for something. The person of jezus, if he was real, was a real pain in the ass for the powers that be, even his own followers. Really read the bible and you find a guy who was kicking against a lot of pedastals and upsetting people. Very confenient he was killed and that the pleps couldn't read and that the powers that be could tell their people what Jezus had RE
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Fake Steve Jobs? That's not the only thing he's faked being...
How about fake journalist? Fake analyst? Fake intellectual?
The guy is firmly attached to the corporate teat, and things like
Linux scare him to death, because he can't figure out how to make
money on it. When Fake SCO came along, he started spouting anti-Linux
vitriol at every turn; here's just a sample;
"In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies
in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own
righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will
agree."
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux_print.html
Of course, when it turned out we Linux supporters had it right all
along, Dan jumped off of the SCO bandwagon while it was hurtling
downhill at warp speed, and he nearly broke both of his ankles in the
process. His "apology" basically blamed Darl McBride, saying all Dan
did was repeat what Darl and company told him. Excuse me? You're
trying to pawn yourself off as a journalist, yet you take the word of
a litigious, all hat, no cattle wannabe cowboy, and then fail to
research the whole story?
If anything, Dan Lyons is an even worse shill than Rob Enderle - at
least Rob has the decency to reply to people directly, as he has done
with me on several occasions; Dan is too chickenshit to admit he was
wrong, on his own accord.
(I'd bring up the poor quality of his "blook" here, but that would
mean I'd have to detail all of the material he blatantly stole from
the regulars of the Yahoo SCOX message board, which I don't have the
time for right now; I will say that when you read the material there,
you've gotten exactly what you paid for; I don't see how Dan can live
with himself for trying to *charge* for it in print!) -saltydogmn on
Yahoo SCOX
P.S. Dan, if you're reading this, make sure to have Darl send me my $699/cpu invoice for running Linux on my computers; I have 3 of them, including this IBM laptop; 2 running Kubuntu, and 1 Xubuntu. Where should I send the check, and, more importantly, WHY? kthxbye
Yes. Hoax is really a better word.
It was all fun and games until he started flat-out lying about Apple and the EFF (just like he'd already flat-out lied about SCO and Linux). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find either of them really suing them now, say for libel and defamation of character. Way to go, dumbass.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's just Dan Lyin' Lyons. I doubt Apple cares one way or the other.
But it sure gets danny a lot of free publicity. Danny is a pure fiction writer. Danny is laughing up his sleeve right now, because of the slashdotters he fooled.
I agree, and further more I wish /. would develop some policy of printing retractions to stories that turn out to be bogus. I plan on tuning back in tomorrow to see how things develop but I don't want to have to sift through all the esoteric and inaccurate discussions that arise for any given story, interesting as they may be, to find out "truth".
Here's my suggestion for if a article ends up being fabricated: Post a retraction at the top of the article, or even remove the original article and create a new entry/article about how you discovered the original one was a fake.
Could Slashdot please change the inflammatory title of the post to reflect that it's actually a hoax?
You're wrong. The distinction is actually quite important. When you lie about someone in voice, your body language, etc, can make the lie less powerful. You can see if the seaker is pissed, and often far fewer people hear the lie. The lie doesn't usually persist, but must be recalled. It's not as bad. Even on TV, it's less likely to be recorded and repeated (and if it isn, there are machinisms for calculating damages).
When you write something, you are making a permanent record. You're preserving a fact about someone that could be around for 100 years. It's harder to delete, it's harder to ignore, it's harder to forget. No indications of your tone to see if you're pissed or joking. Your statement will be taken at face value.
Thus, Libel is more serious, usually, than Slander. There are exceptions to that, but the distinction is valid.