Not exactly. What's missing from your first scenario is the fact that the blogger actively solicits people to break trade secret law. That makes him a participant, not just a reporter.
I can't imaging any other explanation why Apple would want to throw money on such litigations.
Let me try to give you an idea of why product secrecy is so important to Apple.
Remember the G4 iMac? Remember seeing it on the cover of Time?
Apple got that cover story because 1) it was news, and 2) they were able to promise Time an exclusive on the story. You can't buy the cover of Time as an ad placemement, but if you could, it's probably worth about a hundred million bucks.
Apple has come a long way from the days when you could find out everything that was happening there just by having lunch in any restaurant within ten miles of the campus. Apple can't just let this go, because letting it go is a lousy thing to do to all the Apple employees who do honor their agreements and STFU about upcoming products.
What was it the 1st Amendment said about Congress shall make no law...?
The freedom of expression is not a license to aid and abet a theft. A journalist can be held liable for slander, prosecuted for incitement to riot, etc, etc. The first amendment secures our right to criticise and offend people, not to violate their property rights.
Trade secrets are the property of a corporation's shareholders. That's a hell of a lot of people, in case you didn't realize it.
I see you missed the part where other people had managed to boot XP on the Mac without Apple's help. You can shove your snotty affectation of superiority right next to your conspiracy theory, sunshine.
Apple users will be forced to pay full retail price for Windows
If, god forbid, I ever needed a copy of windows, I'd pick it up for twenty bucks from any Linux user I know who got it with his Dell and never wanted it in the first place. First sale doctrine and all that.
You can't tell me that Apple suddenly decided to cancel this product just because news of it got leaked to the web.
Let's see... A minor product like that, unlikely to ever generate even a whole percentange point of Apple's revenues? It's entirely possible that such a product got cancelled. It's even possible that anyone on that product team is now seeing their career at Apple stalled under a cloud of suspicion until the big mouthed asshole is identified and canned.
If you were a manager at Apple, would you look to a team with known leaks for internal transfers? Would you take the chance on your own project ending up splashed all over the rumors sites?
Make no mistake, this jerk didn't just violate his NDA (break his word), and violate the law, he also fucked over his colleagues.
Whether bloggers are journalists is really beside the point here. Even if the asswipe had been talking to the Wall Street Journal, Apple should still be suing to find out his identity any way they can. As a shareholder, I expect no less.
No, I don't wonder. The reasons are many, and obvious.
1) People were damaging their machines trying to follow the recipes on the web for booting XP; 2) the availability of Boot Camp removes one standard premise that coporate IT drones routinely use to veto Mac purchases; 3) Apple wanted to lower the sales barrier for individual buyers who have one or two Windows apps that they must run, for whatever reason: Virtual PC costs a couple hundred bucks, Boot Camp doesn't; 4) it provides a compelling sales advantage against the Dells and the HPs of the world, since they can't offer Mac OS.
So, cram your stupid conspiracy theories back where they came from.
her boss, who appointed her, believes he's the King of America
No, he believes he's the president of the USA, and he's quite aware of the difference. If he were anything like the kind of autocrat that his detractors claim, those same detractors wouldn't be walking around in the sunlight.
The Mac community is composed of 30% latte-sipping wannabe 'artists', 50% trendsters with too much money, 25% hippies, 4% Hollywood actors, and 1% Steve Jobs.
Check your math. There are more than 100 Macintosh users.
When a government official tries to extend their own authority, they are way out of line. This stupid cow needs to be dismissed from the taxpayers' payroll, immediately.
When I described longhorn as the biggest failure, I'm speaking in terms of the money down the drain. Copland was big, but it was much smaller even than Office Vision.
Vista hasn't failed yet.
Yes, it did. MS abandoned the work in progress and (as they put it) did a "reset" to the Windows 2003 server code base.
How do the words "failed" and "late" suddenly have the same definition?
They don't. Longhorn is a failed project; they had to abandon the work in progress, and are now planning to ship what basically amounts to service pack four, and pretending it's the same project.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has zero chance if this goes to court, you know it.
Sorry, it takes a bit more than the assertion of yet another AC to convince me. Or the court, for that matter.
Why don't they sue the guy who signed the NDA in the first place?
They have. Look up what "John Doe" means in a legal context.
-jcr
Very interesting plots. Thanks for posting those.
-jcr
why are they spending so much goodwill and money prosecuting?
So that they can find and fire the perp, of course.
-jcr
By your definition Kos (of Daily Kos fame) is not a journalist
He's not a journalist, he's a polemicist (and not a very skilled one), but that's really beside the point.
-jcr
Not exactly. What's missing from your first scenario is the fact that the blogger actively solicits people to break trade secret law. That makes him a participant, not just a reporter.
-jcr
Exactly. We're not talking about whistle-blowing, we're talking about some jerk trying to look like a big shot to the bloger he's feeding info to.
-jcr
I can't imaging any other explanation why Apple would want to throw money on such litigations.
Let me try to give you an idea of why product secrecy is so important to Apple.
Remember the G4 iMac? Remember seeing it on the cover of Time?
Apple got that cover story because 1) it was news, and 2) they were able to promise Time an exclusive on the story. You can't buy the cover of Time as an ad placemement, but if you could, it's probably worth about a hundred million bucks.
Apple has come a long way from the days when you could find out everything that was happening there just by having lunch in any restaurant within ten miles of the campus. Apple can't just let this go, because letting it go is a lousy thing to do to all the Apple employees who do honor their agreements and STFU about upcoming products.
-jcr
What was it the 1st Amendment said about Congress shall make no law...?
The freedom of expression is not a license to aid and abet a theft. A journalist can be held liable for slander, prosecuted for incitement to riot, etc, etc. The first amendment secures our right to criticise and offend people, not to violate their property rights.
Trade secrets are the property of a corporation's shareholders. That's a hell of a lot of people, in case you didn't realize it.
-jcr
I see you missed the part where other people had managed to boot XP on the Mac without Apple's help. You can shove your snotty affectation of superiority right next to your conspiracy theory, sunshine.
-jcr
Apple users will be forced to pay full retail price for Windows
If, god forbid, I ever needed a copy of windows, I'd pick it up for twenty bucks from any Linux user I know who got it with his Dell and never wanted it in the first place. First sale doctrine and all that.
-jcr
You can't tell me that Apple suddenly decided to cancel this product just because news of it got leaked to the web.
Let's see... A minor product like that, unlikely to ever generate even a whole percentange point of Apple's revenues? It's entirely possible that such a product got cancelled. It's even possible that anyone on that product team is now seeing their career at Apple stalled under a cloud of suspicion until the big mouthed asshole is identified and canned.
If you were a manager at Apple, would you look to a team with known leaks for internal transfers? Would you take the chance on your own project ending up splashed all over the rumors sites?
Make no mistake, this jerk didn't just violate his NDA (break his word), and violate the law, he also fucked over his colleagues.
Whether bloggers are journalists is really beside the point here. Even if the asswipe had been talking to the Wall Street Journal, Apple should still be suing to find out his identity any way they can. As a shareholder, I expect no less.
-jcr
Their other avenues for protecting their creations (patents, copyrights and trademarks) I presume they are already aware of.
I see that you left out trade secret law, which is what this case is all about.
-jcr
wonder why Apple released BootCamp?
No, I don't wonder. The reasons are many, and obvious.
1) People were damaging their machines trying to follow the recipes on the web for booting XP; 2) the availability of Boot Camp removes one standard premise that coporate IT drones routinely use to veto Mac purchases; 3) Apple wanted to lower the sales barrier for individual buyers who have one or two Windows apps that they must run, for whatever reason: Virtual PC costs a couple hundred bucks, Boot Camp doesn't; 4) it provides a compelling sales advantage against the Dells and the HPs of the world, since they can't offer Mac OS.
So, cram your stupid conspiracy theories back where they came from.
-jcr
Seems more like a personal vendetta then a business...
Would you care to guess what product secrecy is worth to Apple, in dollar terms?
They're exercising their fiduciary duty to find and stop these leaks.
-jcr
Just look at Carter's eventual result. There was no war, a plus. The hostages were released, a plus. It took too much time, a minus.
Iran spiraled into theocratic totalitarianism. The consequences of Carter's inaction are suffered by many more people than just the hostages.
-jcr
He has already locked up an American citizen without trial for years.
Roosevelt did it to thousands of American citizens. What's your point?
Your libertarian instincts have dulled.
Oh, bite me.
-jcr
anything other than data that you have absolutely no problem with becoming completely public.
Nonsense. You can put an encrypted disk image on a network volume just as easily as any other place.
-jcr
her boss, who appointed her, believes he's the King of America
No, he believes he's the president of the USA, and he's quite aware of the difference. If he were anything like the kind of autocrat that his detractors claim, those same detractors wouldn't be walking around in the sunlight.
-jcr
The Mac community is composed of 30% latte-sipping wannabe 'artists', 50% trendsters with too much money, 25% hippies, 4% Hollywood actors, and 1% Steve Jobs.
Check your math. There are more than 100 Macintosh users.
-jcr
In the words of H. L. Mencken: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."
-jcr
When a government official tries to extend their own authority, they are way out of line. This stupid cow needs to be dismissed from the taxpayers' payroll, immediately.
-jcr
Apple still ripped off the overall GUI
Not that stupid canard again. Apple licensed Xerox's technology, and Xerox was a pre-IPO investor in Apple.
-jcr
I always forget that you work at Apple
Not lately, I don't. I left back in June.
where you invovled in the failed Copland project?
No, that was way before my time there.
-jcr
What about copland?
When I described longhorn as the biggest failure, I'm speaking in terms of the money down the drain. Copland was big, but it was much smaller even than Office Vision.
Vista hasn't failed yet.
Yes, it did. MS abandoned the work in progress and (as they put it) did a "reset" to the Windows 2003 server code base.
Thank god steve came back and saved us!
Well, Steve and the rest of the NeXT guys.
-jcr
How do the words "failed" and "late" suddenly have the same definition?
They don't. Longhorn is a failed project; they had to abandon the work in progress, and are now planning to ship what basically amounts to service pack four, and pretending it's the same project.
-jcr