Just for the record, I don't think you can really call what Nick did "bribing." He offered a promise of anonymity in return for secrets, and that's definitely against the law, but I think "bribing" is misleading and goes too far.
Um. The thesis of Gruber's article is that Think Secret is not a news site, because a news site would have known not to break the law in pursuit of a story.
Read this blog post which I linked from another story last night. The author does a good job of walking you through exactly what Apple is claiming, including providing a copy of the complaint itself.
Long story short: Apple says that Ciarelli offered anonymity in exchange for trade secrets. In California, offering something in exchange for somebody breaking a contract is called tortious interference. Second, Apple says that Ciarelli knowingly published trade secrets. In California, it's against the law to do that, under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
So yeah, Think Secret is probably going to have to shut down or pay millions or some other onerous thing because Ciarelli broke the law.
You're only thinking about one small part of the dispute, the subpoenas for the names of the leakers.
Actually, I think a clever lawyer could argue that it doesn't.
Point one: Everybody knows that Think Secret has been accused of breaking the law to acquire proprietary information and publishing that information on its Web site.
Point two: This report sites unnamed "sources," just like the reports for which Think Secret is accused of breaking the law.
Point three: The law says that it's illegal to knowingly publish trade secrets. The standard is that if a reasonable person would have had a reasonable suspicion that the information was confidential, publishing it is a violation of California's trade-secrets act.
So I don't actually think it would be that hard to construct a prima facie argument that Slashdot has, in fact, broken the law here. Assuming the information really was leaked to Think Secret, of course. Only Apple and Think Secret know for sure right now.
I've never heard of her before right now btw, and if she is does advocate fascism, then I don't see a hint of it here.
She doesn't. She's big on immigration reform. I think she's making a mountain out of a molehill, but I don't think she's fundamentally wrong about it. I mean, our borders are pretty porous. It would be pretty easy to sneak a suicide bomber into Texas. And there are a lot of people out there who want to. So I think she's kinda got a point.
But she's not a fascist. The person who said she was is doing what so many others do: confusing conservatives with fascists.
I started reading Malkin because the guy whose blog that is links to her a lot. She's not always right, but she's usually worth reading.
But absolutely *NO* strong evidence that the magazine's sources were actually the violators.
Doesn't matter. In California, it's illegal to publish information that a reasonable person would know is confidential. The big label on the document saying "APPLE CONFIDENTIAL" would have been a clue.
Secondly, I'm skeptical of your conclusion that the "ruling sets a nasty precedent," seeing as how your comment didn't have anything to do with the ruling.
Dude, don't dignify. Calling somebody a name isn't an argumentum ad hominem. It's just being a cock.
Argumentum ad hominem is an attempt to refute an argument by attacking the person making it. And you know what? It's not always fallacious.
Example: If you say, "The sky is green," I might respond by pointing out that your wife left you for a younger man. Do we really want to take the word of a man who can't satisfy his wife in bed?
That would be an argumentum ad hominem.
Counter-example: If you say, "The sky is green," I might say that you're color-blind.
That's not argumentum ad hominem. To the contrary, that would be a perfectly valid point. Your assertion, in that case, would be unreliable because you can't distinguish colors, which is a perfectly valid argument.
The only thing more annoying than people who make argumentum ad hominem are people who accuse others of doing so. Especially when they're wrong.
If they were, the judge would have ruled on the points.
Um. The judge wasn't hearing the case. It was an evidentiary hearing to determine if subpoenas could be lawfully issued as part of the discovery process in advance of the trial. The judge doesn't rule on the merits of a case at an evidentiary hearing.
Furthermore, I don't think you understand the legal definition of solicitation.
The technical legal term that applies here is "inducement," not solicitation. I said solicitation because I was trying to avoid jargon.
And, if you are going to keep arguing, please stop conflating issues from two separate cases.
There are three cases, and they share many issues in common.
AFAIK, Think Secret haven't broken any laws, or atleast, they are not being charged with anything.
No, not correct. Apple alleges that Think Secret is guilty of three things: 1. tortious interference, 2. misappropriation of trade secrets, 3. unlawful disclosure of trade secrets.
Basically, the law says that you can't induce somebody to break a contract, you can't offer somebody something in exchange for trade secrets, and you can't publish something that you know is a trade secret. Think Secret did all three of these things.
These facts aren't really in dispute. They're kind of all in black and white. Think Secret's lawyer is arguing that the writer who did that stuff should be excused because he's a reporter. Apple's lawyers are obviously saying that he should not be excused, and that he's liable for damages.
By that reasoning, reporters should have blanket immunity against speeding tickets. Because you never know. They could be speeding in pursuit of a story!
You're not doing very well tonight with your commenting. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to take a little time off, maybe go have some pie.
The problem is that before the identities of the sources are revealed, there's no way to know whether those sources broke the law in acquiring the information.
That's not correct, in two ways.
First, Apple claims that the only reasonable explanation for how the particular information that ended up on the Web got there is that some employee broke confidentiality. That's point 1.
Point 2 is that Apple claims that the bloggers in question actively solicited Apple employees to break confidentiality, which is against the law in California.
Point #2 really isn't in dispute. It's basically open-and-shut. The bloggers promised X in return for secrets, and they got secrets. So the bloggers definitely, no question, broke the law.
Information can leak from a company due to incompetence as well as malice, and if it does, you're SOL as far as trade secrets are concerned.
But that would have to be an affirmative defense. In order for the defense to claim that, they would have to provide details explaining how the information got out... which is exactly what Apple wants.
let's say that the judge forces the bloggers to reveal their sources... and the sources turn out not to be Apple employees, and committed no crime in acquiring the information
Hang on there. The bloggers already committed a crime. They broke the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That means they're not eligible for coverage under the shield law, which means the judge has no legal justification for not granting the subpoena.
Remember, when there's a civil (and possibly even criminal) investigation in progress, there has to be a compelling reason not to issue a subpoena. This is the opposite of a warrant; you have to have a compelling reason to issue a warrant, but you have to have a compelling reason not to issue a subpoena.
The judge made a bad call.
Nope. The judge did exactly the right thing, both legally and in terms of common sense.
"I think it's telling that Apple chose to file suit in California, the very same state that Richard Nixon is buried in."
"I think it's telling that Apple's complaint was printed on paper, the very same material that Hitler used to wipe his ass!"
Well, guess what, Sparky... it's not telling. The law is what it is. It's written down. It's not tainted because some people you don't like decided to use it. And you say absolutely nothing about somebody's case when you draw such an unbelievably flimsy association solely for the purposes of inducing an emotional response.
This blogger, whom I have become completely addicted to, wrote the best article I've read on the subject. It deals with only one of the several lawsuits filed, but the points he makes are real thought-provokers.
Sorry for being such a shameless pimp, but I really think people who are interested in this Apple story would be interested in this article.
The Xserve is not an enterprise-class server. It only goes to two CPUs, and only has one PCI slot. That's not an enterprise-class server. It's a cluster node or small workgroup server.
Two power supplies in an Xserve -- aside from completely not fitting -- would be tits on a boar hog.
We all know what the words mean, right? A fan is somebody who is an enthusiastic devotee of something. A customer is somebody who takes a good or service that's offered for use.
People who use Gnome aren't fans. They're customers. They aren't enthusiastic about it. They just use it. (Can you find exceptions? Sure, but don't be fooled into thinking that they prove the point.)
Want to be successful? Start treating your customers as customers, not as buddies or pals or fans.
Don't care about being successful? Then for Christ's sake, can we please stop all the nonsense about how Linux is going to take over the world and go back to treating it as what it is: a hobby project.
As proud as you are of that, you seem to have missed the fact that everybody stopped listening at "If you don't like it, fuck off."
And incidentally, yes, commercial software vendors do fall all over themselves to implement things you want. You just have to offer them money first. See, that's reason #1 why commercial software is nearly always a better business choice than public-domain software. With commercial vendors, you have leverage. You can get them to do things by offering them money, or by threatening to withhold money.
With the developers of public-domain software, you've got no options at all, other than hiring your own staff to bring the whole project in hours, which takes what should be a modest capital expense and turns it into a massive operating expense. Dumb idea all around.
Yeah, we have UPS, surge/brownout protection and all that, but some power supplies have been ruined.
Then you don't have UPS/surge/brownout protection, do you? Fix the problem. Don't mandate stupid work-arounds.
If making sure your company can continuously make money (to ensure payment of your salary) is stupid, then I'm proud to be the president of the Stupid Club. Where I'm from, though, it is called "Doing your job."
It's not, though. Your job isn't to waste a ton of money implementing stupid solutions to simple problems. Your stupid solution has made an entire class of servers -- highly cost-effective servers -- unavailable to you. That's not doing your job. That's called throwing good money after bad.
Invest in a facility power management system like a Liebert and call it a day. You will have saved your company a fortune. That would be doing your job.
What's your boss' e-mail address? It sounds like he needs to know what you've been doing while he's been paying you.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for the record, I don't think you can really call what Nick did "bribing." He offered a promise of anonymity in return for secrets, and that's definitely against the law, but I think "bribing" is misleading and goes too far.
Just a nitpick.
Um. The thesis of Gruber's article is that Think Secret is not a news site, because a news site would have known not to break the law in pursuit of a story.
Read this blog post which I linked from another story last night. The author does a good job of walking you through exactly what Apple is claiming, including providing a copy of the complaint itself.
Long story short: Apple says that Ciarelli offered anonymity in exchange for trade secrets. In California, offering something in exchange for somebody breaking a contract is called tortious interference. Second, Apple says that Ciarelli knowingly published trade secrets. In California, it's against the law to do that, under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
So yeah, Think Secret is probably going to have to shut down or pay millions or some other onerous thing because Ciarelli broke the law.
You're only thinking about one small part of the dispute, the subpoenas for the names of the leakers.
my own knowledge of the care with which Nick Ciarelli researches his reports
You're referring to Ciarelli's violation of California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act, no doubt?
Actually, I think a clever lawyer could argue that it doesn't.
Point one: Everybody knows that Think Secret has been accused of breaking the law to acquire proprietary information and publishing that information on its Web site.
Point two: This report sites unnamed "sources," just like the reports for which Think Secret is accused of breaking the law.
Point three: The law says that it's illegal to knowingly publish trade secrets. The standard is that if a reasonable person would have had a reasonable suspicion that the information was confidential, publishing it is a violation of California's trade-secrets act.
So I don't actually think it would be that hard to construct a prima facie argument that Slashdot has, in fact, broken the law here. Assuming the information really was leaked to Think Secret, of course. Only Apple and Think Secret know for sure right now.
I'm not so sure that the facts are not in dispute in the legal sense
I never said nor implied that. I said that the facts aren't really in dispute. The bloggers got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
I don't expect this case to ever go to trial. The bloggers will settle, because they don't have a leg to stand on here.
He praises her for for being smart
Also pretty, which is a matter of taste.
I've never heard of her before right now btw, and if she is does advocate fascism, then I don't see a hint of it here.
She doesn't. She's big on immigration reform. I think she's making a mountain out of a molehill, but I don't think she's fundamentally wrong about it. I mean, our borders are pretty porous. It would be pretty easy to sneak a suicide bomber into Texas. And there are a lot of people out there who want to. So I think she's kinda got a point.
But she's not a fascist. The person who said she was is doing what so many others do: confusing conservatives with fascists.
I started reading Malkin because the guy whose blog that is links to her a lot. She's not always right, but she's usually worth reading.
(blush)
Did I say "paying customers?"
The term "trade secret" has a specific legal meaning. Look it up.
But absolutely *NO* strong evidence that the magazine's sources were actually the violators.
Doesn't matter. In California, it's illegal to publish information that a reasonable person would know is confidential. The big label on the document saying "APPLE CONFIDENTIAL" would have been a clue.
Secondly, I'm skeptical of your conclusion that the "ruling sets a nasty precedent," seeing as how your comment didn't have anything to do with the ruling.
Dude, don't dignify. Calling somebody a name isn't an argumentum ad hominem. It's just being a cock.
Argumentum ad hominem is an attempt to refute an argument by attacking the person making it. And you know what? It's not always fallacious.
Example: If you say, "The sky is green," I might respond by pointing out that your wife left you for a younger man. Do we really want to take the word of a man who can't satisfy his wife in bed?
That would be an argumentum ad hominem.
Counter-example: If you say, "The sky is green," I might say that you're color-blind.
That's not argumentum ad hominem. To the contrary, that would be a perfectly valid point. Your assertion, in that case, would be unreliable because you can't distinguish colors, which is a perfectly valid argument.
The only thing more annoying than people who make argumentum ad hominem are people who accuse others of doing so. Especially when they're wrong.
If they were, the judge would have ruled on the points.
Um. The judge wasn't hearing the case. It was an evidentiary hearing to determine if subpoenas could be lawfully issued as part of the discovery process in advance of the trial. The judge doesn't rule on the merits of a case at an evidentiary hearing.
Furthermore, I don't think you understand the legal definition of solicitation.
The technical legal term that applies here is "inducement," not solicitation. I said solicitation because I was trying to avoid jargon.
And, if you are going to keep arguing, please stop conflating issues from two separate cases.
There are three cases, and they share many issues in common.
So because everything he said is right, but he likes somebody you don't like, he's wrong?
Tell me more about what it's like to be in the third grade.
AFAIK, Think Secret haven't broken any laws, or atleast, they are not being charged with anything.
No, not correct. Apple alleges that Think Secret is guilty of three things: 1. tortious interference, 2. misappropriation of trade secrets, 3. unlawful disclosure of trade secrets.
Basically, the law says that you can't induce somebody to break a contract, you can't offer somebody something in exchange for trade secrets, and you can't publish something that you know is a trade secret. Think Secret did all three of these things.
These facts aren't really in dispute. They're kind of all in black and white. Think Secret's lawyer is arguing that the writer who did that stuff should be excused because he's a reporter. Apple's lawyers are obviously saying that he should not be excused, and that he's liable for damages.
By that reasoning, reporters should have blanket immunity against speeding tickets. Because you never know. They could be speeding in pursuit of a story!
You're not doing very well tonight with your commenting. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to take a little time off, maybe go have some pie.
You'll get your groove back, I'm sure of it.
What corporate abuses, exactly, did Apple commit? You are aware, aren't you, that we're talking about leaked product specifications here?
Let's pull ourselves back a little closer to reality, huh?
The problem is that before the identities of the sources are revealed, there's no way to know whether those sources broke the law in acquiring the information.
... which is exactly what Apple wants.
That's not correct, in two ways.
First, Apple claims that the only reasonable explanation for how the particular information that ended up on the Web got there is that some employee broke confidentiality. That's point 1.
Point 2 is that Apple claims that the bloggers in question actively solicited Apple employees to break confidentiality, which is against the law in California.
Point #2 really isn't in dispute. It's basically open-and-shut. The bloggers promised X in return for secrets, and they got secrets. So the bloggers definitely, no question, broke the law.
Information can leak from a company due to incompetence as well as malice, and if it does, you're SOL as far as trade secrets are concerned.
But that would have to be an affirmative defense. In order for the defense to claim that, they would have to provide details explaining how the information got out
let's say that the judge forces the bloggers to reveal their sources... and the sources turn out not to be Apple employees, and committed no crime in acquiring the information
Hang on there. The bloggers already committed a crime. They broke the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That means they're not eligible for coverage under the shield law, which means the judge has no legal justification for not granting the subpoena.
Remember, when there's a civil (and possibly even criminal) investigation in progress, there has to be a compelling reason not to issue a subpoena. This is the opposite of a warrant; you have to have a compelling reason to issue a warrant, but you have to have a compelling reason not to issue a subpoena.
The judge made a bad call.
Nope. The judge did exactly the right thing, both legally and in terms of common sense.
Dumbest comment ever.
... it's not telling. The law is what it is. It's written down. It's not tainted because some people you don't like decided to use it. And you say absolutely nothing about somebody's case when you draw such an unbelievably flimsy association solely for the purposes of inducing an emotional response.
"I think it's telling that Apple chose to file suit in California, the very same state that Richard Nixon is buried in."
"I think it's telling that Apple's complaint was printed on paper, the very same material that Hitler used to wipe his ass!"
Well, guess what, Sparky
Dumbest comment ever.
You don't understand the case or the ruling. Read this article (which I have already pimped elsewhere).
This blogger, whom I have become completely addicted to, wrote the best article I've read on the subject. It deals with only one of the several lawsuits filed, but the points he makes are real thought-provokers.
Sorry for being such a shameless pimp, but I really think people who are interested in this Apple story would be interested in this article.
(I got the link from MacSlash last weekend.)
The Xserve is not an enterprise-class server. It only goes to two CPUs, and only has one PCI slot. That's not an enterprise-class server. It's a cluster node or small workgroup server.
Two power supplies in an Xserve -- aside from completely not fitting -- would be tits on a boar hog.
That's just wacky.
We all know what the words mean, right? A fan is somebody who is an enthusiastic devotee of something. A customer is somebody who takes a good or service that's offered for use.
People who use Gnome aren't fans. They're customers. They aren't enthusiastic about it. They just use it. (Can you find exceptions? Sure, but don't be fooled into thinking that they prove the point.)
Want to be successful? Start treating your customers as customers, not as buddies or pals or fans.
Don't care about being successful? Then for Christ's sake, can we please stop all the nonsense about how Linux is going to take over the world and go back to treating it as what it is: a hobby project.
As proud as you are of that, you seem to have missed the fact that everybody stopped listening at "If you don't like it, fuck off."
And incidentally, yes, commercial software vendors do fall all over themselves to implement things you want. You just have to offer them money first. See, that's reason #1 why commercial software is nearly always a better business choice than public-domain software. With commercial vendors, you have leverage. You can get them to do things by offering them money, or by threatening to withhold money.
With the developers of public-domain software, you've got no options at all, other than hiring your own staff to bring the whole project in hours, which takes what should be a modest capital expense and turns it into a massive operating expense. Dumb idea all around.
Yeah, we have UPS, surge/brownout protection and all that, but some power supplies have been ruined.
Then you don't have UPS/surge/brownout protection, do you? Fix the problem. Don't mandate stupid work-arounds.
If making sure your company can continuously make money (to ensure payment of your salary) is stupid, then I'm proud to be the president of the Stupid Club. Where I'm from, though, it is called "Doing your job."
It's not, though. Your job isn't to waste a ton of money implementing stupid solutions to simple problems. Your stupid solution has made an entire class of servers -- highly cost-effective servers -- unavailable to you. That's not doing your job. That's called throwing good money after bad.
Invest in a facility power management system like a Liebert and call it a day. You will have saved your company a fortune. That would be doing your job.
What's your boss' e-mail address? It sounds like he needs to know what you've been doing while he's been paying you.