I realize that. The comment I was responding to was one that said that all this sort of work could be replaced by free software like PythonCAD. I was just pointing out that while the person I was responding to seemed to think that drawing 3D vectors was a trivial programming project, there was more that went into it than just drawing things.
CAD, design, and animation software really have very little in common. A lot less than people think. Drawing up the floor plans for a building, designing an airplane, making a shoe, and making special effects for a movie have almost nothing in to do with eachother. If you think that just because they are all done on a computer, then the tools must all be pretty much the same, then you might as well say "why do we need word processors, calculators, spreadsheets, and databases? They can all just be done with a pencil." What sets these apps apart is the interface and workflow, not the core technology that draws to the screen. When you have to set up behaviors on 10,000 objects, and then animate another 500 objects moving through them on fixed motion paths, the features in QCad aren't going to be of much help. By the same token, you aren't going to get much useful stress analysys out of an animation done for a game cutscene in Maya.
Alias had already dropped IRIX support before this. I don't remember if 6.5 or 7.0 were suppose to be the last IRIX version, but there was definitely not going to be a 7.5 or 8.0 for IRIX.
Actually, seeing all the time and money Autodesk has been putting into migrating the smoke/flame/inferno product line off of SGI, and onto Linux, I really don't think it is very realistic to claim they are going to force Maya onto Windows only. When I last talked to Autodesk, they even said they were at least looking at making a Linux version of Combustion, since they had heard so many customer requests, though officially there were no plans yet to offer the product for Linux.
Re:AutoCAD is too far up MSs back end...
on
Autodesk Acquires Alias
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, you couldn't be more wrong about how mergers have shaped Maya up until now. I was a Wavefront, and TDI user, and have been a Maya user since it came out.
The actual story is that Wavefront merged with TDI, and that product of that merger WAS Maya. The release of the program that was to become Maya (which was going to be called Explorer 5 if I remember correctly) had been talked about a lot at Wavefront before the Alias/SGI merger. It was held up for a bit by the Alias/Wavefront/SGI merger, and then was re-branded as Maya, and sold under the Alias/Wavefront logo. In fact, if you look at the modeling tools available in Maya 1.0, they were an almost exact copy of the modeling tools in the last released version of Wavefront (TDI) Explore. The Alias modeling tools were suppose to be available in a separate Advanced Modeling pack, but that never actually came out. However, Maya matched feature for feature everything that had been promised in the joint TDI/Wavefront package, and even had an interface quite reminiscent of TDI's Explore software. In fact, the only notably Alias feature of Maya 1.0 was the shelf, and I'm not even sure that was in there until Maya 1.5 or 2.0
As far as the rest of your comments about Max and Maya go, I think there is something that should be pointed out. Multiple times in all the press material, Autodesk says that they will definitely be keeping all of the Alias products alive, but never once do they say specifically how it will change the Autodesk products offered. Seeing as how Max is very much in need of a total from the ground up rewrite (something Maya just went through in the past 3 releases) I suspect that there is going to be a lot of long discussions at Autodesk about whether or not to fund the rewrite of Max or whether to just let is slowly whither. Maya has been eating away at Max's core market (games) for some time now, largely because Max is currently more expensive than Maya. Also for the past several years Max's main feature enhancements have mainly revolved around better competing with Maya. Why keep pouring money into trying to keep up with an app that is taking your market share, when you own both apps?
I expect that what you will most likely see, is Autodesk fixing the horribly broken Maya CAD import tools, and adding other features (like RPF support), then pushing that as their main animation/visualization program. The Alias team (assuming they stick around) has been doing a much better job of developing features in-house, whereas the Max team has really been relying on third party developers to add functionality in the way of plugins. I think that just about any business would rather have the IP in-house if they can, rather than having to keep buy-up plugins to integrate into the core program over the years. Also, there is very little chance that buying Maya and then killing it would get Autodesk a single customer. For the bulk of the 3D industry, 3DS and Lightwave have been the default software everyone learned when they were getting into 3D. The people who ended up using Maya, have most likely already used Max, and decided they needed something else. If Autodesk kills Maya, they will just be making more sales for XSI and Houdini. If they were willing to use Max, in the first place, they never would have learned and bought Maya. Max is the path of least resistance, and to go a different way required some real effort. People aren't just going to throw up their hands and say "oh well, I guess I'll use Max after all."
You know, this is really getting sad. I know that everyone loves taking pot shots at MS, but I think it especially ironic given the missing context of this story. The only reason anyone even knows about this story, is because when Apple tried to patent some really obvious aspects of an MP3 player, they were told that they couldn't have the patent because Microsoft had beat them to it! Microsoft hasn't sued anyone, or in any way tried to enforce their patents on any company. This is just being floated around because Apple is pissed that someone beat them to patenting work done back before there was even a market for MP3 players, by companies that are long out of business.
A lot of people responding to this article either must not read most of what they sign, or haven't worked for many companies! All of these "don't sign it, or expect to live with the terms of the contract" posts are simplistic, and childish. Often, there is little choice for an employee. Let me give you an example.
I left one company to go to work at another company. I negotiated the terms of my employment in a number of meetings, and got a letter of intent. I then quit my old job, and moved to a new city to start my new job. I worked a month, and then when the time came to pick up my first paycheck, I got a call from accounting saying I needed to come to the office and sign a few documents before they could release my pay. O go in the office, and low and behold, it is a contract saying that I can't work in any related field for a year after leaving for any reason, as well as a clause saying that any work I do on or off the clock belongs to them, and a clause saying that I can't ever use any skills or techniques I learn or develop there at any other company, and several other things that directly go against the terms agreed to when I took the job!
I immediately schedule a meeting with the owner of the company, and sit down to talk to him. At first I am given the standard "it is just a formality, and we don't actually enforce it" line of crap, but as soon as I even mention the word "lawyer" I am told that if I don't sign it immediately, I will no longer have a job, and my pay will not be released.
So, there I was having just spent quite a bit of money to move to a new city, and having lived off my savings for a month while I waited for my first paycheck, and I am faced with the option of either having to sign a contract that I don't agree with, or with no money in my pocket, in a city I don't know, start looking for a new job after having given someone a month of free work. It is a bit more complicated than "don't sign it, or expect to live with the terms of the contract."
I could tell tons of stories about people I know who had to sign contracts like this after years of working at a company, in order to vest their stock options, or people who had contracts like this presented to them after a management change at a job where they had invested a lot of time and work. The hook is always, that you have put time and work into something, and before you can get paid for what you did, you need to sign one of these bullshit contracts as "a formality." In my case, I ended up having to sign it to get my money, then hire a lawyer to review it and plan a strategy to get me out of it while I looked for new work.
That is where I learned this next bit. In most states, you have inalienable rights that you can't sign away in a contract! In fact, it turns out that almost the entire contract in question was completely unenforceable. Employers have you sign these things because most employees won't take them to court over it, and just get bullied by the company because they think that if they signed the contract, then they are screwed, so why bother paying an attorney.
In the vast majority of states, no contract can prohibit you from perusing your chosen field. If the business you are working for classifies every company in their given market as a competitor, then it is meaningless for them to put in a non-compete clause, because they cannot enforce a contract that forbids you from an entire industry. Now, if they have one or two specific competitors, or clients that they forbid you from working for, then they might well have an enforceable contract. By the same token, in most states no matter what a contract says, no contract can sign away blanket ownership of all works of an individual to their employer. If you can prove that you did not use any resources of your employer's in the creation of said work, then no matter what you signed, they most likely are going to have a very hard time proving that they own said work.
A contract is not a law, it is just a piece of paper with some wo
I love this, in a country where people trade out cars every two years, you are actually shocked and amazed that they would throw away their computers?
Come on, a car these days costs tens of thousands of dollars, has a life span of around 20 years, and the technology hasn't substantively changed in 50 years! Yet, every couple to few years, the average American gets a new one. I don't know why, but I suppose it is because a four year-old car is just icky.
Computers on the other hand, are improving about every six months, are completely obsolete every five years, at the outside, and only cost a few hundred dollars. Why wouldn't people throw them away?
Admittedly, I still have just about every computer part I have bought since about '95 sitting in a bin somewhere, but I hardly ever have a use for all those parts. I also have thrown away one entire computer (sans drives) because it just pissed me off that much, and I have to say it was quite satisfying kicking it all the way to the dumpster!
If you are going to address the problem with disposable consumerism, I think there are much more important and meaningful targets than people swapping out their crappy cheap computers for new crappy cheap computers. Hell, what about the millions of people who tossed perfectly good CRT monitors, just because they wanted a flat panel monitor with a lower resolution, and slower refresh rate, just because they thought it was cool that their monitor was only two inches thick?
Ok, you, and several of the Apple people, have been really big on this whole "as long as they are within their legal rights, then Apple did nothing wrong" logic lately, so let's try turning the table for a second.
What would your reaction be if Wiley got upset about this, and as a result stopped publishing any "For Dummies" books for the Mac? Now, how about if they went further, and removed any reference of the Mac from all of their "Bible" series? In fact, what if all of a sudden in every book store in the land the number one, and number two selling series of technical help books suddenly made no mention of there being any products by Apple on the market?
Would you still be sitting here saying that a company has every right to do whatever it wants, or would you be screaming from the rooftops about how biased and unfair Wiley is being? How about when Apple started losing its mindshare (and thus sales) as being the "computer for the rest of us" due to a lack of learning material? How fair would it seem when the best book you could get for Photoshop, or Dreamweaver, or Flash conspicuously failed to mention any of the differences between the platforms, and only listed keyboard shortcuts for the PC?
The only real "fact" here, is that fairness and rationality aren't enforced rules, but rather best practices. Jobs, through Apple, is being a spoiled little brat, and attempting to punish a company for "crossing him." That is well within his right, but is hardly an admirable, or even respectable action. It is predicated on the, all too common, preconception that he can get away with it, because the company he is punishing is reasonable (unlike him) and won't retaliate in kind. Were Wiley to retaliate in kind, it would hurt Apple a LOT more than it would hurt Wiley. Sure there would be a few Macheads who would refuse to ever buy a Wiley book again, and sure some other publisher would step up their Mac efforts to compensate. However, when someone went to the store to pickup a book on an app, and the salesman invariably recommended either one of the "For Dummies" or "Bible" books, they would be given a clear signal that perhaps they had made a mistake buying a Mac, and would reconsider their next purchase.
Now, Wiley probably is run by responsible adults, so probably will keep on publishing books about Apple products. However, that hardly speaks well for Jobs or Apple, acting like a bunch of spoiled children.
Um... Here is a bit more legalistic definition of prima facie:
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight," used in Common law regions to denote a case that is strong enough to justify further discovery and possibly a full trial.
For example, being found standing near a dead gunshot victim with a smoking gun in your hand would establish a prima facie case for murder.
Prima facie is often confused (even by legal scholars) with res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself), the legal doctrine which establishes that the evidence on its own is sufficient to establish the fact in question unless it is explicitly rebutted by other evidence or mitigating circumstances.
You are clearly confusing prima facie with res ipsa loquitur. Prima facie implies no real validity to the claim, but rather just says that upon first glance is reasonable enough to allow the case to go further. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that just as valid a translation of prima facie, would be "shallow." Of course "the Court finds that Apple has made a shallow case of misappropriation..." doesn't really forward you agenda very well, does it?
I am not reading anything between the lines. This is English, not some obscure foreign language that needs to be carefully translated! Every statement of the validity of the claim is bracketed by disclaimers saying that none of this is to be used to evaluate the validity of the claim, but rather just for the sake of argument in this specific instance. That isn't some clever divination of the judges mental process through deconstruction of his childhood or anything, it is what is written on the page in black and white.
By the same token, the judge specifically admonishes the defense council for having nothing to say in either their prepared brief, or in their oral statement. Once again, no subjective slight of hand here, but rather a black and white observation of what is written on the page. The only point where I used any actual supposition whatsoever was in saying that judges usually don't admonish attorneys unless they think they did something wrong. I don't think that is really much of a stretch, since that is true about just about everyone.
No, I have no real problem saying that I'm not really "reading between the lines" here, but rather evaluating the document as a whole, rather than picking and choosing the parts of it that say what I want. You yourself quote "...it cannot and should not be read or interpreted more broadly" and then turn right around and say that it proves that this is actually a trade secret. I would say that goes beyond reading between the lines, and straight into creative reinterpretation to support an already decided point of view.
Well, if all of IP law and trade secret law could be summed up in one sentence, we wouldn't need all these overpriced lawyers, would we?
Look, a trade secret is traditionally something for which you would normally seek a patent but which you do not wish the disclosure of a patent, because it is too sensitive to let out of your company. Product information, specs, packaging design, and internal marketing material typically do not fit this definition. That sort of information getting out might mess up your brilliantly thought out marketing plan, but it doesn't put you business in jeopardy. Furthermore, it really has no value in and of itself, which is another requirement of a trade secret. I assure you that Apple would find it impossible to prove in court that there was anything in those documents that represented any kind of new advance in manufacturing, or design that took away their exclusive position in the market. No one at Dell read the offending articles said "Oh my god, that's it! Now I see how they are actually getting a bigger hard drive in their mp3 player! we have been stuck on that for months, but now we see how it works!"
That sort of information is certainly confidential (if Apple chooses to call it such), and Apple has plenty of civil options to protect the confidentiality of said information. Unfortunately, in a civil proceeding they must first prove who leaked the information, and then prove that it did harm. If they can prove both of those things, then they can seek damages from the person who breached their confidentiality agreement. However, Apple choose to pursue the trade secret route, which deals with this as a criminal theft, and is meant to be applied to HIGHLY sensitive information, that could ruin your business if it got out. Things like chip designs, source code, formulas, and other materials that are VITAL to your (or your competitors) ability to do business. I stress vital, because there is a big difference between vital and convenient. It might make your product easier to market if you control absolutely all information about it, and strategically release it as you see fit, but it is not vital to your business that you do so.
Taking it out of the tech sector for a second, to try and better illustrate what I mean, if a magazine were to get a leak that Ford were working on a zero-emissions car that used a completely new type of powertrain based on a hydrogen fuel cell, and proceeded to show drawings of the car, and a list of features, likely no trade secret law would have been violated, even though obviously someone had broken their NDA. However, if the same magazine ran a detailed article on the inner working of the hydrogen fuel cell, and diagrams that showed how to build one, most likely there would have been a violation of trade secrets law.
One more quick example. If a magazine runs an article on some revolutionary new animation system being used at a company like ILM, complete with screenshots and a complete feature list, once again someone obviously broke an NDA, but their is probably not a breach of trade secrets law. However, if that same magazine then put the source code for that animation system up on their website, or ran snippets of it in the magazine, there would almost certainly have been a breach of trade secrets law.
The problem with this case, is that Apple is intentionally abusing trade secret law to get what it wants, but the other side is so wrapped up in trying to legitimize blogs as journalism, and pursuing first amendment issues, that they aren't even addressing the abuse of trade secret law. This could set a dangerous precedent allowing companies to dramatically widen the definition of what a trade secret is, thus setting up an environment where companies could start pressing criminal charges against their employees for breaking their NDAs on trivial matters.
To put it in perspective, the formula for Coke is a trade secret, whether or not they are thinking about making an 18-pack, or what next years Christmas 12-pack packaging is going to look like isn't.
Just because a company wishes to keep something under wraps, that doesn't automatically make it a trade secret. A technical schematic could be a trade secret, but the fact that it is a technical schematic doesn't automatically make it a trade secret. For it to be a trade secret, you must be able to demonstrate both that it is of vital importance that your competitors not have access to the information, and that you have taken extraordinary efforts to keep it secret. In this case, it would be very hard to demonstrate that there was any information contained in the leaked documents that gave any demonstrable edge to Apple's competitors. In fact, there really isn't any demonstrable evidence that there was any damage done at all, except for some bruised egos.
The big difference here is that there is plenty of civil IP law that protects a company's right to enforce their confidential information in civil court. Apple chose to jump right over all of that, and go straight to trade secret law, which deals with criminal theft. You can be fired or sued for violating your NDA, however, you can go to jail for stealing a trade secret.
You know it is great to assume that anyone who disagrees with you just hasn't read the same source as you. Unfortunately, that factors out the possibility that you have skewed your perception of the source material to support a position that you want to hold. This is one of those cases. The judge says multiple times in his ruling, that he is provisionally accepting Apple's allegation that this is a trade secret, because it is uncontested in the scope of the hearing. He refers to it as an "alleged trade secret" and goes out of his way to note that the defense bet everything on the first amendment issue, without any attempt to address the trade secret issue.
I can put Apple Confidential on an ad I run in the LA Times, that doesn't make it a trade secret. However, if I go into court maintaining that it is a trade secret, and the defense doesn't question its status as a trade secret, then the judge has little choice but to ignore the pink elephant in the middle of the room, and grant my request.
That is how the law works. What the courts found was that for the purpose of this single hearing, Apple presented enough evidence to support the uncontested claim that this was a trade secret, in order to move forward with discovery. Of course, the court also made it very clear that this finding in no way supported the ultimate validity of any claim Apple made. I think that leaves more than a little question as to whether or not Apple's claims of this being a trade secret are true.
If that is the case, then why is there not a single mention of any NDA in any of the findings? No, Apple could not have obtained a sopbnea to get the information they wanted by just claiming an NDA had been broken. Had they claimed that this was just an issue of an NDA being broken, then the burden of proof would have been on them, and they would have had to have found out who broke it themselves.
Apple specifically invoked the trade secrets law, because it gave them a heavier hand to play with. They are trying to claim that this is information that falls into a rarified clas of intellectual property, which gives them special protections beyond that offered by simply having someone sign an NDA.
Oh, I can, and have read the finding. What I seem utterly incapable of, is hacking it into unrecognizable chunks that fit my point while totally removing it from context, just to try to win an argument. For example, while you quote the end of the conclusion, you leave out the opening which puts this in context:
In this case,
accepting for present purposes that Apple's allegations about trade secrets are true, the information divulged falls squarely under the UTSA and Penal Code 499c definitions. As such it is stolen property, just as any physical item, such as a laptop computer containing the same information on its hard drive (or not) would be.
Now maybe you don't know this, but if something is proven to be true, you don't start off with a disclaimer like "accepting for present purposes that Apple's allegations about trade secrets are true." A disclaimer like that specifically calls into question the veracity of the claim, but agrees to accept it for the present curcumstance. More to the point, you leave out the rather straightforward disclaimer at the beginning of the entire document which says:
The Court makes no finding as to the ultimate merits of Apple's claims, or any defenses to those claims. Those issues remain for another day.
Never mind that though! Why don't you just go right ahead and pretend the judge said that Apple was right about it being a trade secret. The judge goes on to note in his finding, that the defense tacitly accepter that the information was a trade secret by not addressing the issue, therefore he was had little choice but to accept that it was for the purposes of this hearing.
Now, maybe you are too busy searching for quotes that support your position to think about how this adds up, so let me do it for you. Typically, when the judge feels the need to quote the litigants arguments in his finding, it is tantamount to him saying "hey, dummy, this is where you messed up!" In fact, the judge does everything in this finding he can to make it clear that he thinks Apple's argument that this is a trade secret is weak. Unfortunately, since it was never contested in this hearing, he had to accept it, without granting any weight to it, thus the opening disclaimer.
Great, but under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act there is absolutely no evidence that this is a trade secret!
Look, you go to work at a company, and they have you sign an NDA saying you won't disclose anything you learn at the company to anyone. You start work, and one day after work you are telling a friend that you love the job, but the two things you hate are that your boss is an idiot and the coffee sucks. He thinks it is funny, so puts it in his blog, and the next thing you know the company wants to know who leaked that they hat there boss, and that the coffee sucks. Now, clearly this has in no way aided the public good, so is it your position that this should be a trade secret, and the blogger should be compelled to provide your name to your employer? I mean, it is a clear-cut case of violating you NDA, and letting internal information get out of the company, so shouldn't you be punished for talking with your friend?
The simple fact is that not everything that happens at a company is covered by trade secret protection. In fact, in most states it is quite difficult to prove that something is a trade secret, and it requires that you take exraordinary measures to protect it. You can't just say "oh, we didn't want that getting out yet, so it is a trade secret." In fact, even the judge in this case expressed doubts as to whether or not this would stand the test to be deemed a trade secret, yet went ahead and granted their request simply because it might be found to be a trade secret at a later date.
It is great and all to talk about how this is a case that deals with trade secrets, not freedom of speech, but I can't help but notice that time and time again all the Apple supporters consistently ignore that the judge they are so fond of quoting specifically said that he doesn't know if this material is actually a trade secret!
A trade secret is not any little piece of information a business decides it doesn't want to get out. Many businesses these days like to put up forums in lieu of giving a customer a phone number to contact, that doesn't make their phone number a trade secret. Many businesses like to keep pay of their employees confidential, that doesn't make your paycheck a trade secret.
A trade secret is an invention, process, or method that is vital to your business, and that you actively protect and to which you actively limit internal access. For example, a formula for some sort of beverage, might be a trade secret, however, if you post the formula in the break room of every bottling plant, then you can no longer expect protection of trade secret status for that formula, because you have failed to maintain secrecy. By the same token, it is HIGHLY unlikely that ANY marketing material (even internal marketing material) could be considered a trade secret. By its very nature, marketing material is practically in and of itself a violation of the very concept of a trade secret. Trade secret law is a subset of IP law that exists to protect highly sensitive information that is critical to the core business of a company. It is not a method by which the owner of a company is suppose to be able to sue someone for letting the public know his favorite color.
What is really at issue has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether or not a company is entitled to protect its trade secrets. If this were a clear trade secret, then there would be no debate. What is at issue here is whether or not a paranoid company can get away with trying to claim that every trivial piece of information generated in the day to day operations of their business, can be claimed as a trade secret any time they choose.
The ramifications of this are huge! It means that any celebrity could successfully sue for any rumor about them acting badly on the set, because how they act on the set is a trade secret. Any movie studio could sue anyone for passing rumors about an in-production movie, because that is a trade secret. Any software company could sue anyone publishing rumors about their development, because that is a trade secret. You are talking about completely standing our current model on its head, and shifting the balance of power to the company with a presumption that it is the reporter who must show some public good, rather than the company which must show some demonstrable harm.
Anyone who thinks that is a trivial change, is someone far too enamored of a single company to think rationally about this issue. There are a plethora of sites and publications (this one included) that would pretty much have to shut their doors if it is decided that a company can arbitrarily use trade secret protections for any information they choose, unless some grater public good can be demonstrated.
Well, of course it varies from state to state, and I'm not sure about California (as the judge himself also noted) but a trade secret is not just any old piece of information a company wishes wouldn't get out. In fact, a trade secert is typically required to be a formula, method, or device, not marketing material or slides. I have worked with a lot of various sensitive corporate information back when I use to produce corporate training material, and there is a huge difference between the steps needed to show that you treat information as confidential, and the diligence required to get the protection of trade secrets laws. You can't just have all your employees sign a blanket NDA, and then claim that every piece of information related to your business is a trade secret.
This is completely about "Apple is great." If Lucasfilm took Ain't it Cool News to court over leaking information about the new Star Wars film, in an effort to find out who leaked the information, it would be a public relations nightmare! Star Wars fans would be incensed at the idea that people could be fired for giving them tidbits about their favorite movie. However, if you cross the cult of Apple, everyone is suddenly more than willing to side with their hero Jobs over anyone who pisses him off. I actually find it more than a little disturbing how self-loathing Apple fans are, that time and time again they will side with their proxy family at Apple over their own self-interest. This is hardly the first time Apple has used friendly Sillicon Valley courts to squash avid Mac fans for being too avid.
This whole "wistleblower" thing is the biggest crock. Apple is a public company, who's marketing material and product roll-out plans are not covered by any traditional interpretation of a trade secret. We aren't talking about someone who leaked procedures for a new method of physical vapor deposition to optimize production of 300mm wafers here, we are talking about someone who leaked internal marketing information. Apple would be extremely hard pressed to show any real damage from this leak, and will be even more hard pressed to defend this information as a trade secret. As such, it is irresponsible for the judge to compel the ISP to provide the email logs to Apple. Traditional legal procedure would demand that Apple demonstrate an actual harm from the leak, or that they prove this was a sensitive trade secret, as well as proving that there was no way this information could possibly have been obtained by anyone who was not under a contractual obligation to keep the information confidential. Instead of practicing due diligence, they decided to short-cut the whole process by saying that the information might be a trade secret, might have done damage, and might have come from someone under contractual obligation, but they really needed to know who leaked it before they could determine that!
There is no doubt that anytime you disclose an individual's private communications, you are doing harm to the individual, companies have no such protection. A company has no legally protected right to confidentiality of its documents and papers. As such, they must rely on contractual agreements to protect their secrecy. That means that in a case like this the individuals legally protected right to privacy must be weighed against the company's right to enforce their contract. I think it is a very bad trade off when we decide that even without any concrete proof of contractual violation, nor any proof of damage to the company, the company's right to protect its contract summarily overrides the individual's right to privacy.
You say this isn't anything new, and in today's pro-corporate America you have a bit of a point, but previous bad decisions don't magically turn new bad decisions into good ones.
I know that it is hard for a lot of people to think clearly about his particular story, because they are so busy thinking differently, but does the entire significance of this ruling escape everyone? This ruling basically says, that unless there is some public good being protected, that a news venue can be compelled to reveal their sources, simply because a company wants them to. Now, perhaps on first glance people are too tied up in this particular example to grasp the ramifications of something like this, so let me point something out.
Every business deal ever done has been covered by some sort of confidentiality agreement. This isn't something that just effects geeks and Apple fan sites. People Magazine, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Ain't it Cool, E! and imdb all cover an industry that pretty much by its very definition will never generate any news that actually constitutes a threat to the public good, and all of those outlets rely heavily on confidential sources that are all guaranteed to be breaking a confidentiality agreement, as there is no industry on earth more secretive and sensitive to leaks than the entertainment industry. Yet by this ruling, they might as well all shut their doors today, because if this ruling stands, any time they want, Time Warner, or Sony, or any other media company can subpoena their sources to find out who leaked the information. You can bet, that as soon as that starts happening, the amount of entertainment news coming out will drop to a trickle.
Now, I'm not saying that would be necessarily be a bad thing for the world, but it would certainly put a large segment of the media out of business. Could everyone please get over their "Apple is great, so anything they do must be great" mentality for a few minutes to think about the floodgates of problems a ruling like this can cause. No, I'm not talking about anything related to the legitimacy of blogs as journalism, I'm talking about the future of any business journalism in an era where the burden is on the reporter and editor to demonstrate some public good before deciding whether or not to publish a story.
The argument, and some case law has now been made that simple curiosity is not a high-enough standard to justify the publication of internal information a company does not want released, without the disclosure of sources. That means that *(theoretically) The Wall Street Journal now needs to decide if there is a demonstrable public good to be served in reporting a story based on confidential sources about a company. Of course, by this ruling, serving the public good now carries some meaning beyond just informing the public. There is now some requirement to inform the public of something 'important.'
Is that really how we want our press to be run? A system where by default companies are assumed to have the right to do everything secretly, unless someone can demonstrate a compelling reason that their plans should be public?
*Mind you, I say theoretically, because functionally I think this really does come down to an issue of the legitimacy of blogs, since I notice that while Apple has sued fan sites several times for outing their future plans, they have yet to sue Ziff Davis, or The Wall Street Journal for doing the same.
If Microsoft gets upset because people are illegally violating their EULA to reverse engineer their OS, or install unsupported OSs on their game console, then Microsoft is a slavering pack of monsters that use the law to bully free-thinking individuals. If Microsoft gets upset because employees leak information about bugs, holes, flaws, and detrimental weaknesses in their biggest money making product, then they are just a bunch of lame hacks trying to use secrecy to cover up their poor coding skills.
By the same token, when courts uphold a major studio's rights to prosecute people for copying and distributing their copyrighted material, then they are clueless dinosaurs who don't understand the topology of the digital media age, and a slave to big media corporate interests.
But if Apple files a punitive suit against some of its loyal fans, because they were irked at someone messing up their product roll-out marketing strategy, it is an important day for IP law, and a victory for all law abiding citizens! Apparently, Think Different really means that there is one way of thinking that is applied to anything Apple does, and a completely different mode of thought applied to the rest of the world.
Personally, I think that if a precedent is truly being set that any publication can be forced to reveal any source who broke an NDA, provided that the material doesn't address a threat to the public welfare, then pretty much the entire tech reporting industry might as well pack up and find new jobs, because companies are quite capable of putting out their own carefully controlled press releases without all the expense of 'reporters' having to copy them down and parrot them back on websites and in magazines.
The simple fact is that pretty much the entire tech press relies on people leaking information, and usually far more sensitive information that some simple marketing slides show to the sales force. This has yet to bring about the total collapse of our system of capitalism, and it is very doubtful that it ever will. However, if companies are given a legal tool to compel any media entity to reveal the source of any story that had to have come from an internal source, then the tech press has just become nothing more than, at best, an outlet for official information, and the occasional post-release review.
Now I know this is all well and good as long as it is just being used so that Steve Jobs can maintain his god complex, but lets see how the people here at/. feel about this ruling the first time someone gets the ax from Microsoft for leaking news about a bug, or specs of the next Xbox, or an internal memo about how they are dealing with the 'linux threat,' using this ruling as the precedent for identifying the source!
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that. The comment I was responding to was one that said that all this sort of work could be replaced by free software like PythonCAD. I was just pointing out that while the person I was responding to seemed to think that drawing 3D vectors was a trivial programming project, there was more that went into it than just drawing things.
CAD, design, and animation software really have very little in common. A lot less than people think. Drawing up the floor plans for a building, designing an airplane, making a shoe, and making special effects for a movie have almost nothing in to do with eachother. If you think that just because they are all done on a computer, then the tools must all be pretty much the same, then you might as well say "why do we need word processors, calculators, spreadsheets, and databases? They can all just be done with a pencil." What sets these apps apart is the interface and workflow, not the core technology that draws to the screen. When you have to set up behaviors on 10,000 objects, and then animate another 500 objects moving through them on fixed motion paths, the features in QCad aren't going to be of much help. By the same token, you aren't going to get much useful stress analysys out of an animation done for a game cutscene in Maya.
Alias had already dropped IRIX support before this. I don't remember if 6.5 or 7.0 were suppose to be the last IRIX version, but there was definitely not going to be a 7.5 or 8.0 for IRIX.
Actually, seeing all the time and money Autodesk has been putting into migrating the smoke/flame/inferno product line off of SGI, and onto Linux, I really don't think it is very realistic to claim they are going to force Maya onto Windows only. When I last talked to Autodesk, they even said they were at least looking at making a Linux version of Combustion, since they had heard so many customer requests, though officially there were no plans yet to offer the product for Linux.
Actually, you couldn't be more wrong about how mergers have shaped Maya up until now. I was a Wavefront, and TDI user, and have been a Maya user since it came out.
The actual story is that Wavefront merged with TDI, and that product of that merger WAS Maya. The release of the program that was to become Maya (which was going to be called Explorer 5 if I remember correctly) had been talked about a lot at Wavefront before the Alias/SGI merger. It was held up for a bit by the Alias/Wavefront/SGI merger, and then was re-branded as Maya, and sold under the Alias/Wavefront logo. In fact, if you look at the modeling tools available in Maya 1.0, they were an almost exact copy of the modeling tools in the last released version of Wavefront (TDI) Explore. The Alias modeling tools were suppose to be available in a separate Advanced Modeling pack, but that never actually came out. However, Maya matched feature for feature everything that had been promised in the joint TDI/Wavefront package, and even had an interface quite reminiscent of TDI's Explore software. In fact, the only notably Alias feature of Maya 1.0 was the shelf, and I'm not even sure that was in there until Maya 1.5 or 2.0
As far as the rest of your comments about Max and Maya go, I think there is something that should be pointed out. Multiple times in all the press material, Autodesk says that they will definitely be keeping all of the Alias products alive, but never once do they say specifically how it will change the Autodesk products offered. Seeing as how Max is very much in need of a total from the ground up rewrite (something Maya just went through in the past 3 releases) I suspect that there is going to be a lot of long discussions at Autodesk about whether or not to fund the rewrite of Max or whether to just let is slowly whither. Maya has been eating away at Max's core market (games) for some time now, largely because Max is currently more expensive than Maya. Also for the past several years Max's main feature enhancements have mainly revolved around better competing with Maya. Why keep pouring money into trying to keep up with an app that is taking your market share, when you own both apps?
I expect that what you will most likely see, is Autodesk fixing the horribly broken Maya CAD import tools, and adding other features (like RPF support), then pushing that as their main animation/visualization program. The Alias team (assuming they stick around) has been doing a much better job of developing features in-house, whereas the Max team has really been relying on third party developers to add functionality in the way of plugins. I think that just about any business would rather have the IP in-house if they can, rather than having to keep buy-up plugins to integrate into the core program over the years. Also, there is very little chance that buying Maya and then killing it would get Autodesk a single customer. For the bulk of the 3D industry, 3DS and Lightwave have been the default software everyone learned when they were getting into 3D. The people who ended up using Maya, have most likely already used Max, and decided they needed something else. If Autodesk kills Maya, they will just be making more sales for XSI and Houdini. If they were willing to use Max, in the first place, they never would have learned and bought Maya. Max is the path of least resistance, and to go a different way required some real effort. People aren't just going to throw up their hands and say "oh well, I guess I'll use Max after all."
You know, this is really getting sad. I know that everyone loves taking pot shots at MS, but I think it especially ironic given the missing context of this story. The only reason anyone even knows about this story, is because when Apple tried to patent some really obvious aspects of an MP3 player, they were told that they couldn't have the patent because Microsoft had beat them to it! Microsoft hasn't sued anyone, or in any way tried to enforce their patents on any company. This is just being floated around because Apple is pissed that someone beat them to patenting work done back before there was even a market for MP3 players, by companies that are long out of business.
No mention of The TAB, which is a Flash-like program actually focused on art and animation, instead of application development.
http://www.the-tab.com/index.htm
I think it is fantastic!
A lot of people responding to this article either must not read most of what they sign, or haven't worked for many companies! All of these "don't sign it, or expect to live with the terms of the contract" posts are simplistic, and childish. Often, there is little choice for an employee. Let me give you an example.
I left one company to go to work at another company. I negotiated the terms of my employment in a number of meetings, and got a letter of intent. I then quit my old job, and moved to a new city to start my new job. I worked a month, and then when the time came to pick up my first paycheck, I got a call from accounting saying I needed to come to the office and sign a few documents before they could release my pay. O go in the office, and low and behold, it is a contract saying that I can't work in any related field for a year after leaving for any reason, as well as a clause saying that any work I do on or off the clock belongs to them, and a clause saying that I can't ever use any skills or techniques I learn or develop there at any other company, and several other things that directly go against the terms agreed to when I took the job!
I immediately schedule a meeting with the owner of the company, and sit down to talk to him. At first I am given the standard "it is just a formality, and we don't actually enforce it" line of crap, but as soon as I even mention the word "lawyer" I am told that if I don't sign it immediately, I will no longer have a job, and my pay will not be released.
So, there I was having just spent quite a bit of money to move to a new city, and having lived off my savings for a month while I waited for my first paycheck, and I am faced with the option of either having to sign a contract that I don't agree with, or with no money in my pocket, in a city I don't know, start looking for a new job after having given someone a month of free work. It is a bit more complicated than "don't sign it, or expect to live with the terms of the contract."
I could tell tons of stories about people I know who had to sign contracts like this after years of working at a company, in order to vest their stock options, or people who had contracts like this presented to them after a management change at a job where they had invested a lot of time and work. The hook is always, that you have put time and work into something, and before you can get paid for what you did, you need to sign one of these bullshit contracts as "a formality." In my case, I ended up having to sign it to get my money, then hire a lawyer to review it and plan a strategy to get me out of it while I looked for new work.
That is where I learned this next bit. In most states, you have inalienable rights that you can't sign away in a contract! In fact, it turns out that almost the entire contract in question was completely unenforceable. Employers have you sign these things because most employees won't take them to court over it, and just get bullied by the company because they think that if they signed the contract, then they are screwed, so why bother paying an attorney.
In the vast majority of states, no contract can prohibit you from perusing your chosen field. If the business you are working for classifies every company in their given market as a competitor, then it is meaningless for them to put in a non-compete clause, because they cannot enforce a contract that forbids you from an entire industry. Now, if they have one or two specific competitors, or clients that they forbid you from working for, then they might well have an enforceable contract. By the same token, in most states no matter what a contract says, no contract can sign away blanket ownership of all works of an individual to their employer. If you can prove that you did not use any resources of your employer's in the creation of said work, then no matter what you signed, they most likely are going to have a very hard time proving that they own said work.
A contract is not a law, it is just a piece of paper with some wo
I love this, in a country where people trade out cars every two years, you are actually shocked and amazed that they would throw away their computers?
Come on, a car these days costs tens of thousands of dollars, has a life span of around 20 years, and the technology hasn't substantively changed in 50 years! Yet, every couple to few years, the average American gets a new one. I don't know why, but I suppose it is because a four year-old car is just icky.
Computers on the other hand, are improving about every six months, are completely obsolete every five years, at the outside, and only cost a few hundred dollars. Why wouldn't people throw them away?
Admittedly, I still have just about every computer part I have bought since about '95 sitting in a bin somewhere, but I hardly ever have a use for all those parts. I also have thrown away one entire computer (sans drives) because it just pissed me off that much, and I have to say it was quite satisfying kicking it all the way to the dumpster!
If you are going to address the problem with disposable consumerism, I think there are much more important and meaningful targets than people swapping out their crappy cheap computers for new crappy cheap computers. Hell, what about the millions of people who tossed perfectly good CRT monitors, just because they wanted a flat panel monitor with a lower resolution, and slower refresh rate, just because they thought it was cool that their monitor was only two inches thick?
Ok, you, and several of the Apple people, have been really big on this whole "as long as they are within their legal rights, then Apple did nothing wrong" logic lately, so let's try turning the table for a second.
What would your reaction be if Wiley got upset about this, and as a result stopped publishing any "For Dummies" books for the Mac? Now, how about if they went further, and removed any reference of the Mac from all of their "Bible" series? In fact, what if all of a sudden in every book store in the land the number one, and number two selling series of technical help books suddenly made no mention of there being any products by Apple on the market?
Would you still be sitting here saying that a company has every right to do whatever it wants, or would you be screaming from the rooftops about how biased and unfair Wiley is being? How about when Apple started losing its mindshare (and thus sales) as being the "computer for the rest of us" due to a lack of learning material? How fair would it seem when the best book you could get for Photoshop, or Dreamweaver, or Flash conspicuously failed to mention any of the differences between the platforms, and only listed keyboard shortcuts for the PC?
The only real "fact" here, is that fairness and rationality aren't enforced rules, but rather best practices. Jobs, through Apple, is being a spoiled little brat, and attempting to punish a company for "crossing him." That is well within his right, but is hardly an admirable, or even respectable action. It is predicated on the, all too common, preconception that he can get away with it, because the company he is punishing is reasonable (unlike him) and won't retaliate in kind. Were Wiley to retaliate in kind, it would hurt Apple a LOT more than it would hurt Wiley. Sure there would be a few Macheads who would refuse to ever buy a Wiley book again, and sure some other publisher would step up their Mac efforts to compensate. However, when someone went to the store to pickup a book on an app, and the salesman invariably recommended either one of the "For Dummies" or "Bible" books, they would be given a clear signal that perhaps they had made a mistake buying a Mac, and would reconsider their next purchase.
Now, Wiley probably is run by responsible adults, so probably will keep on publishing books about Apple products. However, that hardly speaks well for Jobs or Apple, acting like a bunch of spoiled children.
Um... Here is a bit more legalistic definition of prima facie:
You are clearly confusing prima facie with res ipsa loquitur. Prima facie implies no real validity to the claim, but rather just says that upon first glance is reasonable enough to allow the case to go further. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that just as valid a translation of prima facie, would be "shallow." Of course "the Court finds that Apple has made a shallow case of misappropriation..." doesn't really forward you agenda very well, does it?
I am not reading anything between the lines. This is English, not some obscure foreign language that needs to be carefully translated! Every statement of the validity of the claim is bracketed by disclaimers saying that none of this is to be used to evaluate the validity of the claim, but rather just for the sake of argument in this specific instance. That isn't some clever divination of the judges mental process through deconstruction of his childhood or anything, it is what is written on the page in black and white.
By the same token, the judge specifically admonishes the defense council for having nothing to say in either their prepared brief, or in their oral statement. Once again, no subjective slight of hand here, but rather a black and white observation of what is written on the page. The only point where I used any actual supposition whatsoever was in saying that judges usually don't admonish attorneys unless they think they did something wrong. I don't think that is really much of a stretch, since that is true about just about everyone.
No, I have no real problem saying that I'm not really "reading between the lines" here, but rather evaluating the document as a whole, rather than picking and choosing the parts of it that say what I want. You yourself quote "...it cannot and should not be read or interpreted more broadly" and then turn right around and say that it proves that this is actually a trade secret. I would say that goes beyond reading between the lines, and straight into creative reinterpretation to support an already decided point of view.
Well, if all of IP law and trade secret law could be summed up in one sentence, we wouldn't need all these overpriced lawyers, would we?
Look, a trade secret is traditionally something for which you would normally seek a patent but which you do not wish the disclosure of a patent, because it is too sensitive to let out of your company. Product information, specs, packaging design, and internal marketing material typically do not fit this definition. That sort of information getting out might mess up your brilliantly thought out marketing plan, but it doesn't put you business in jeopardy. Furthermore, it really has no value in and of itself, which is another requirement of a trade secret. I assure you that Apple would find it impossible to prove in court that there was anything in those documents that represented any kind of new advance in manufacturing, or design that took away their exclusive position in the market. No one at Dell read the offending articles said "Oh my god, that's it! Now I see how they are actually getting a bigger hard drive in their mp3 player! we have been stuck on that for months, but now we see how it works!"
That sort of information is certainly confidential (if Apple chooses to call it such), and Apple has plenty of civil options to protect the confidentiality of said information. Unfortunately, in a civil proceeding they must first prove who leaked the information, and then prove that it did harm. If they can prove both of those things, then they can seek damages from the person who breached their confidentiality agreement. However, Apple choose to pursue the trade secret route, which deals with this as a criminal theft, and is meant to be applied to HIGHLY sensitive information, that could ruin your business if it got out. Things like chip designs, source code, formulas, and other materials that are VITAL to your (or your competitors) ability to do business. I stress vital, because there is a big difference between vital and convenient. It might make your product easier to market if you control absolutely all information about it, and strategically release it as you see fit, but it is not vital to your business that you do so.
Taking it out of the tech sector for a second, to try and better illustrate what I mean, if a magazine were to get a leak that Ford were working on a zero-emissions car that used a completely new type of powertrain based on a hydrogen fuel cell, and proceeded to show drawings of the car, and a list of features, likely no trade secret law would have been violated, even though obviously someone had broken their NDA. However, if the same magazine ran a detailed article on the inner working of the hydrogen fuel cell, and diagrams that showed how to build one, most likely there would have been a violation of trade secrets law.
One more quick example. If a magazine runs an article on some revolutionary new animation system being used at a company like ILM, complete with screenshots and a complete feature list, once again someone obviously broke an NDA, but their is probably not a breach of trade secrets law. However, if that same magazine then put the source code for that animation system up on their website, or ran snippets of it in the magazine, there would almost certainly have been a breach of trade secrets law.
The problem with this case, is that Apple is intentionally abusing trade secret law to get what it wants, but the other side is so wrapped up in trying to legitimize blogs as journalism, and pursuing first amendment issues, that they aren't even addressing the abuse of trade secret law. This could set a dangerous precedent allowing companies to dramatically widen the definition of what a trade secret is, thus setting up an environment where companies could start pressing criminal charges against their employees for breaking their NDAs on trivial matters.
To put it in perspective, the formula for Coke is a trade secret, whether or not they are thinking about making an 18-pack, or what next years Christmas 12-pack packaging is going to look like isn't. Just because a company wishes to keep something under wraps, that doesn't automatically make it a trade secret. A technical schematic could be a trade secret, but the fact that it is a technical schematic doesn't automatically make it a trade secret. For it to be a trade secret, you must be able to demonstrate both that it is of vital importance that your competitors not have access to the information, and that you have taken extraordinary efforts to keep it secret. In this case, it would be very hard to demonstrate that there was any information contained in the leaked documents that gave any demonstrable edge to Apple's competitors. In fact, there really isn't any demonstrable evidence that there was any damage done at all, except for some bruised egos. The big difference here is that there is plenty of civil IP law that protects a company's right to enforce their confidential information in civil court. Apple chose to jump right over all of that, and go straight to trade secret law, which deals with criminal theft. You can be fired or sued for violating your NDA, however, you can go to jail for stealing a trade secret.
You know it is great to assume that anyone who disagrees with you just hasn't read the same source as you. Unfortunately, that factors out the possibility that you have skewed your perception of the source material to support a position that you want to hold. This is one of those cases. The judge says multiple times in his ruling, that he is provisionally accepting Apple's allegation that this is a trade secret, because it is uncontested in the scope of the hearing. He refers to it as an "alleged trade secret" and goes out of his way to note that the defense bet everything on the first amendment issue, without any attempt to address the trade secret issue.
I can put Apple Confidential on an ad I run in the LA Times, that doesn't make it a trade secret. However, if I go into court maintaining that it is a trade secret, and the defense doesn't question its status as a trade secret, then the judge has little choice but to ignore the pink elephant in the middle of the room, and grant my request.
That is how the law works. What the courts found was that for the purpose of this single hearing, Apple presented enough evidence to support the uncontested claim that this was a trade secret, in order to move forward with discovery. Of course, the court also made it very clear that this finding in no way supported the ultimate validity of any claim Apple made. I think that leaves more than a little question as to whether or not Apple's claims of this being a trade secret are true.
If that is the case, then why is there not a single mention of any NDA in any of the findings? No, Apple could not have obtained a sopbnea to get the information they wanted by just claiming an NDA had been broken. Had they claimed that this was just an issue of an NDA being broken, then the burden of proof would have been on them, and they would have had to have found out who broke it themselves.
Apple specifically invoked the trade secrets law, because it gave them a heavier hand to play with. They are trying to claim that this is information that falls into a rarified clas of intellectual property, which gives them special protections beyond that offered by simply having someone sign an NDA.
Great, but under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act there is absolutely no evidence that this is a trade secret!
Look, you go to work at a company, and they have you sign an NDA saying you won't disclose anything you learn at the company to anyone. You start work, and one day after work you are telling a friend that you love the job, but the two things you hate are that your boss is an idiot and the coffee sucks. He thinks it is funny, so puts it in his blog, and the next thing you know the company wants to know who leaked that they hat there boss, and that the coffee sucks. Now, clearly this has in no way aided the public good, so is it your position that this should be a trade secret, and the blogger should be compelled to provide your name to your employer? I mean, it is a clear-cut case of violating you NDA, and letting internal information get out of the company, so shouldn't you be punished for talking with your friend?
The simple fact is that not everything that happens at a company is covered by trade secret protection. In fact, in most states it is quite difficult to prove that something is a trade secret, and it requires that you take exraordinary measures to protect it. You can't just say "oh, we didn't want that getting out yet, so it is a trade secret." In fact, even the judge in this case expressed doubts as to whether or not this would stand the test to be deemed a trade secret, yet went ahead and granted their request simply because it might be found to be a trade secret at a later date.
It is great and all to talk about how this is a case that deals with trade secrets, not freedom of speech, but I can't help but notice that time and time again all the Apple supporters consistently ignore that the judge they are so fond of quoting specifically said that he doesn't know if this material is actually a trade secret!
A trade secret is not any little piece of information a business decides it doesn't want to get out. Many businesses these days like to put up forums in lieu of giving a customer a phone number to contact, that doesn't make their phone number a trade secret. Many businesses like to keep pay of their employees confidential, that doesn't make your paycheck a trade secret.
A trade secret is an invention, process, or method that is vital to your business, and that you actively protect and to which you actively limit internal access. For example, a formula for some sort of beverage, might be a trade secret, however, if you post the formula in the break room of every bottling plant, then you can no longer expect protection of trade secret status for that formula, because you have failed to maintain secrecy. By the same token, it is HIGHLY unlikely that ANY marketing material (even internal marketing material) could be considered a trade secret. By its very nature, marketing material is practically in and of itself a violation of the very concept of a trade secret. Trade secret law is a subset of IP law that exists to protect highly sensitive information that is critical to the core business of a company. It is not a method by which the owner of a company is suppose to be able to sue someone for letting the public know his favorite color.
What is really at issue has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether or not a company is entitled to protect its trade secrets. If this were a clear trade secret, then there would be no debate. What is at issue here is whether or not a paranoid company can get away with trying to claim that every trivial piece of information generated in the day to day operations of their business, can be claimed as a trade secret any time they choose.
The ramifications of this are huge! It means that any celebrity could successfully sue for any rumor about them acting badly on the set, because how they act on the set is a trade secret. Any movie studio could sue anyone for passing rumors about an in-production movie, because that is a trade secret. Any software company could sue anyone publishing rumors about their development, because that is a trade secret. You are talking about completely standing our current model on its head, and shifting the balance of power to the company with a presumption that it is the reporter who must show some public good, rather than the company which must show some demonstrable harm.
Anyone who thinks that is a trivial change, is someone far too enamored of a single company to think rationally about this issue. There are a plethora of sites and publications (this one included) that would pretty much have to shut their doors if it is decided that a company can arbitrarily use trade secret protections for any information they choose, unless some grater public good can be demonstrated.
Well, of course it varies from state to state, and I'm not sure about California (as the judge himself also noted) but a trade secret is not just any old piece of information a company wishes wouldn't get out. In fact, a trade secert is typically required to be a formula, method, or device, not marketing material or slides. I have worked with a lot of various sensitive corporate information back when I use to produce corporate training material, and there is a huge difference between the steps needed to show that you treat information as confidential, and the diligence required to get the protection of trade secrets laws. You can't just have all your employees sign a blanket NDA, and then claim that every piece of information related to your business is a trade secret.
This is completely about "Apple is great." If Lucasfilm took Ain't it Cool News to court over leaking information about the new Star Wars film, in an effort to find out who leaked the information, it would be a public relations nightmare! Star Wars fans would be incensed at the idea that people could be fired for giving them tidbits about their favorite movie. However, if you cross the cult of Apple, everyone is suddenly more than willing to side with their hero Jobs over anyone who pisses him off. I actually find it more than a little disturbing how self-loathing Apple fans are, that time and time again they will side with their proxy family at Apple over their own self-interest. This is hardly the first time Apple has used friendly Sillicon Valley courts to squash avid Mac fans for being too avid.
This whole "wistleblower" thing is the biggest crock. Apple is a public company, who's marketing material and product roll-out plans are not covered by any traditional interpretation of a trade secret. We aren't talking about someone who leaked procedures for a new method of physical vapor deposition to optimize production of 300mm wafers here, we are talking about someone who leaked internal marketing information. Apple would be extremely hard pressed to show any real damage from this leak, and will be even more hard pressed to defend this information as a trade secret. As such, it is irresponsible for the judge to compel the ISP to provide the email logs to Apple. Traditional legal procedure would demand that Apple demonstrate an actual harm from the leak, or that they prove this was a sensitive trade secret, as well as proving that there was no way this information could possibly have been obtained by anyone who was not under a contractual obligation to keep the information confidential. Instead of practicing due diligence, they decided to short-cut the whole process by saying that the information might be a trade secret, might have done damage, and might have come from someone under contractual obligation, but they really needed to know who leaked it before they could determine that!
There is no doubt that anytime you disclose an individual's private communications, you are doing harm to the individual, companies have no such protection. A company has no legally protected right to confidentiality of its documents and papers. As such, they must rely on contractual agreements to protect their secrecy. That means that in a case like this the individuals legally protected right to privacy must be weighed against the company's right to enforce their contract. I think it is a very bad trade off when we decide that even without any concrete proof of contractual violation, nor any proof of damage to the company, the company's right to protect its contract summarily overrides the individual's right to privacy.
You say this isn't anything new, and in today's pro-corporate America you have a bit of a point, but previous bad decisions don't magically turn new bad decisions into good ones.
I know that it is hard for a lot of people to think clearly about his particular story, because they are so busy thinking differently, but does the entire significance of this ruling escape everyone? This ruling basically says, that unless there is some public good being protected, that a news venue can be compelled to reveal their sources, simply because a company wants them to. Now, perhaps on first glance people are too tied up in this particular example to grasp the ramifications of something like this, so let me point something out.
Every business deal ever done has been covered by some sort of confidentiality agreement. This isn't something that just effects geeks and Apple fan sites. People Magazine, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Ain't it Cool, E! and imdb all cover an industry that pretty much by its very definition will never generate any news that actually constitutes a threat to the public good, and all of those outlets rely heavily on confidential sources that are all guaranteed to be breaking a confidentiality agreement, as there is no industry on earth more secretive and sensitive to leaks than the entertainment industry. Yet by this ruling, they might as well all shut their doors today, because if this ruling stands, any time they want, Time Warner, or Sony, or any other media company can subpoena their sources to find out who leaked the information. You can bet, that as soon as that starts happening, the amount of entertainment news coming out will drop to a trickle.
Now, I'm not saying that would be necessarily be a bad thing for the world, but it would certainly put a large segment of the media out of business. Could everyone please get over their "Apple is great, so anything they do must be great" mentality for a few minutes to think about the floodgates of problems a ruling like this can cause. No, I'm not talking about anything related to the legitimacy of blogs as journalism, I'm talking about the future of any business journalism in an era where the burden is on the reporter and editor to demonstrate some public good before deciding whether or not to publish a story.
The argument, and some case law has now been made that simple curiosity is not a high-enough standard to justify the publication of internal information a company does not want released, without the disclosure of sources. That means that *(theoretically) The Wall Street Journal now needs to decide if there is a demonstrable public good to be served in reporting a story based on confidential sources about a company. Of course, by this ruling, serving the public good now carries some meaning beyond just informing the public. There is now some requirement to inform the public of something 'important.'
Is that really how we want our press to be run? A system where by default companies are assumed to have the right to do everything secretly, unless someone can demonstrate a compelling reason that their plans should be public?
*Mind you, I say theoretically, because functionally I think this really does come down to an issue of the legitimacy of blogs, since I notice that while Apple has sued fan sites several times for outing their future plans, they have yet to sue Ziff Davis, or The Wall Street Journal for doing the same.
I love the power of Apple!
If Microsoft gets upset because people are illegally violating their EULA to reverse engineer their OS, or install unsupported OSs on their game console, then Microsoft is a slavering pack of monsters that use the law to bully free-thinking individuals. If Microsoft gets upset because employees leak information about bugs, holes, flaws, and detrimental weaknesses in their biggest money making product, then they are just a bunch of lame hacks trying to use secrecy to cover up their poor coding skills.
By the same token, when courts uphold a major studio's rights to prosecute people for copying and distributing their copyrighted material, then they are clueless dinosaurs who don't understand the topology of the digital media age, and a slave to big media corporate interests.
But if Apple files a punitive suit against some of its loyal fans, because they were irked at someone messing up their product roll-out marketing strategy, it is an important day for IP law, and a victory for all law abiding citizens! Apparently, Think Different really means that there is one way of thinking that is applied to anything Apple does, and a completely different mode of thought applied to the rest of the world.
Personally, I think that if a precedent is truly being set that any publication can be forced to reveal any source who broke an NDA, provided that the material doesn't address a threat to the public welfare, then pretty much the entire tech reporting industry might as well pack up and find new jobs, because companies are quite capable of putting out their own carefully controlled press releases without all the expense of 'reporters' having to copy them down and parrot them back on websites and in magazines.
The simple fact is that pretty much the entire tech press relies on people leaking information, and usually far more sensitive information that some simple marketing slides show to the sales force. This has yet to bring about the total collapse of our system of capitalism, and it is very doubtful that it ever will. However, if companies are given a legal tool to compel any media entity to reveal the source of any story that had to have come from an internal source, then the tech press has just become nothing more than, at best, an outlet for official information, and the occasional post-release review.
Now I know this is all well and good as long as it is just being used so that Steve Jobs can maintain his god complex, but lets see how the people here at /. feel about this ruling the first time someone gets the ax from Microsoft for leaking news about a bug, or specs of the next Xbox, or an internal memo about how they are dealing with the 'linux threat,' using this ruling as the precedent for identifying the source!