What’s your take on Apple’s Think Secret lawsuit?
Dan Gillmor calls
Apple’s lawsuit a case of corporate misbehavior. He
thinks Apple is trying
to suppress free speech: “I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that Apple’s only legitimate legal beef is with its
employees or contractors who are leaking the information to Think Secret and other rumor sites.”
John Gruber doesn’t think so: “this is not a case of big bad Apple putting
the screws to a little guy.” His take is that Apple is trying to
use scare tactics to prevent future leakages. He also
notes multiple attempts on the part of Apple to warn Think Secret that they
may be treading on thin ice: “If Think Secret wasn’t prepared for this, it’s because they’re foolish, not because they
weren’t fairly warned.”
What’s your take? Is Apple abusing its corporate muscle by going after the little guy, or are they justifiably
protecting their own interests?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PXLated said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I side with the Gruber analysis.
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Cap'n Hector said 4:46PM on 7-05-2005
Apple is serious about not having leaksI agree with Gruber, too.
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Steve Martin said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
The employees of Apple are the ones that signed their confidentiality agreements, not Think Secret. The job of any journalist is to go for the story. Apple should work on policing and punishing the wayward employees responsible for leaking the info.
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Steve said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
The employees of Apple are the ones that signed their confidentiality agreements, not Think Secret. The job of any journalist is to go for the story. Apple should work on policing and punishing the wayward employees responsible for leaking the info.
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Shig said 11:49AM on 7-06-2005
Freedom of the press. It's as simple as that. Apple can do whatever it likes with whoever broke their nondisclosures, but since confidentiality of sources tends to get upheld in court, suing Think Secret is only going to make Apple look like a big corporate bully.
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Brian said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Apple doesn't care whether they win a suit against ThinkSecret, they only want to subpoena the name of their source, whereupon they'll sue the shit out of the leaker.
It's totally a punitive suit intended to protect their trade secrets and to scare off other leakers.
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Justin said 1:55PM on 7-22-2005
I've always hated the whole idea of Apple keeping their products a secret and then squashing those who try to predict what they will be. This is insane. I want to know whats coming out because I use these products to do actual work, not spending my money collecting cool Apple stuff. I want to be able to budget for the future and plan ahead and Apple makes it a point to prevent me from doing this. I love Apple, but hate some of their practices.
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Chris said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I was under the impression that you pretty much _have_ to enforce such things, regardless of whether it's a big fish or a small guppy. Failure to do so sets a precedent that could be used against you in other cases (like say if someone leaked source code or something much more damaging).
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Alderete said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
It's hard to argue that the press have the right to print anything, or even anything that's true. There is obviously a line somewhere, with national secrets on one side, and movie reviews on the other. But where the line is, and if commercial trade secrets are on one side or another, is for the courts.
I'm with Gruber, especially his piece from today. It's pretty clear that the leaks are bad for Apple...
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