Bad Apple

It's bully-ish...Na, just good business And if you were in Apple's shoes, you'd probably be doing the same. :-)

Al says: "This lawsuit in no way engenders a curtailing of freedom of speech or freedom of the press." Except Apple asked for the sites involved to yank the story. Then they take the sites to court. That's Apple's big money lean on little ole internet sites, and effectively establishes a nasty precedent that sort of curtails the practicality for a small site to speak freely about info it discovers. I know Apple has a right to protect their interests, and closely at that, but this leaking information is their internal problem, and instead of policing it internally, they are making moves against smaller business entities. It's bully-ish, imho.

At the same time, shouldn't Apple as an entity be allowed to seek out the individual that leaked sensitive internal information? I mean, the odds are it's an employee or someone else who's signed a non-disclosure, and that means they broke the law by spilling that information. More than that, it means that someone Apple trusted had betrayed them. All they want from ThinkSecret is the name of the person who broke with their trust. This lawsuit in no way engenders a curtailing of freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Although we all like to think of Apple as the David to Wintel's Goliath, they as a company are going nowhere without common business sense: Apple in particular, being a) highly innovative and b) the "little guy" in an ugly market, need to keep their secrets to themselves. The notion of protection for sources is flawed in several ways [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66630,00.html] - although I'd just love to imagine Apple as a happy, friendly company that would let it lie and hope everyone's learnt their lesson, I'd rather they had the real-world gumption to act in the best interests of their shareholders and customers. It's an unfortunate situation, but somebody, somewhere did something wrong.

Dave, that's exactly the plain and simple point: the writers never had a contract with Apple that they have violated, so suing these writers is a step beyond what is required to get at the person who leaked the info.

I don't know where reporters think they derive this protection from revealing their sources when compelled by a warrant. There is no law supporting this, nothing in the US Constitution that provides for it, and there is solid California law on Apple's side to force the disclosure, since the leakers are probably in violation of California law. Rather than thinking they are some kind of *special* citizen who are not obliged to comply with court orders, reporters (or Bloggers) need to figure out where in the law they think they find this special protection. Later, Mike

Y'know I'm game for free speech 'n all that too... but someone broke a contract. Maybe the writers didn't, but someone who LEAKED the information did. Plain and simple.

The rumor sites are/were asking for confidential information protected by a non-disclosure agreement. That is why they lost it has nothing to do with them being journalists or not being journalists. They spread Apple's confidential information. Apple is trying to protect their information and find out who leaked it to the rumor sites. Plain and simple. Cut and dried.

That's a little bit of an extreme position, isn't it? I mean, in cases where sensitive information has been leaked to the press, it's not uncommon to see judges order reporters to name their sources. It's not completely unheard of. I don't think the court's decision in any way casts bloggers aside as second-class journalists. Just my $0.02.