Asteroid ruling leaves huge crater

Some days being a gossip monger isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

A judge on Friday ordered Jason O’Grady’s PowerPage to hang their sources out to dry reveal the sources they obtained NDA-bound trade secrets from, regarding the unreleased and unconfirmed Apple music software, code named Asteroid. Last week, several defendants filed an Anti-SLAPP suit to prevent Apple from proceeding with the suit but the judge instead gave Apple permission to slap back - and hard.

I could ramble on about this, but so many others already have. Check out John Gruber, Charles Cooper, Jeff Jarvis and Mike Langberg for starters.

The Mac Observer is hosting a PDF of the complete rulling if you’d like to read it and weigh in.

Interestingly, TMO reports, “The court decision does not affect legal proceedings against the owner of AppleInsider, Monish Bhatia, and another person who writes under the pseudonym Kasper Jade. The Mac Observer has learned the subpoenas seeking information from Mr. Bhatia and Mr. Jade, were never served and have since expired. It is not known if attorneys for Apple will seek to re-issue those subpoenas.”

There will, of course, be an appeal filed next week so this story will drag on for a while longer. Meanwhile,  Think Secret, AppleInsider and PowerPage are all raking in the big bucks as thousands swarm to their websites to see what all the fuss is about. As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.