News
Apple loses court bid to unmask sources
A California appeals court has struck down Apple’s bid to identify the sources of leaked product details that appeared on Apple enthusiast websites, ruling that online reporters are protected the same as traditional journalists. “In no relevant respect do they appear to differ from a reporter or editor for a traditional business-oriented periodical who solicits or otherwise comes into possession of confidential internal information about a company,” Justice Conrad Rushing of the 6th District Court of Appeal wrote in a unanimous 69-page ruling. “We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes ‘legitimate journalism,” he wrote. “The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here.”
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1
any clue on what info was leaked?
now that it’s out, i want to see it
Posted by formatc1702 on May 26, 2006 at 9:17 PM (PDT)
2
Thank God someone has finally stood up to Apple and Steve Jobs.
Posted by Talking Madness in Los Angeles on May 26, 2006 at 9:54 PM (PDT)
3
First Amendment 1, Apple 0.
As well as it SHOULD be.
Posted by flatline response on May 27, 2006 at 6:05 AM (PDT)
4
Some good news about Apple at last…
There is little more appalling than the belief of corporations that their interests are in any way more important than, oh yeah, everybody elses. Apple couldn’t police its own employees so they did what most corporations do: ask the government to make it a crime for anybody to thwart them.
Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on May 27, 2006 at 6:09 AM (PDT)
5
What information was leaked?
Posted by ben on May 27, 2006 at 7:57 AM (PDT)
6
pwn3d by teh constitution!
Posted by joe blow on May 27, 2006 at 8:48 AM (PDT)
7
I believe it was the insider information about the Mac mini and iPod shuffle.
Posted by Rene on May 27, 2006 at 2:12 PM (PDT)
8
The less savoury side of Apple. People tend to forget that it’s a huge, secrecy fixated corporation. They should think hard about what this does to their carefully crafted image. Success and profit are vital to any company, but they sometimes take the media manipulation too far.
Posted by drevo_uk in UK on May 28, 2006 at 12:53 AM (PDT)
9
“Success and profit are vital to any company, but they sometimes take the media manipulation too far.”
I agree - there’s a bit of “just rewards” involved in the whole problem. Apple profits handsomely from their model, i.e. “Mum” is the only word you will find officially about their future products (barring the occasional “Intel coming to Macs!” type announcement). This lets them build up an arguably unwarranted sense of anticipation in their fans, keep soon to be discontinued stock selling normally right up until the day it’s obsolete, and keep competitors in the dark.
When it works, it works to their advantage in a way that nobody else has been able to reproduce. However, it’s trivial to wreck this system: just report on what Apple’s up to ahead of time. And since so much of Apple’s profits are artificially inflated by their normal model, of course it hurts their stock value to have their plans solidly confirmed ahead of time, but that’s the risk you take in making some percentage of your profits dependent upon a de facto deception of your own customer base.
Apple wanting to have this incredibly risky business model and expecting government to protect it for them was ridiculous in the extreme.
Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on May 28, 2006 at 5:11 AM (PDT)
10
Think Secrect should be happy.
Posted by Real Reply on May 28, 2006 at 8:18 AM (PDT)