Apple Wins Against Bloggers 672
linuxwrangler writes "Saying that no one has the right to publish information that could have been provided only by someone breaking the law, judge James Kleinberg ruled that online reporters for Apple Insider and PowerPage must reveal their sources. No word yet on an appeal."
Appeal (Score:5, Informative)
No word yet on an appeal.
From the article:
He said the trio would appeal the judge's ruling.
Oi, this is getting bad. I mean, do the submitter read the articles they submit?
Shameless link peddling (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for being such a shameless pimp, but I really think people who are interested in this Apple story would be interested in this article.
(I got the link from MacSlash last weekend.)
Re:Viva La Revolution (Score:5, Informative)
This helps to ensure that the legal system cannot simply apply the letter of the law and steamroll over everyone. It also helps to prevent people from using laws to shield illegal activity.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:3, Informative)
(Yes, I'm being a little sarcastic there.)
Or shall we stay on topic here?
And to directly answer your question, yes, Novak should reveal his source if there is ever any court action that compels him to do so. (Disclaimer: I am not familiar with shield laws on this topic in Novak's jurisdiction or Washington DC.)
And it's not treason. Treason in the US is very specifically defined as only "levying war against the United States or 'in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort,' and requires the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction."
Re:Yeah, its great (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And yet, on the other hand... (Score:4, Informative)
In other words, the papers did NOT break the law, since they fell under what is commonly called a "whistleblower" exemption.
Re:Shameless link peddling (Score:1, Informative)
"[If Ciarelli] reported that Apple was dumping toxic chemicals into the groundwater behind their corporate headquarters, that would clearly be an important story, one which the public would have an obvious right to know. It would also clearly be a trade secret. In that case, the public's right to know trumps company's right to protect its trade secrets.
"But we're not talking about illegal dumping here. We're not talking about blowing the whistle. We're talking about the disclosure of specifications and prices for upcoming products, details that were obtained by convincing Apple employees to break their confidentiality agreements."
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:3, Informative)
1. One would assume that one finding "trade secrets" and the UTSA unconstitutional wasn't all that keen on intellectual property in the first place, and most certainly would dismiss that it has anything to do with real property. This line of argueing is thus only valid if you agree with the conclusion in the first place.
2. Secondly; yes, free speech has always had ramifications. Somebody most certainly broke a non-disclure contract here, and they most certainly are liable by whatever stipulated there. The kicker is however, how does this pertain to third parties in poessesion of the 'illegal information'? A great many people find the prospect that they should be held liable for publishing information gotten legally (from their point of view that is) just because whoever they got it from brok a NDA ridicilous. Not everybody accepts the notion that some information can suddenly be flagged as secret, and that you have to go around pretending not to know it. Signing away your own free speech is one thing, signing away others' is a whole different slew!
3. Moreover, I also believe quitr alot of people would be against the notion that these bloggers have to give up their sources. A potential breach of a NDA should be treated as a contract dispute, and this shouldn't have anything to do with special tradelaws, and shouldn't involve courts/police at all! It ain't the governments job to create special provions for certain kind of contracts just because somebody crybabied themselves to it. This is just artificially plugging the market something it's perfectly able to fix itself (god forbid somebody actually had to try to keep their employees happy!)
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah, its great (Score:2, Informative)
Possibly.
"[...] the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, versions of which have been adopted by about 45 states, including California, prevents third parties from exposing information knowingly obtained from sources bound by confidentiality agreements.
Just because you don't have a relationship with the company doesn't necessarily immunize you, if you publish what you reasonably should have known was a trade secret," said [Andrew Beckerman-Rodau, who runs the intellectual property program at Boston's Suffolk University Law School]. "The First Amendment has been asserted more and more against intellectual property rights, but it's not faring well. Most courts haven't accepted it." (source [washingtonpost.com])
They broke a law? Which one? Any evidence?
The judge didn't rule on any of that today. But assuming they did get their information from someone under a confidentiality agreement at Apple or a contractor, which, while circumstantial, seems overwhelmingly clear, then yes, they may have broken a law. The judge today said that REGARDLESS of whether any law has been broken - which is yet to be decided - the information at issue in this case does NOT constitute information in a clear public interest, and therefore, the web sites/journalists in question are NOT protected by journalist shield laws.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:2, Informative)
Re:-1, Flamebait, Astorturfing, and Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
From the Judge's opinion [eff.net], posted on the EFF's site:
In short, Apple had strong enough evidence that this information wasn't just accidently leaked to convince the court that trade secret laws had been violated and for the subpeonas to go forward.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:2, Informative)
NEW YORK, January 13 (newratings.com) - Apple Computer's (AAPL.NAS) share price appreciated more than 10% in early trade on Thursday, after the company reported its highest-ever quarterly sales and earnings for 1Q FY05.
Apple Computer said in a statement late on Wednesday that its earnings more than quadrupled in the fiscal first quarter this year. The company's net income increased to $295 million or $0.70 per share in 1Q FY05 ended December 25, while sales increased to $3.5 billion, representing 75% y/y growth. Apple Computer's first fiscal quarter results were ahead of the Wall Street forecasts. The company's iPod shipments increased to 4.58 million units in the quarter, from the year-ago figure of 2 million units. The company witnessed robust y/y growth in the shipment volumes of its Macintosh computers as well during the quarter. Apple Computer has projected earnings of $0.40 per share and sales of $2.9 billion for the current quarter ending March this year, which is ahead of the current consensus forecasts. Earlier this week, the company introduced low-priced versions of its popular iPod music player and Mac personal computer, iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:5, Informative)
In short, these reporters were used to do someone's dirty work. They must have known this, but they still protect the person or persons who used them, possibly even to the extent of going to jail.
Here's an example of the difficulty in allowing the reporters to keep secrets. Suppose that I happen to know that a friend of mine is a spy and I tell anyone this fact, then I can go to prison for 10 years. But (by the reporters reasoning) if I tell a journalist, he can publish that information with impunity and doesn't even have to say where he got the information. Doesn't that seem wrong somehow?
In any case, how does it serve the interests of the country to publish the name of an American spy? The idea of shielding journalists is so that they are free to communicate freely and to report on scandals that need to be exposed to public scrutiny. In this case, the sources that the reporters are protecting were not whistleblowers with knowledge of a scandal. Indeed, the sources ARE the scandal. They are not brave tellers of truth, determined to get a dastardly plot out in the public eye - they are nothing but craven scoundrels bent on settling a score. I would have thought that real journalists would hate being used in this fashion. I know I would.
Wouldn't it serve the best interests of the press to expose these people rather than protect them?
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, the problem is that the Valerie Plame story:
a) Does not involve nepotism. Valerie and her husband were both very clear that she had not been involved in any way with his selection, and reliable sources at the CIA confirmed this. Wilson was qualified.
b) Does not involve poor-quality research. Plame and her husband's research on the Niger Yellowcake documents was one of the few shining high points in the events surrounding Dubya's bullheaded rush to war. The two of them confirmed that the documents were faked and that Iraq had not tried to acquire weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Unfortunately, the neo-cons in power decided that the facts were the wrong facts and lied their way to war anyway.
c) Does involve the public interest. Revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent is treason. Plame's identity was a closely-guarded secret and, by revealing it, someone in the White House put a lot of people in direct mortal danger and severely damaged our ability to gain intelligence about the very threat they have been claiming to be fighting. The outing was also not due to concerns about nepotism; rather, it was revenge against Plame and her husband for speaking out against the Cheney/Rove administration.
Re:Compelled testimony is an offense to freedom (Score:2, Informative)
No. What you think you reserve and what is codified in law are two different things. In fact you have to testify even if it incriminates someone other than yourself or you could be held in contempt of court. There are a handful exceptions to this, such as you can't be forced to testify against your spouse. But for the most part your wrong, you don't have that right, you never did, so STFU cus your entire post is crap.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:3, Informative)
Dumbass, not for a CIVIL case they dont. And trade secret *IS* a civil case.
B.
Trade Secrets and You! (Score:5, Informative)
Trade secrets are inventions,(new products) and revisions to existing products, if there are more things that might fall under the definition, they don't really matter in this case so don't flame me for omitting a few. If a company invents something(ipod) or revises a currently shipping company product(new g5 powerbook, new powermacs, etc) they are allowed to issue NDAs to their employees to keep their traps shut about them with good reason. If company x finds out about the new products before Apple in this case is ready to release it, and company x copies product and releases at the same time before patents have been issued, then Apple is screwed and loses revenue because of it.
As you may or may not know, under capitalism companies generally invent and innovate new products so that they themselves can gain the revenue from their research. With no trade secrets or NDAs there is no longer an incentive to do research as a company and capitalism fails.
With that out of the way, the judge was right to back Apple, if he hadn't many other companies would be severely put in a pickle fiscally by employees leaking detailed specs to other companies. Our economy would be in shambles, and you would all be out of jobs. Granted there is a bit of a slippery slope implied there but thats the fundamental logic behind the case.
The fact that people are upset about Apple getting a big boost in this stage of the case is absolutely astonishing to me. Freedom woohoo and all but there are limits to every freedom, press, speech, right to arms, every single one of them. The websites in question and the sources should be punished, for different reasons, the sources for breech of contract and the websites for publishing information they knew to be acquired in an illegal manner.
Re:A refreshing victory for common sense (Score:3, Informative)
You're not. Let me explain a little for you. I just harshed out in another post, so I'll try to keep this more amicable.
If you were involved, even tangentially, in a transaction that was either unlawful (the breaking of a contract, for instance) or illegal (the dissemination of trade secrets, for example), even if you bore no guilt whatsoever, you would still be required to make testimony about the case, to provide evidence as a witness.
The people who published the information aren't necessarily guilty of a crime nor liable for a tort. However, they are witnesses, and as such, can be compelled to reveal their sources. They tried to use a loop hole given journalists who need to protect sources for the socially beneficial purpose of whistle blowing.
The court didn't agree with this, and ordered that they must reveal their sources. The main reason was not whether or not that they are "really journalists", but that even if they are journalists, they weren't entitled to protection under the loophole because the material they published in no way whatsoever could be considered in the public interest. There was no malfeasance or illegal behavior that was being revealed.
I hope that clears things up. You did put your statements in the form of a question, and I've always been a big Jeopardy fan.
Re:-1, Flamebait, Astorturfing, and Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Do you have any idea how serious perjury is? The punishment of perjury is SEVERE, much worse than just refusing to testify and being held in contempt of court.
So what are the chances of not getting caught? Well, you're basically putting your life into the hands of someone you know does not respect agreements or signed contracts.
Oh, and there's no statute of limitations on Perjury. If the truth comes out in ten or twenty years, you can still be prosecuted in court as a criminal. And you're doing this to protect someone in a civil trial? So they won't lose their job?
The main reason not to engage in perjury is because it's wrong to bear false witness. But there are a lot of very serious reasons why it's not smart.
But don't take my word for it. Ask any lawyer about Perjury, the risks involved, the penalties, etc.
Re:Oh, really? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, please. Just because you were not interested in such cases prior to the Apple vs bloggers trial, it doesn't mean such cases did not exist! Check this link [post-gazette.com]. If you don't bother to click on it, here's a brief quote: "Three times this summer, judges have held journalists in contempt of court for refusing to name their anonymous sources (...) Since 1984, a total of 14 journalists have been jailed ? some for only a few hours ? for refusing to comply with court orders demanding that they reveal sources or other information, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press."
I'm looking on this case from across the pond. In Europe, we tend to have specialized law codes for, ummm, basically anything. We have the Press Code, Labor Code, Family Code etc., while you in the USA rather put anything into just civil law of the "someone versus someone" scheme. Anyway, European press codes both guarantee certain privileges to journalists and guarantee that journalists have to obey certain rules of professional ethics. In Europe it's simple: if you break your professional ethics - you're out of protection, buddy. In general, journalist ethics means that you can't break the law just for sake of getting a scoop - you can be protected by the code if you did it in genuine public interest. From European point of view, this ruling was not a surprise, actually the judge said just what we have wrtitten in our law regarding the freedom of press.
Re:I can't help but wonder "If it have been CNN... (Score:3, Informative)