Apple Loses This Round In Blogger Case 95
smart2000 writes "A decision has been handed down in O'Grady, et al. v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, the case commonly referred to as 'Apple vs Bloggers', in previous Slashdot posts. While like any court case it is complex, the short of it is that O'Grady won this round." From the article: "Apple has failed to demonstrate that it cannot identify the sources of the challenged information by means other than compelling petitioners to disclose unpublished information. This fact weighs heavily against disclosure, and on this record is dispositive."
dispositive? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
Re:dispositive? (Score:3)
Re:dispositive? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dispositive? Being dispositive is not entirely (Score:3, Funny)
Re:dispositive? (Score:4, Informative)
"Dispositive" isn't from "dis-positive". It's from the same root as "disposition", "dispose", etc. What they're saying is that they don't need to send this case back to the lower court for a retrial or anything like that -- they have enough evidence to make a final decision about the case.
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
Re:dispositive? (Score:2, Insightful)
What we really need is to get the legislatures to write law in clear, boolean logic that anybody can follow and always come up with the same answer...
While legal loopholes most definitely get abused, having all laws be "absolute, black & white, this is the way it is" has a lot of potential to really break down in situations where a little bit of common sense can save the day.
That said, writing the laws more clearly is not a bad thing... just making it a strict logical construct such as Modus Ponens
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
I'm not sure I believe in the existance of "common sense" anymore- and thus would rather have society run more like an operating system. Preferably one where there is a bug appeal process, but still at least deterministic instead of indeterministic.
That said, writing the law
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
I'm not sure I believe in the existance of "common sense" anymore- and thus would rather have society run more like an operating system. Preferably one where there is a bug appeal process, but still at least deterministic instead of indeterministic.
heheheh... hard to argue with your statement about common sense in general, but I've seen a fair amount of common sense coming from judges. Maybe nobody else in the entire governmental process, but I have seen (as recently as this week) judges that can and do
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
Keep in mind that laws are written by a group of people who have throughout history proven to be among the most corrupt and corruptable people in society. They are currently elected to represent 50.1% of the people who actually bother to vote at all. The selection process by which they are placed on the ballot is far less than transparent, and subject to the whims of the power structures of two large and en
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
That logical construct is going to be pretty strictly limited to imaginary societies, insofar as it's not actually a modus ponens argument - "if A, then B. B, therefore A" is in fact the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Modus ponens takes the form "If A, then B. A, therefore, B."
Just FYI before you actually submit your bill in committee :^)
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
That logical construct is going to be pretty strictly limited to imaginary societies, insofar as it's not actually a modus ponens argument - "if A, then B. B, therefore A" is in fact the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Modus ponens takes the form "If A, then B. A, therefore, B."
Oh, hell... you're right. I had meant to type "If A, then B. A, therefore B" but I'm going to blame my typo on the beautiful weather and the fact that I was inside, at work, and the air conditioning was down.
That's my stor
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly, many of the lawyers I know are engineers. I can see where almost anybody could end up a bit twisted from trying to snigger behind their own back... :-)
Experience with programming languages, design specification languages, etc., would tend to indicate that even
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
So eliminate the human experience entirely- let the machines read the law, and let them give us the answer. I just want the law to become deterministic- the same answer out f
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Adversarial games are not worth playing. If you need to be adversarial, you're doing something seriously wrong with your life.
Re:dispositive? (Score:1, Interesting)
Amazing how those sentences are so physically close together, and yet one has to make an enormous leap to get from one to the other.
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
Not that enourmous- if you have to fight, then you've failed at the type of cooperation all parents try to teach their kids by age 3.
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Life is an adversarial game. It's a zero-sum competition, which means we are all adversaries. The fact that we form alliances in order to better compete with other alliances doesn't change the fact that we are still engaged in an adversarial game.
Re:dispositive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
Shall we play a game?
How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Wouldn't you perfer a nice game of chess?
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
You mean 42 isn't good enough for you?!?!
B.
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
let F(C) be a function mapping from a set of conditions to a verdict.
F(C) = Guilty.
See, there you go. And it's really easy to optimize the implementation!
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
Re:dispositive? (Score:2)
No, it's like... (Score:2)
Dispositive, as in, "part of the case can now be disposed of."
Re:dispositive? (Score:1)
Cool! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cool! (Score:1)
I always figured either they got to him or it was Jobs himself, possibly with technical assistance.
Re:Cool! (Score:1)
You could be right. He was pretty darn sharp though. Was he ever wrong about anything? The rumor sites are wrong all the time. And you'd think a nobody would want to "reappear" once in a while to get whatever thrill he was getting in the first place.
I'm not betting that it was Jobs, though.
Re:Cool! (Score:2)
This particular post is the one I'm talking about.
Re:Cool! (Score:2)
Re:Cool! (Score:2)
Re:I told you! (Score:1)
Dead Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
BZZZT!
Quote from the ruling, via Wired [wired.com]:
Re:Dead Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dead Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL, but my lay guess: If you publish it as a journalist, you might be protected under the shield law from revealing that you are you are your own source... but you wouldn't be protected from having smuggled or stolen the document originally. Presumably, it wouldn't be hard to connect you as y
Re:Dead Wrong (Score:2)
Either way, as the smuggler, you are not a journalist, merely a source.
Re:Dead Wrong (Score:1)
Furthermore, you would know if you had signed a non-disclosure agreement and so would they. You'd be nuts to published information in such a circumstance.
Ralph Wiggum (Score:3, Funny)
--
This is a joke. I am joking. You have been joked with.
IANAL - so I wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lay speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
My educated lay guess: First, the ruling is based in part on the California Constitution Journalist Shield, so in CA they are protected as journalists. Other jurisdictions with shield laws/amendments would consider the ruling advisory, not binding, but would probably be influenced by its arguements. In areas without specific shield laws it would again be advisory, and with more limited use due to the more limited protection of the First Amendment alone; I suppose it might give a basis for arguing against prior restraint in publication for a blog. Of course, that would imply someone would come to try and get a court to order prior restraint on a blog, an idea which would probably make most judge judges call for the Advil.
Re:IANAL - so I wonder.... (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of people have tried to make this case about whether bloggers are journalists or not, but the judges have always sidestepped that. The first ruling, when the defendants tried to block the case under California's shield laws, was rejected on the grounds that revealing the existance of the Mac Mini and an audio break-out box wasn't whistleblowing, since they weren't reporting on a health risk coverup or bribery or the like, and that these items were trade secrets. The rulings since then have all been th
Re:IANAL - so I wonder.... (Score:2)
(Although I notice that since this thing started, he started using blog-like publishing software. http://www.powerpage.org/ [powerpage.org])
Can someone translate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:4, Informative)
shield law n. A law that protects journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources of information. - Answers.com
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:3, Informative)
Essentially, the sum total results of this decision were that someone acting in a journalistic capacity qualifies as a journalist, without further refining the definition t
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
But isn't that exactly how shield laws should work? Is a blogger a journalist? If they're gathering or distributing news. Is a NY Times writer a journalist? If they're gathering or distributing news. Why should a reporter for the mainstream media automatically get subpoena immunity in discovery via a s
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Yes. They should. Anyone serving in a journalistic capacity should be treated as such. My point was that a case holding that people engaging in journalism via blogs are equivalent to those engaging in journalism for online newspapers, unpaid college newspapers, unpaid college online newspapers, etc. was inevitable, and the decision on that point was similarly inevitable. Thus, that aspect of the ruling was a complete eye roll and a yawn.
Is a blogg
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Um, what?
They most certainly DO qualify, as their target audience is much more interested in the goings-on at last night's party than in the shooting at the 7-eleven. They are journalists.
If the precedent could be set that they weren't, the gossip columns in nearly every major newspaper could be declared "not journalism" which would be very dangerous to a free society.
Likewise, geeks writing about what they did a
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Let's not confuse the issue. The first amendment protects a lot of things. We aren't talking about the first amendment. We are talking about shield laws. Shield laws are designed to protect journalists, period. They are not designed to protect gossip columnists. They are not designed to protect every crazy person who decides to write lies about someone in a blog. And so on.
Gossip is not journalism. Editorializing is not journalism. Journalism is defined as reporting of the news with the intent to
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:1)
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:1)
The thing is, when the court applied the journalists' shield law to bloggers, they implicitly accepted that bloggers were "legitimate" journalists. The court did precisely what they said they
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the court said that they didn't want to rule on what qualifies a person as a "journalist" but would rather focus on the activity. That's a quite sane and reasonable approach.
I'm currently in the midst of a case where the city of Chicago is aggressively pursuing a subpoena of a writer I work with for our online reporting on police misconduct in conjuction with a federal civil rights lawsuit (see The View From The Ground [viewfromtheground.com]). One of the questions in these cases always centers on whether or not the writer is "really" a journalist. This court sets a useful precedent in arguing that the spirit of shield laws is intended to protect the activity of making and distributing "news" and not "journalists" per se. Of course, there's no federal shield law, so our situation is different.
Following the court's logic in this case, you have to wonder how much "journalism" (as in material that appears in newspapers, magazines, etc) is protected by shield laws.
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
I doubt a judge would make the mistake of informing the public that journalists are no better or worse than the average joe. There's an imaginary line between self-righteous idiots who re-write associated press articles for a living and a humble blogger who does the same thing for free.
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Actually, check out the decision [ca.gov]:
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:2)
Agreed. The lawsuit that we reported on (an alleged series of incidents of grace police misconduct) is actually a federal civil rights suit. But, even though a California court doesn't set jurisprudential precedent at the federal level, certainly such cases do have an impact on the way judges think about these issues.
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:1)
Re:Can someone translate? (Score:1, Informative)
Apple Computers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple Computers? (Score:2)
hell, who can blame you, you'd have to be a "moron in a hurry" not to ; )
Re:Apple Computers? (Score:2)
Darn that EFF, it just keeps winning (Score:2)
A weak victory (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I missing something?
Re:A weak victory (Score:3, Informative)
Am I missing something?
I don't think you're missing anything, but I also don't think that makes the victory weak. First, they didn't say that Apple would necessarily have won if this was their only way of determining the source, only that they couldn't
For the battle, or the war? (Score:2)
That the court ruled that Apple has to meet as high a standard to extract a source from a news-and-rumors blogger as from (for example) a LA Times reporter.
Admittedly, that's not very high, it's California, and it's not even the state's highest court... but it's enough to leave Apple sucking Lemons, sets a precedent that will be at least considered in other US courts, and gives bloggers a little more respect than they had yesterday.
In Cupertino, war was beginning.... (Score:5, Funny)
SteveJobs: What happen ?
AppleDrone1: Somebody set up us the bomb.
AppleDrone2: We get signal.
SteveJobs: What !
AppleDrone2: Main screen turn on.
SteveJobs: It's you !!
O'Grady: How are you gentlemen !!
O'Grady: All your secret are belong to us.
O'Grady: You are on the way to destruction.
SteveJobs: What you say !!
O'Grady: You have no chance to survive make your time.
O'Grady: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
AppleDrone2: Steve !! *
SteveJobs: Take off every 'Mac' !!
SteveJobs: You know what you doing.
SteveJobs: Move 'Mac'.
SteveJobs: For great justice.
Re:In Cupertino, war was beginning.... (Score:2)
Ack! I misread this on my first headline parse... (Score:1, Offtopic)
*blinks*
Very interesting (Score:5, Informative)
"The publication here bears little resemblance to that in Bunner, which disclosed a sort of meta-secret, the whole purpose of which was to protect the plaintiff's members' products from unauthorized distribution. Here, no proprietary technology was exposed or compromised. There is no suggestion that anything in petitioners' articles could help anyone to build a product competing with Asteroid. Indeed there is no indication that Asteroid embodied any new technology that could be compromised. Apple's own slide stack, as disclosed in sealed declarations which we have examined, included a table comparing Asteroid to existing, competing products; there is no suggestion that it embodies any particular technical innovation, except perhaps in the fact that it would integrate closely with Apple's own home recording software--a feature reflecting less a technical advance than a prerogative of one who markets both hardware and software.
The newsworthiness of petitioners' articles thus resided not in any technical disclosures about the product but in the fact that Apple was planning to release such a product, thereby moving into the market for home recording hardware.
[..]
Publishing a computer manufacturer's proprietary code may thus be compared to publishing a miller's secret recipe for a breakfast cereal. What occurred here was more like publicizing a secret plan to release a new cereal. Such a secret plan may possess the legal attributes of a trade secret; that is a question we are not here required to decide. But it is of a different order than a secret recipe for a product. And more to the point, the fact of its impending release carries a legitimate interest to the public that a recipe is unlikely to possess."
Is it the method that matters? (Score:2, Interesting)
If I sneak into Apple and take pictures, documnet copies etc and post them online I am not protected.
But if I am told or given those documents, pictures, etc. by another person (third party) I am protected. Is this true or am I missing something????
Re:Is it the method that matters? (Score:2)
IANAL, but... you would also have to be revealing them as part of a produced news periodical, although a news blog may qualify; and it cannot be a criminal case -- trade secret disclosures are civil cases. If you recieved a stolen Apple prototype, and took pictures of it yourself for your news publication, they would have a better chance at a subpoena for your
Re:Is it the method that matters? (Score:2)
OT? Merkey article whitewashed on wikipedia (Score:2)
If the story was changed in exchange for money, then big money is still deciding what gets published, and what doesn't.
I applaud the court (Score:2)
Re:I applaud the court (Score:2)
I doubt mentioning a product that's about to come out is considered a "trade secret." There were many flaws in Apple's argument, the judge went after something with less impact on the precedence.
Bullshit (Score:2)
I hate companies bullying people around as much as anyone, but "for the sake of public good" is a complete self-serving bullshit argument.
If the guy had leaked info about Apple knowingly selling faulty products, for example, that would be justifiably defended by the courts as "for the public good". But this was just "Hey d00ds! I have cool secret info! I signed a document
Very little to see, here. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is really just an example of the adversarial legal system in action. Both sides state their ideas in the strongest terms they possibly can, then the other side gets a chance to chip away as much it can.
In the previous round, the bloggers floated the idea that anyone who puts information on the internet is a journalist, and that anyone who posts protected information should receive the same legal protection as a whistleblower. The court didn't buy that, nor should anyone have expected it to. But that's where the defense started, because it would have been the simplest, strongest win they could get. All they really lost was the right to claim blanket immunity from prosectution for anyone, anywhere, under pretty much any circumstances.
Now it's Apple's turn. Apple floated the idea that it should get a free pass for discovery since the information in question was vastly important, and that the bloggers had no possible interest in publishing it. The court didn't buy that, either. Had the bloggers posted the product's schematics, or a discussion of some new, patentable idea that Apple had been working on, the decision probably would have gone the other way.
So as things stand now, the bloggers can't make the case go away on the grounds of blanket immunity, and Apple can't ask the court to fast-track its subpoenas because of the massive-and-ongoing damage it received. Neither of those was really a viable claim in the first place, but that's how the game is played.
The courts still have to rule on whether Apple has done sufficient work trying to find the leak by other means, and the bloggers still have to face questions about whether they knew the information they posted was confidential, and put it online anyway.
And NONE of this has anything to do with the question of "whether bloggers are journalists."
I'm all for freedom of the press but.... (Score:2)
If a case does not inv