Apple Wins Trade Secrets Legal Dispute(online reporters must give sources)

Apple Wins Trade Secrets Legal Dispute
By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer

Friday, March 11, 2005

(03-11) 12:49 PST San Jose, Calif. (AP) --


A judge on Friday ordered three independent online reporters to divulge confidential sources in a lawsuit brought by Apple Computer Inc., narrowly interpreting who is a journalist and thereby entitled to First Amendment protections.


The reporters allegedly published product descriptions that Apple said employees had leaked in violation of nondisclosure agreements and possibly the U.S. Trade Secrets Act.


The ruling concerned free speech advocates, who insisted that the people who write for Apple enthusiast sites should enjoy the same legal protections as reporters for mainstream publications. Among those are protections afforded under California's "shield" law, which is meant to encourage the publication of information in the public's interest.


Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg disagreed, ruling that no one has the right to publish information that could have been provided only by someone breaking the law.

more....
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/03/11/financial/f122955S64.DTL

Robert Novak

Gannon/Guckert

Jay

Bev Harris (and the Diebold memos)

Robert Novak

Boycot Apple

the buzz is all you have. why kill that?

I love Apple products, I also use WINTEL as well but prefer Mac. In any case they should be proud they have such a devoted fan base. That kind of devotion is hard to create and would be a disaster for them to lose. I have read most of the so called 'secrets' , they need to calm down.


I do noy see many or if any Dell fan sites or Gateway sites and not that many Microsoft 'Fan Sites'.

this practise of going after the employees is really getting out
of hand. I've seen contracts for "nothing" that basically
put ALL of the liability of a company onto the employee/contractor.

Spare me, they have been using cold war spy tactics to do industrial
spying for major corporations and any serious "leak" is just not happening from these minor incidents.

To me, this is just another attack on journalists as well as
yet another loss on the affront to put corporate liability onto the backs of it's workers.

to have a chance to get out of Little Brother's clutches. Little Brother is the corporate globalized empire that manipulates governments at all levels.

Operation Mockingbird payola prevents too much from coming out at the top while lack of whistleblower protections prevents anything coming up from the bottom.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I really think Apple is on a losing streak, as well as M$, and they are doing the profiteer's thing...protecting profits.

I work on a network with both Apple and M$. Apple is not user friendly. Apple is prestigeous (based on a history not current practice...that belongs to Linux now). M$ is readily available and lots of people in our neighborhoods and places of business know how to fix them when they break (which is often). But neither of them really offer a better way to communicate, mine data or manipulate information.

That's my experience.

So, I think this action is perfectly appropriate. They need to protect the remains of their corporate customers, at the expense of their fan base. The fans just don't know it yet.

John

I do not agree with Apple going after people who are nothing more than devoted fans of their products much like Harley riders are to their bikes.

Apple should embrace and thankful that they have a cult following.

I used to be WINTEL user till 2000 when I bought my first iMac just to try them out. I started to get hooked especially after OS X really went mainstream.

I am on my third iMac now.

iMac G3 450 Mhz (Sage)
iMac G4 (15 Inch)
iMac G5 (20 inch)

I know people bash Apple but hey if you don't like them don't buy them and stick with WINTEL or Linux.

It might be just fine for you. But when you put it in a work situation with dozens of other computers, especially in a mixed OS workplace, you get a mess.

People expect me to be an expert on both OSs (actually, until recently, all six operating systems). They want me to work on Mac OSX, OS9, pre-OS9. They want me to work on NT, Win98, Win2000 and and XP. Can't do it. I'm getting rid of the Macs (most of the people just inherited them anyway, never told me they didn't want them) except for the layout person (she's a die hard and the expensive software was previously purchased for Mac anyway). I'm retrograding the Win2000 and XP to Win98 because we can't afford to upgrade all the computers to handle the newer OSs and it is just too expensive to provide IT to so many different systems. It would be nice if they could afford the 10k to 20k to upgrad everything to 2+gbyte processors but its not going to happen anytime too soon. This place is a non-profit experiencing budget cuts.

Rant done.

See Bartnicki v. Vopper where the SC held that media defendants could not be held liable for publishing information of public concern that was obtained unlawfully by a source where the media were blameless in the illegal interception.

More at http://www.medialawprofessor.com/Cases/Bartnicki%20v%20Vopper%20USSC.pdf

I hope it sticks in his throat on the way down.

Redstone

and i am a HUGE fan of apple but this is WRONG, sadly though if it wasn't them it'd be someone else.

what if we all became C O R P O R A T I O N S could we fight back and WIN then :shrug:

peace