p2pnet - rss feed: Apple vs PowerPage, reloaded
p2p news / p2pnet: Are online reporters entitled to the same rights as ‘traditional’ journalists?
Not according to Apple Computer or Steve Jobs but today, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) staff lawyer Kurt Opsahl will in Apple v Does argue that both are wrong.
And is Apple a “hip underdog, a cool alternative?”
Not according to its mean-minded attitude towards online news site PowerPage which ran an item on ‘Q97′ or ‘Asteroid,’ a FireWire audio interface built to let users record audio using any Mac and Apple’s GarageBand music studio application.
As a direct result, at the end of 2004, Apple Computer filed against unidentified people who, it claimed, had leaked information on Apple gear to Apple-friendly sites including AppleInsider and PowerPage.
It also separately subpoenaed Think Secret for allegedly revealing trade secrets.
Mike Langberg wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs warning, "The lawsuits pose an imminent threat to Apple’s most precious asset: the company’s reputation as a hip underdog, a cool alternative to bigger and blander competitors such as Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard," says OS News.
"As part of the suit, Apple has subpoenaed Nfox, the ISP for PowerPage publisher Jason O’Grady, demanding that the ISP turn over the communications and unpublished materials O’Grady obtained while he was gathering information for his articles," says the EFF, going on, "Apple has also been granted permission to issue subpoenas directly to Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) clients PowerPage and AppleInsider for similar information."
A little more than a year ago Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled an online journalist’s ISP can be forced to reveal the identities of confidential sources to Apple, rejecting the EFF’s request for an order to protect the identities of sources for the online news sites AppleInsider and PowerPage.
"Unlike the whistleblower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials, (the Macintosh news sites) are doing nothing more than feeding the public’s insatiable desire for information," Kleinberg wrote at the time, says CNET News.
The, "EFF and co-counsel Thomas Moore III and Richard Wiebe have appealed, asking the appeals court to correct the error and restore the well-settled constitutional protections for a journalist’s confidential information."
Also See:
both are wrong - Apple v Does, April 3, 2006
leaked information - Apple vs Freedom of the Press, March 21, 2005
OS News - Retaliation or extortion?, April 10, 2006
protect the identities - EFF appeals Apple decision, March 22, 2005
CNET News - Apple pushes to unmask product leaker, April 20, 2006
April 21st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Once again, another example of a situation that would not have festered into mountains of litigation if ISPs would simply stop obsessively keeping logs about every single byte that was transported on their networks when no longer needed for trouble shooting or quality assurance purposes. In the US (which has NO EU-style data retention requirements,) ISPs are not required to keep any usage logs beyond what is needed to support correctly billing customers. Certainly content information is not required for billing purposes. With ‘unlimited’ (caveated by “don’t be a pig” terms) access services, almost no log information is necessary for billing.
Large corporations and their high-priced lawyers can issues subpoenas until their laser printers burst into flames, but if the information sought was never saved nor even collected in the first place, it can not be turned over.
Most judges do not take too kindly to plaintiff’s counsel who continues to harass and badger a non-litigant third party after they’ve sworn to the court that the information specified in a subpoena does not exist.
This is a simple solution that would end much of the litigation activity that serves only to harass, intimidate, unmask an anonymous critic, or expand a fishing expedition.
–TurboGeek
April 21st, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Well, it only figures that a website dedicated to negating copyright holder’s rights would side with these soapbox “bloggers”. Apparently, they have little to no respect for property rights either, albeit intellectual property. One day you people are going to have to grow up and realize that in the real world just because you can gain access to something, it doesn’t mean it’s OK to take it and/or pass it along to your friends.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:25 pm
thanks for your comment Mr. Rumsfeld
April 23rd, 2006 at 2:09 pm
I so don’t care about Jason O’Grady or his PowerPluge web site. I also don’t agree, and I hope the court sees, that posting what you know to be a company’s confidential information on the web is not protected by “free speech”. What’s next? Posting my name, address, date of birth, and social security number going to be free speech one day too? Let’s draw the line here in the sand once and for all. Jason can go get a real job for once.