Apple Pushes to Unmask Product Leaker

Zack Wells writes "Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters? Apple claims they should not. Its lawyers say in court documents that Web scribes are not 'legitimate members of the press' when they reveal details about forthcoming products that the company would prefer to keep confidential. That argument has drawn stiff opposition from bloggers and traditional journalists. This is related to a case of an Apple news site, PowerPage.org, who leaked information about a FireWire audio interface for GarageBand that has been codenamed 'Asteroid.' The subpoena is on hold during the appeal. In the lawsuit, filed in late 2004, Apple is not suing the Mac news sites directly, but instead has focused on still-unnamed 'John Doe' defendants. The subpoena has been sent to Nfox.com, PowerPage's e-mail provider, which says it will comply if legally permitted."

And in further news...

[dpbsmith]

...the San Jose Quicksilver reports that according to court filings, "Segway" Delmonte Jr. said that an Apple director, former vice president Al Gorithm, told him to leak the information, saying that he had direct authorization from Steve Jobs to do so. Under Apple law, Jobs has the legal right to declassify documents, but Delmonte said this was the only time he recalled in his experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the CEO's authorization that it be disclosed.

Re:"online journalists receive the same rights"

[cabinetsoft]

And no, because you can use dreamweaver you won't become a web developer either.

Of course, everybody knows real web developers use Front Page!

Re:Some things I don't understand.

[carpe_noctem]

There is something more to this that Apple doesn't want us to know. I just can't quite pinpoint what is going on...

"Asteroid" is actually the codename for a much larger, more subversive project from Apple. Using fake headlines to lure in bloggers and subsequently suing them, they will allow them to settle out of court anonymously. But, what they don't say, is that "out of court" actually means "secret death camps", and that apple is planning to unleash a mass extermination of bloggers, purging their vile, smelly presence from the clean, brushed-metal ideal of apple's internet. These brave souls sacrificed their lives to bring us the first bits of information from this insidious plot, and we owe it to ourselves to find out what hidden truths lie beneath this seemingly innocent firewire interface.

Begun, this war of the blogosphere has....

Re:Apple needs to be careful here.

[Hal_Porter]

Dear Steve Jobs,

If you want me to kill this guy I will. I have made a shank out by gnawing the
edge of my iPod nano.

Just issue the fatwa by the usual channels, i.e. pulse position modulated in
the beat of the next song I download from iTunes.

We should defintitely try to silence trolls who portray us users of the One
True OS as insane fanatics.

Hal.