Arrogance at Apple

CNet: Apple suit foreshadows coming products. Apple on Tuesday sued the publisher of Mac enthusiast site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, alleging that recent postings on the site contain Apple trade secrets, according to court documents seen by CNET News.com. The suit, filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, Calif., aims to identify who is leaking the information and to get an injunction preventing further release of trade secrets. However, in filing the suit, Apple identifies specific articles that contain trade secrets, indicating that at least parts of those reports are on the mark.

This is disturbing on many grounds. Apple claims (see the end of the story) that it's not trying to suppress free speech. Bull. That's precisely what the company is doing here, well beyond keeping internal secrets.

This reeks of corporate misbehavior. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that Apple's only legitimate legal beef is with its employees or contractors who are leaking the information to Think Secret and other rumor sites.

I'm fairly sure of this: If the party leaking information to Think Secret had sent it, say, to the San Jose Mercury News or New York Times, and had those publications run the news, Apple wouldn't be suing them. Both have deep enough pockets to defend themselves.

I hope the EFF or some other organization will defend Think Secret. I don't know if there's counter-suit potential for interfering with freedom of the press. But I do know that if citizen-based journalism is to have a prayer of making headway, we need to deter, not just counter, moves like Apple's.

If a company wants to control its own employees' activities, including by firing or suing workers who reveal secrets, that's a company's right. When it seeks to put a gag on the people who merely receive the information, that's going way too far.

Comments

[Joshua Porter]

Here's an interesting take over at daringfireball. John Gruber suggests that Apple is leaning on ThinkSecret not to gag them, but only to retrieve the names of the the Apple employees who are leaking information. He hypothesizes that if that occurs, Apple will back off of the issue.

[GrubbStreet Hack]

If Apple wants to know who is leaking "trade secrets," then it should do an internal investigation, hire some detectives or something like that.

Such suits have a chilling effect on journalists. Even if you're employed by a big organization with deep pockets, such suits always have some censoring effect on the news. If not the journalist himself/herself, then the editors who will wonder if they can trust the reporter.

In this case, ThinkSecret is much more vulnerable, as you say. Apple, regardless of what it says, is being vindictive. They're angry and so are shooting the messenger instead of asking the really important question. Why would someone betray us like this? What are we doing wrong?

Never forget that citizens have something much more powerful than any pack of lawyers. We have the power to choose where to buy our products.

If we all boycott iTunes on January 12 -- just one day -- Apple will get the message. Back off!

[Alan Kellogg]

Steve Jobs has long been a control freak. He's been insisting on tight reins on information getting out, and has been making noise regarding Apple rumor sites for years. The fact he's going after a particular site is certain to give Mac addicts the impression the place may actually have valid information.

I hope Apple gets slapped down and learns a moiety of prudence from this.

[Todd Blanchard]

I have to back Apple on this. Intellectual property in the form of trade secrets was stolen from Apple by dishonest people who broke their employment agreement.

Think Secret is guilty of receiving and dealing in stolen property. This isn't free speech. Suppose an employee acquired the recipe for Coca Cola and the New York Times published it. I don't imagine any kind of free speech argument will hold and Coca Cola would definitely sue (and most likely win) the Times for damages.

[Daniel J. Wilson]

Todd --

The problem with your analogy is that Think Secret isn't distributing actual intellectual property, which would be software in this case. They are disseminating information about intellectual property.

For your Coca-Cola analogy to work, Think Secret would have to have posted Apple source code.

[jerry]

How could Apple possibly determine the leaker? It's been 18 months and President Bush still hasn't found the Valerie Plame leaker, and that guy works within 30 feet of George!

[MasonMcD]

Trade secrets are also a form of property for Apple.

Remember how Apple got screwed initially. It wasn't the GUI code, per se that Neville Chamberain... err... John Scully screwed the pooch on with MSFT; it was the "look and feel" of the windowing system. While a particular software implementation can be IP, Apple has also successfully sued people like emachines that just take Apple's ideas and blatantly rip them off. The suit against Think Secret is an attempt to protect trade secrets similarly. Not to keep them secret forever, but during potentially sensitive time periods.

I don't think Apple is being malicious, but acting in a legally mandated fashion. If you don't make the effort to secure your ideas/trade secrets/look and feel aside from patents, you may not be considered to have a legitimate claim to the work you've put into market research, design, development etc.

I think it's a "draw a line in the sand" lawsuit - that may also have the intent to intimidate leakers - rather than one that is actively looking for information from Think Secret.

[steve crandall]

I'm not lawyer either, but was talking to one last night.

He made a few points:

1. This type of information is undoubtedly covered by a NDA. Violation of an NDA is very serious and historically third parties have been invoked to smoke out NDA violators.

2. Intellectual property is treated as property and passing known stolen stuff (source code, business plans and other trade secrets) is considered the same as passing known stolen material by the courts, The critical point here is the site in question actively solicits information that is known to be covered by NDAs.

3. This gets blurry when you consider whistle blowers. The law isn't universal - what if the secrets are wrapped with a crime the company is committing? In that case a whistle blower can be protected for the greater good. Whistle blowing rarely covers new products.

4. This sort of thing constantly happens. There are clearly cases where great damage has been done, but most of the time the damage is minimal. A really smart marketer can even turn these events to their advantage and gain millions in free publicity. Jobs is not clueless.

[Evan]

I don't understand what's so "insane" about Apple defending their intellectual property rights. Their employees sign NDAs, they are legally bound to follow them. They leak info, they get busted, simple as that.

NDAs are common in all kinds of industries and professions, yet somehow leaking that info to a major newspaper is "better" or "safer" than leaking it to a website?

[Daniel]

This is not a troll, but Dan would you apply the same argument to the Valerie Plame case as a justification for Bob Novak not being called to reveal his sources?

[flynn]

Nick Ciarelli's business model is to encourage people to break contracts in order to generate ad revenue for his shady website operations.

I certainly hope the EFF stays away from this case as far as they can. It would be one step away from supporting a spammer in his right of free speech...

[George Hotelling]

This seems to be increasingly common on blogs, Jason Kottke was hit with a suit by Sony for posting audio from Ken Jennings' Jeopardy loss. Without the resources of a news organization, I'm worried about bloggers' ability to report facts, which is a chilling threat to online speech.

[john bosnitch]

Think Secret and other such sites know they are encouraging people to violate legal secrecy contracts. They then use this information, which they solicit over anonymous phone lines and email addresses, to sell ads on their site. That's up to them. If they are violating the law, they will lose in court. If they are not, they will win. If they don't like the heat, they should get into another line of work. As for Apple, why should anyone begrudge them their constitutional right to seek a resolution of greivances through the courts. It seems that depriving them of that right would rank right up there with free speech issues.

If Think Secret just wanted to air the "secrets" at Apple, they could easily do so, completely anonymously at a remotely hosted site that could move randomly around the Web and never be traced back to them. They could enjoy all the free speech that they might want. But that is not, evidently, what they are after... they want to obtain trade secrets and then make money by selling ads on the site where they expose those secrets. This is an entirely different matter. Let the courts decide.

There are plenty of far more serious suppressed issues that could benefit more from free-speech protection than this one.

[AZKMAN]

How do you know this isn't some big publicity stunt being pulled by Steve Jobs himself? Maybe he's been doing this for years behind the scenes to elicit exactly this type of response.

[Dan Gillmor]

It's sad to see so many people taking Apple's side on this. Again, Apple has every right to police its own employees. But taking journalists to court is an attack on free speech, and I'm dismayed that some people don't grasp why.

[Digital Czar]

Dan,it's not sad to see so many siding with Apple. This is about TRADE SECRETS and yes, I'm shouting! You ought to put yourself in the place of an owner of such and imagine how you would feel if you were in a highly competative business and things about your upcoming product were let out. Would you be jumping for joy? (With your current attitued,I suppose you couldn' care less).

This isn't about Think Secret, but they're the target the lawers can reach out and touch. Often,the lawyers shoot with a shotgun and let the court decide later who was hit.

Do you really think Apple has no right to defend it's desire,created with a legally binding NDA,to protect it's intellectual property?

I understand too a journalist's right to protect their sources.That is falling under scrutiny, and I hope it holds up for honesty's sake and to protect journalist's right to protect their sources.

[Frodo]

Well, a tangent, then: do you consider Nick dePlume a journalist? I don't.

[Jeff Kirk]

Trade secrets are not political secrets. They're matters of business. They're protected by state and federal law. If you claim it is arrogant for Apple to protect its trade secrets, then you might as well move on to claim that non-disclosure agreements are chilling freedom of speech as well.

What IS arrogant is for members of the media to assume that everything under the sun is fair game for a public story. What pressing need is there for the public to know about a product that hasn't been released? No one's life or freedom is jeapordized by Apple, or any other company, for that matter, enjoying the freedom to surprise their customers and their competitors.

Of course I enjoy finding out about these things in advance as much as anyone, but that enjoyment doesn't supersede a company's legal right to protect its intellectual property. Nor should it.

[Dan Evil]

BTW, Dan, it's sad to see you on the wrong side in this. Think Secret is deliberately inciting employees to illegal behavior. There's no public good in what they're doing, either -- it's not like whistleblowing. It's not public money being used to develop these products. It's not national security at stake.

[Chidi Onwuka]

Dan, I think it's really sad to see how you seem to buy "the little guy can do no wrong" approach. Your statement that taking journalists to court automatically equates to an attack on free speech needs to be backed up by facts that let us, the readers, know that you actually understand what is going on in this case. It would help if you included some specifics as to what Apple's beef is with Think Secret. Perhaps you could have mentioned that they were none too happy with the amount of detail Think Secret revealed about the said product.
When you say "I'm fairly sure of this: If the party leaking information to Think Secret had sent it, say, to the San Jose Mercury News or New York Times, and had those publications run the news, Apple wouldn't be suing them. Both have deep enough pockets to defend themselves" I'm left wondering how do you know this? Nothing to do with whether or not you are correct, but how do you know? In an opinion piece I'd let it ride, but since you are talking journalism here, please let us have some facts.

As far as I am concerned, a good number of the web's blogger population has yet to understand that opinionated columns are not the same as objective journalism.

[Todd Blanchard]

Dan,

1) Think Secret is guilty of receiving (and attempting to profit from) stolen (intellectual) property.

2) Think Secret isn't remotely journalism. Its a clearinghouse for practitioners of corporate espionage. I like to think that real journalism somehow benefits the greater good. I don't see how working to destroy a carefully oriented marketing campaign serves the greater good.

I'm very pro-journalism. That's not journalism.

[schwarzy]

the pro-apple comments here are irrelevant since they obviously come from ste usual mac-zealots.
Apple should instead *thanks* sites like thinkSecret because they're still generating interest around a dead platform (1.5% in western europe -where i'm writing now-
in the last quarter). BTW, as Dan said, we can easily solve the problem: by stopping buyng Crapple's machine at all.

[Martin]

There's no doubt Apple has a right to enforce its non-disclosure agreement.

There's also little doubt that Think Secret isn't exactly the paragon of journalistic ethics here. None of this invalidates the fact that Apple's actions threatens their freedom of expression to publish the sort of material they do.

This clash of irreconsilable competing interests free expression vs. the right to create and enforce secrecy contracts &mdash is what this sort of case is always about. Just siding with one of the parties in one instance doesn't really get us anywhere in terms of understanding the principles at stake.

The real issue Dan is trying to get at is how the politics of such cases change when one party is a tiny web site rather than The New York Times. Whever the merits of Think Secret, the outcome will affect all small web site publishers. Is Apple taking this action because it's easy, or because it has truly exhausted all other, less "chilling" avenues for finding the leaker?

[jesper]

schwarzy, you are an entertaining person. not very bright and not very knowledgeable but willing to bleat out obediently like sheep. simple, primitive reasoning; pro-apple means usual mac-zealots. anyway thank you for the new year's light entertainment however next time please make an effort to actually say something sensible.

[Stephen Howard-Sarin]

Dan's point about the little guy getting stomped is right on. I worked at MacWEEK for many years and we regularly published the sort of information Think Secret is getting sued over.

We even had an internal rule of thumb: when Apple officially announced a product, we'd publish the details of the successor product that week. We published specs, even benchmarks, and 90% of the time this information came to us from people violating NDAs (including some company execs).

Apple screamed, yelled, initiated internal pogroms and "security awareness campaigns," but they didn't sue the media -- I believe because we were a billion-dollar company with a legal dept. to defend ourselves.

The key point here is that Apple is mis-using the term "trade secret." There are no trade secrets (like the forumla for Coke) involved here. All the information will be made public by Apple on its own, probably next week. Apple is not protecting its trade secrets, its protecting its PR schedule.

Stephen

[John]

If TS or any other site merely published speculation about future Apple products or analysis of public information to speculate about future Apple products then I'd be in complete agreement with you. Since they appear to be publishing information covered by NDAs then this is theft of property and Apple has the right to protect their property. Also, this is not a matter of protecting someone's life or revealing illegal behavior. It is simply a web site satisfying the cravings of the curious. If Apple wants to drop hints about future products Steve can get an interview with any major newspaper any day of the week and do so. What they really want to do is keep their intentions secret from the competition until they release their products. That may or may not be a good strategy but it is legitimate and legal.

[solid]

Call me crazy, but both parties are protected under the First Amendment to pursue their courses of action. Think Secret is part of the journalistic process. It may be shoddy journalism, but it's journalism nonetheless. And they do add value, whether anyone would like to admit. After all, their "scoops" are hecka entertaining, no? If they have done anything illegal, the courts will root this out.

And I don't begrudge Apple to agressively defend their NDAs and intellectual property rights. Whether this lawsuit is the best way to do it, let's let the judge decide. Shall we?

[Randy B]

Dan,
I generally agree with you on most matters, but here I too am taking Apple's side. Intellectual property is intellectual property. Nowhere is there any law or statue that says "The public has a right to know" unless it involves government, and even then we don't know everything.

Whether this is a mastermined plot to generate publicity or the God's-honest truth - it does not matter. Apple has a right to operate in secrecy when it feels it must, and to protect those secrets vigorously.

In the end, Apple answers to its shareholders for its performance - it is their money after all. It also answers to its customers for its products, and those must be released under the best possible circumstances.

[ScottS13]

There's no proof that anyone violated anything yet, only allegations. (Though Apple seems to be doing it's best to indirectly confirm the accuracy of the rumors; and therefore that there HAVE been leaks.)

Over the years, I've signed more than a couple of Apple NDAs - I was a systems engineer providing technical guidance to Apple's education customers. The reason I was given access was so I could "guide" customers in planning their future purchases - without actually telling them anything specific. As in: "At this price, we can't buy all the workstations we'll need next fall." "We're going to throw away all these old monitors." A fine line, to be sure.

The point is, if you read between the lines and talk to enough people, you'd be suprised how much you can learn once you put it all together. WITHOUT anyone actually violating an NDA.

[Dave]

Dan said "But taking journalists to court is an attack on free speech...."

Huh? It's nothing like that at all. It's merely a legal entity exercising it's rights. Remember Dan, before you continue down this road, that no injunction or indictment - much less a verdict - has yet been rendered.

Am I "siding with Apple"? Not in the least. To do that would say I believe Traade Secrets is guilty. Nothing less that that statement means I side with Apple.

Am I one who believes Apple - or Sun or Coke or Kleenex or J&J (Band-Aid) - allowed their day in court? Sure. And so are you, me, and Bill Gates too. Just like I'll "side" with any journalist who maintains their right to withhold source names. Same with Replublicans contesting votes counts in Florida or Democrats doing same in Washington.

Jeez. Since when is speaking in favor of letting the judiciary branch of government do their job somehow "siding with Apple"?

[Jim]

Dave,

Perhaps Apple has a beef with ThinkSecret's rather blatant pitch for stories that is accompanied with an anonymous voicemail number (425-930-4769) or anonymous email form at http://www.thinksecret.com/contact/anonymous.html

This provision for anonymity, is an enticement for breaking NDA's. Apple has a responsibility to protect its intellectual property and by not enforcing its NDAs they would be liable to shareholder action should they lose money due to a lax policy. Damned if they do....

[Alan Kellogg]

You ever notice the louder the screeching, the less important the matter?

[noname]

I think the journalist ethic to protect the identity of a source is problematic if it is taken as an absolute. Take for example a case where an attorney violates client confidentiality and gives information to a reporter. What is the obligation to protect that source? The attorney has an ethical breach without accountability if the reporters obligation to protect the source is absolute. What if an IRS employees uses access to individual records to attack people thru the media. Handing confidential information to a member of the press is certainly a violation of the law and an ethical failure. How much protection should that source be given? If we protect that source in all cases it may benefit free speech and the media but it also undermines privacy and commitments to confidentiality - also important in a free society.

[Mike D.]

I tend to agree with your assessment, however, I wonder how the legal definition of "stolen property" applies to this sort of thing. For instance, if you steal a golf club and you give it to me, I am breaking the law by being in possession of stolen property. Now, if I didn't know if was stolen and a jury believed me, then I probably wouldn't be in any sort of legal trouble. But if it could be proved that I knew the club was stolen, I would most certainly be accountable.

Does the same thing apply to stolen documents? Let's say you steal a diagram of an upcoming flash-based iPod and you give it to me. I obviously know it's stolen so aren't I legally culpable? Furthermore, if I redistribute it on the web, aren't I basically trafficking stolen property?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I assume that is Apple's thinking... and I'm not sure I disagree with them.

Now... to me it might be a totally different thing if I see such documents and then I "interpret" them on the web. For instance, if I post my own analysis of what sort of device this might be and what its features are.

I wonder where the line is...

[alex lim]

I think there is a difference in the act of whistleblowing an illegal or morally wrong action and abusing the position of trust an NDA confers. Whistleblowing alerts the authorities to the act of illegality while disseminating confidential information from a position of trust is in itself illegal because of the NDA signed. It is your word given.

A person breaking faith on an NDA is the same as a journalist disclosing his sources of information, you cannot uphold one while denying the other. At the end, it is a matter of keeping your word. Let your yes be a yes and your no be a no.

The freedom of speech you so value is a delicate instrument. Used wrongly, it is slander. Used correctly, you build up a reputation for truth and gain a position of trust. Tell me it is not so, Journalist Dan Gillmor.

[Jaded]

I completely agree with you Dan.

If someone, by their own accord, violates an NDA or puts the pieces of the puzzle together and submits it to Think Secret, TS is not breaking the law. Typically the info they break is model numbers and brief decriptions. Certainly not enough information for a competitor to develop another product. Especially when you factor in the fact TS publishes the info about 2 weeks before it is released. This isn't IP, these are PR surprises.

Where are the lawsuits against ZDnet, NY Times, the SJ Mecury and the Chronicle for publishing this speculation?

[Chris]

Jaded,

The difference between Apple suing TS vs ZDNet, NY Times and etc. is that TS is the source of the publication and is typically referenced by the reports from those big names. That difference is being the source to leak private information or being a company that is reporting about the leaked private information.

Dan,

Apple is likely just trying to stop the leaks in the most affordable way possible. Getting TS to prove they haven't viloated any laws will require them to give up the names of the people that have and the methods they used to convey Apple's confidential information.

How else would you encourage Apple to solve this problem? You mention they can fire the offending employees--and I suspect that will happen as soon as they find the names of the employees--but how do they know who to fire? Should they polygraph everyone in the company? Should the simply ask with a pretty please? Again, Apple seems to be engaging in a prudent course of action to protect its assets and competitive advantage for its shareholders.

You'll probably grow to appreciate this better as you proceed down the path with your own venture. What would you do if you found TS posting trade secrets about your new company that you fear could jeopardize its possibility to succeed?

[Dan Gillmor]

There are competing interests in this case. Apple's understandable wish to stop leaks is, in my view, more than counterbalanced by the need for a robust press. If Apple gets away with this, it'll be open season on media organizations of all kinds.

[Dave]

There seems to be some confusion here as to what is actually happening. Apple did not file suit for either trade secret or IP violations. They filed a tortious interference suit, alleging a systematic method to entice those under Apple NDA to violate them. The release info of pending product is not a trade secret. I invite those that disagree to cite the appropriate case law where leaking general details of pending product to be a misappropriation of a trade secret. The legal definition of a trade secret is a formula, process, system, tool, etc. which provides a company with a competitive advantage. If it was really an IP matter they could have filed for a DMCA takedown or a TRO to prevent the information from being posted. They didn't, they chose to file a civil complaint because they know that there is no basis for a trade secret or IP theft charge.

In California the State Supreme Court has ruled that speech on the Internet, such as that on forums or in blogs is protected speech and serves a public good. Doesn't matter what one thinks of Ciarelli or his site, it's protected speech under the California Constitution. This reeks of a SLAPP suit as an effort to smoke out the leakers and use ThinkSecret as the anvil for such. This type of litigation by those with deep pockets could have a chilling effect on bloggers or so called grassroots journalism.

[GrubbStreet Hack]

Grassroots journalism must have legal support to defend itself. Everywhere that grassroots journalism has succeeded, it has been supported by volunteers like lawyers, activists, unions, foundations and communities that stand behind a principle, be it in Nigeria against the mighty Shell Oil, in Burma against the Junta, in China against the communist leaders, the former Soviet-controlled countries or in Apartheid South Africa against the white political, economic and military aparatus.

People have died, continue to die, because they are written, published and tried to distribute information. This is more nobel than anything TS will do, but the principle is the same.

Apple's attack on TS is an attack on blog journalism, an attack on the fourth estate, and an insult to a community that arguably are its most likely customers, the free thinking, anti-Microsoft denizens of the Blogosphere.

If this is a publicity ploy, I hope it backfires, because it would be in very bad taste.

[john bosnitch]

I am pleased to see that a number of people are standing together on this issue in saying Apple has a constitutional right to seek redress through the courts. These matters should be settled in the legislative branch established by the people to handle such issues and not through some kind of mob rule of knee-jerk defense for any and every word published under the cover of "journalism". This is a far bigger issue than this Apple-related comment list would suggest.

I am a journalist and covered the war in the former Yugoslavia. There are thousands of people dead in that region because of the biased and completely non-factual war propaganda published by State Department "partners" like the establishment's Washington Post and the New York Times. The false claims by journalists about "genocide" taking place in Kosovo were used as grounds to bomb and kill civilians across Yugoslavia. Hansomely paid government spokesmen posing as journalists earlier did the same thing in Bosnia. Just last week, almost ten years later, Bosnian Muslim researchers admitted that the death tolls there were grossly inflated by Muslim officials and then parroted by "journalists" to engage NATO on what now turns out to have been Osama bin Laden's side of the conflict. (He was issued a Bosnian Muslim passport.)

Journalists should not only be subject to the same courts as the rest of us in trade secret-related issues. They should be standing trial at the Hague for committing the war crime of incitement to make agressive war. The moniker of 'journalist' is now so dirtied by by such abuses that when I hear things like, "journalists confirmed that...", I immediately presume the report to be a lie. Welcome to the information age. This is a massive problem and until there are clear and effective professional criteria, testing, and self-policing guidelines established by and for journalists themselves, this issue will have to fall to the courts.

It has long been a crime for anyone to cry fire in a theatre. Doctors have self-managed professional disciplinary procedures. Engineers have the same. But the "journalists," who today can 'launch more ships' to war (see Iraq) than Helen of Troy, face no internal restraints at all and hide behind freedom of speech when what they are doing is often nothing of the sort. Bring these imposters to justice and save true journalism before it is too late.

There is a far broader issue behind all of this than meets the eye. We in this field need to define who and what a journalist is and what his/her responsibilities are in this information age. We then need to enforce those responsibilities. Until we journalists do that ourselves ... the courts will simply have to do it for us.

Sincerely,

John Bosnitch
Journalist
Tokyo

[john bosnitch]

Correction: In the second sentence immediately above, where I wrote:

"These matters should be settled in the legislative branch established by the people..."

It should read:

"These matters should be settled in the judicial branch established by the people..."

Sorry...

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

Having read Jon Gruber's take on things and seeing his, I don't think Apple is really trying to smash Think Secret. It seems like a careful chess move. Think Secret's fate here is… collateral damage.

I understand where Apple is coming from, but their move is still ruthless and thuggish.

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

Seeing his points, even.

[Phil Jackson]

On Friday (Jan 7 05) I suggested via email to Nick that he set up a Pay Pay payment location for contributions to fight the Apple suit and offered to contribute. Thus far, no response. It is a dicey question and not having legal training I an relutant to comment except to agree that there is a lot of truth to the concept of equity in this filing: it often seems big bucks go after little bucks, which, in Apple's case, often seems like a personal attack by an Apple executive well known for his temper.

[Martin]

Just as Dan hoped would happen, EFF are defending Think Secret.

[Bob Perdriau]

Dan,

You are wrong on this issue. It is not OK for anyone to publish trade secrets or to encourage the revelation of trade secrets. I spent 35 years in Hi Tech in SV. I would hang anybody that revealed a trade secret. The issue has nothing to do with free speech or the rights of reporters. It has everything to do with the right of a company to introduce new products in the manner it deems best.

The bastard should be hung.

[John C. Dvorak]

I am wildly amused by the number of characters siding with Apple on this issue; especially on this particular blog which I would assume attracted free speech junkies. Apparently it doesn’t. Seems to have a lot of Nazis in fact. The news today is already over-controlled by PR and PR spin. It needs no rooting section. This is not a trade secret. This is a marketing ploy. Trade secrets are about processes that are not patented and must REMAIN a secret. To think that a $500 Mac is a trade secret is laughable. Some secret: it was announced!! Hey, I’ve got one for you. Apple will introduce a video iPOD!!! So sue me!

And to the “journalist” in Japan. I really do not get that post at all. Spin was bad in Bosnia and spin is good in Cupertino? Huh? Wha? Guh!

Oh, and the idea of licensing journalists. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think that’s what the Soviets did.

[Gaz]

Quote: To think that a $500 Mac is a trade secret is laughable.

You are joking right? How many of these macs get sold worldwide? How much money is involved?

At the end of the day thinktank had contacts to get information before it was officially released. They used this information to keep mac enthusiasts wordwide ahead of the game (so to speak!). This industry is worth Billions. It wasnt their information to give away so therefore they should be punished accordingly.

Yawn......a tad boring this....all of the corporate conspiracy theorists seem to be loving it though!

[Gaz]

Could this be the mole?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=10976

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up in africa, he have low manterity and my husband´s
relatives are not Christians and I don´t want my family
hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I don´t
want a situation where this money will be used in an
ungodly manner. Hence the reason for taking this bold
decision.

I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going to.
! I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord.
Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the lord will fight my case and I
shall hold my peace. I want your telephone communication in
this regard because of my health because of the presence of
my family relatives around me always .I don´t want any of
my husband family relatives to recieve this money. With God
all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I
shall give you the contact of the Finance/bank. I will also
issue you a letter of authority that will empower you as
the new beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church
to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherd. My
happiness is that I live a life of a worthy Christian.

Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in
spirit and truth. Please always be prayerful all through
your life. Any delay in your reply will give me room in
sourcing for a church or Christian individual for this same
purpose. Plea! se assure me that you will act accordingly as
I stated here.

Remain blessed in the name of the Lord.
Mrs. aisha dawoda LEO

[Gene]

People in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. Apple has stolen numerous ideas and committed copyright infringement that it shouldn't worry about the theft of trade secrets. Most of the secrets are probably not Apple's anyway. Apple has committed its own disreputable acts. First, it abandoned its Apple IIe users in the 1980's, leaving hundreds of thousands of individuals with hardware that was no longer supported with software.

Additionally, Apple allows "Authorized Apple Resellers" to sell hardware to other resellers, knowing it will ultimately end up being sold to an unsuspectng end-user. That end-user gets little or no warranty on the equipment because it was not purchased through an Authorized Apple Reseller. Apple wins on two accounts. They unload large numbers of units because Authorized Apple Resellers are allowed to sell in bulk to other resellers. They also reduce their service obligation by denying warranty service and technical support to those hundreds of thousands of end-users who unwittingly purchase their products through these secondary resellers.

There is no doubt that Apple is driven by profits and not by honesty or customers. It does not surprise me that Apple would commit copyright infringement, knowing that no single individual could possibly have the resources to fight the theft in court.

There's nothing manufactured by Apple that some other company, with a whole lot more integrity, hasn't already manufactured. I personally will not purchase any Apple products and would encourage others not to do so.