07/12/2006, 7:50pm, EDT
Wednesday, July 12th
Apple forgoes appeal, bloggers win
Siding with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with several other traditional publications, the Court of Appeals declared that bloggers and online journalists were entitled to the same Constitutional and state law protections as traditional journalists as well as ruled that Apple could not subpoena information from a journalist's internet service provider (ISP). A separate
The unanimous ruling from a three-panel judge overturned the trial court on all counts, saying that the online journalists, which included the PowerPage and AppleInsider were deserving of protections under both the California Shield Law and The First Amendment as well as federal laws that protected their email carriers.
Apple had nearly 40 days to file an appeal, but recently filed a case management statement officially saying that it did not appeal. The statement noted that the Appeals Court overturned the trial court on the protective order issue and "Apple did not appeal that decision."
A separate civil lawsuit against rumor site ThinkSecret is still pending.
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What do you mean, who initiated the leaking? Are you saying Apple leaked the story to the rumor sites? If so, that's stupid, because they were trying to sue to get their apple contacts, and all that would have came out of this was that apple leaked it themselves.
After that it doesn't matter. If Steve Jobs leaves a 'confidential' memo on his desk, so flunky finds it, reads it, and passes it along, they're still breaking their NDA and stuff.
As for where the product is, perhaps its in the trash heap with so many other products apple has worked on and discarded, due to cost issues, lack of market, funtionally unfeasible or just completley buggy (it is apple hardware after all). There's a lot of stuff Apple works on that doesn't make the light of day.
What really galls me is the title "journalist" is now given to any putz with a blog. But then "real" journalists are little better than that anyway.