Technology news and Jobs 
Telecommunications Apple v the bloggers: it's all news
Telecommunications Apple v the bloggers: it's all news | Apple v the bloggers: it's all news |
|
| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 29 May 2006 | |
  
Apple's attack on the rights of the bloggers for the protection afforded journalists under California's shield law was on a number of fronts: that they were bloggers and not therefore journalists, that the confidential information on Apple products they posted was not news and that their activities were not legitimate newsgathering and dissemination because they had merely reprinted "verbatim copies" of Apple's internal information while exercising "no editorial oversight at all". Of course Apple would be perfectly happy if every journalist published verbatim every apple press release with no editorial judgement at all. However editorial oversight is as much about selection as it is about addition and elaboration: merely choosing which Apple press releases were newsworthy would be to exercise a degree of editorial oversight. The widely quoted New York Times report of Apple's resounding defeat at the hands of the California Appeals Court in Santa Clara in its case against bloggers who published inside information on their web sites focussed on the fact that the judgement elevated bloggers to the same status as traditional journalists in the eyes of the law. According to the NYT, "In its ruling, the appeals court said online and offline journalists are equally protected under the First Amendment. 'We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news,' the opinion states. 'Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment." However this is to take the quote somewhat out of context. The judgement's opinion was less about refusing to make a distinction between different disseminators of news than about declining to make any distinction between what constitutes news and what does not. This is what the opinion actually stated: "We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes "legitimate journalis[m]." The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish "legitimate" from "illegitimate" news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace." Well said. In other words, news is by definition what a news service (be it print, TV, radio website or whatever publishes) on indeed by a man with a sandwich board predicting that the end of the world is nigh (news does not have to be the truth!). This point does not seem to need any elaboration, but the appeal court judges felt the need to press their point with some comments on the Apple device at the heart of the case, the so-called Asteroid. "While it may be tempting to think of Asteroid as a mere gizmo for nerds, such a device may also be the means by which the next Bob Dylan, Julia Ward Howe, or Chuck D conveys his or her message to the larger world. "Music is of course a form of speech, from the stirring hymns of Charles Wesley to the soaring meditations of John Coltrane. "Who knows what latter day Woody Guthries may be lifted from obscurity by this new technology, in defiance of the considered judgment of recording executives that once might have condemned them to obscurity? "Apple's commitment to such a product could prove to be an important step in democratising the production and publication of music, as other digital technologies have democratised the publication of news and commentary." That of course is all the more reason why Apple would want to keep the lid on it and why it has pursued the offending bloggers with such zeal: to make a sufficient example of them to deter others in the future. This pursuit may not yet be over. The NYT said that Apple had declined to comment on whether it might appeal. |
Tags
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
