Bloggers slice Apple up in court

Stan Beer
Sunday, 28 May 2006 15:28

IT Industry - Strategy

Bloggers and online journalists have triumphed over Apple Computer in court. A three-member judiciary panel ruled that the computer manufacturer could not force an ISP to hand over email records which could divulge the names of sources of bloggers the company claims revealed trade secrets. Apple had sent a subpoena to Nfox.com, the ISP of Macintosh news site PowerPage to get email records which could identify the sources of the bloggers on the site who were being sued. The computer company had also argued that bloggers were not real journalists and therefore should not be afforded the same privileges of journalists from traditional media sources such as print.

Apple had initially won the first round of the battle in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, when a judge granted it the right to subpoena the records. However, the State of California Court of Appeal gave Apple a far less sympathetic hearing last month, with all three judges indicating that they were less than impressed with arguments about bloggers not being journalists.

One of the judges, Judge Franklin Elia, was scathing in his criticism saying that all Apple wanted was "the name of the snitch." Another judge even questioned whether the value of technology in the project that was revealed. The technology in question is an interface box that enables a guitar to be plugged into a computer, codenamed Asteroid.

The three-member panel had 90 days to hand down a judgement but took just over 30 days. The panel found that both online and print journalists are covered by the First Amendment, which enables to them to protect their sources. The judgement also ruled that the subpoena issued to Nfox.com by Apple was invalid.

The ruling against Apple is being hailed by the online journalist community as a landmark decision.