Judge Preliminarily Ruled Against Mac Web Sites on Apple Subpoena Appeals

Apple filed a subpoena for the email of a Mac web site O'Grady's PowerPage from their ISP and applied for subpoenas for the Mac web sites O'Grady's PowerPage and AppleInsider in order to discover who passed them information that Apple claims are trade secrets protected by California law. The web sites in question published the information about a product that Apple supposedly has under development. The web sites through their Electronic Freedom Foundation attorneys asked the court to quash Apple's subpoenas but the court has preliminarily stated, according to News.com, that it will let the subpoenas stand. A final ruling is expected next week. More....

Apple's lawyers have argued that the Mac web site writers are not real journalists and are therefore not due the legal protection afforded a journalist's sources under California law. According to News.com, Apple's lawyer argued that "They were simply fencing stolen information by publishing it verbatim." We think this is rather extreme but lawyers frequently take extreme positions in arguing cases. It's always a wonder to us that courts, judges or juries, can make rational decisions when faced with two opposite and "off-the-map" sets of arguments.

It is our hope that the court will affirm or side-step as unnecessary to the case the relatively thorny issue of online journalism being real journalism. [Bill Fox]