Comments on: Apple suit tests First Amendment

Lawsuit against Web site that published details of forthcoming Mac products raises touchy free-speech questions, media experts say.
A new iMac for under $500?

[volterwd]

freedom of speech?

*** does this have to do with freedom of speech. freedom of speech to me has nothing to do with divulging company secrets

If all Corps nice to Apple Computer, Trade secret...

If all Corps are being nice to Apple Computer, Trade secret won't
be issued at the Apple Computer. Apple Computer surely will
share all of its trade secrets with corporations and developers.
Unfortunately, as matter of fact, they ALWAYS try to sell new
innovations from Apple. If they successfully steal Apple's
secrets, Apple's product would not be in the market anywhere. I
support Apple's decision to protect its trade secret against
corporations and developers.

Cool?

[frankz00]

My Bet: Apple drops the suit

My bet is that this lawsuit is just a diversion to drive up speculation about this 'headless' PC. Apple is going to drop the suit after Steve Jobs makes his announcements. None of which will have anything to do with this non-existent 'headless' PC.

Give me a break!

What would you think of the guy who comes out of the early
showing of "Psycho" and announces to those standing in line to
see the late showing, "Hey, everybody, Janet Leigh gets killed in
the shower and Norman Bates is his own Mom. Enjoy!"

Freedom of speech? Maybe, but it's the ******* thing to do.

What ThinkSecret divulged is what everyone is waiting for
tomorrow to hear. If Apple were using slaves in third-world
countries to assemble Macs or were misappropriating corporate
funds to crack ******, that's important for us to know and even
if it meant violating some secrecy rules. Blabbing Apple's
intentions a few days early is not at all equivalent. It's just the
******* thing to do.

[Jonathan]

always err on the side of free-speech rights

That should be the goal of any court. Too bad our system is so FUBARed at this point that nothing short of the Supreme Court would actually see it that way. Justice may be blind but it also is incredibly stupid.

PR or self-defense?

The timing of the leaking of this story, in combination with musicians' claims that this particular product is nothing revolutionary, leads me to believe that the leak was intentional, to create more "buzz" just one week before the public release of the product. Jobs is a master at creating buzz.

However, if the leak really wasn't secretly authorized, Apple truly does have a serious problem. Because I do believe they ARE wizards of marketing, they must know that the negative publicity of suing the messengers, rather than attacking the leaks at their source, wouldn't be good for Apple. So I too believe that Apple will drop the suit.

What I'd be interested in seeing is whether they send another, and more effective, message to their employees by mass-firing the ones they suspect. Here, too, they may have lawsuits on their hands (firing without proof); but it would send shockwaves throughout the company as a warning that Apple takes its proprietary information seriously. The cost of those lawsuits would probably be far less than the cost of suing the bloggers; and it would probably end the leaks once and for all.