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Dear god, not only is the blogdorkosphere a big stupid echo chamber, but it's fucking ignorant too.
First, let's clear one thing up. Think Secret never mattered to me. Nick Ciarelli's little circlejerk of OMGWTFSCOOP!!!111 didn't matter to me, because Nick wouldn't have known anything I cared about if it bit him on the ass. No, really, can you imagine him with a "scoop" that SNMP was going to be massively better in Leopard? "SNMP? What the fuck is that? Moron, all I care about are iPods!" I think I read that site ten times in its entire history.
The IT world is a little more grown up about how we find out our info, and our methods work a shitload better than Nick's anyway. So the existence, or lack thereof, of Nick and his little wankorama site matters not to me.
The implication that "This will have a chilling effect on writing about Apple" is fucking lame too. It hasn't slowed down the requests for articles on Apple in my inbox one damned bit. Hell, I think it may be picking up. I didn't get any bad email from Apple for delving into the details on Leopard's SNMP implementation. Not a one. Who knows, with Captain BreakMyNDA gone, maybe people will calm the fuck down a little. Probably not. Anyway, this is not a first amendment issue. It never was, unless you're the EFF and Cory Doctorow, and your cock is sore from wanking about DRM, (which, for the most part is at least useful). Regardless of what dingalings like Matthew Ingram think, (and wtf is a Canadian journalist bitching about U.S. First Amendment rights for anyway? The Canadian version of the Official Secrets Act says "cast out the beam in thine own eye before thou pointest out the mote in mine"), the First Amendment is fine, or rather, this case isn't doing it any harm. No, it isn't, no matter how much Ol' Matt cries or whines about it.
See, what Matt, and too many others don't get is a fundamental point of the US civil judicial system. In fact, it may be the point: Lawsuits are the only way to settle a dispute in a legal forum. Bitch and whine about Mean Old Apple suing that nice Ciarelli boy all you want, but Apple had no other options to get the information. Well, not legally. Once they asked Nick directly, and he said "no", their legal options were:
- Walk away
- Take Nick to court
Walking away wasn't really an option from Apple's POV. (Spare me the PR shit. The only people who think Apple needs that kind of PR still whine about HyperCard and Mac OS X not running on their fucking IIci.) They had people they knew were breaking NDA, and here's this little prat who knows he's getting NDA'd information, (It is impossible he did not. He got enough C&D's from Apple to keep him in free toilet paper forever), in fact, he's inducing people to break NDA,(Again, this is fact), and inducing people to break a legal contract, particularly where trade secrets are concerned is a major no-no. Apple had a case. Whether dorkosphere fanboys think they should have doesn't matter. I can't imagine too many sober-minded (oh look, just excluded Cory Doctorow) legal experts who wouldn't think Apple didn't have a good case.
True, they didn't have to sue him to get the info. But sending goons over to smack Little Nicky around is called assault, and is frowned upon in polite society. They could have hacked his site, but again, illegal. In fact, once you eliminate all shady/illegal options, and you realize that just walking away sets a bad precedent for Apple, the only option left was suing him, and allowing the legal system to work the way it was designed to work. Is that system stacked in favor of the rich and powerful? Of course, welcome to the entirety of human history.
But think about it. Once you removed the blathering idiots on both sides, and let the lawyers do their jobs, this was settled painlessly. No one roughed up. No one shot. No Karen Silkwood shit. It was all civilized. Keep in mind, Nick did not have to agree to the settlement. There was no gun at his head. (Yay civilized legal system!) He could have fought it if he thought he had a good chance to win, and had he won, the chances of the judge awarding him damages in addition to his costs would have been pretty decent. He chose to settle. That's how things work in this country. People may not like that lawsuits are the only option to get a dispute up in front of a judge, but that's how it works. If you think that this is some kind of OMGTOTALITARIANISM shit, go ask Benazir Bhutto what it's like getting stuff done under real totalitarianism. Or Walesa. Or a coal mining union sympathizer in the early part of the 20th century.
Nick Ciarelli settling did not kill the First Amendment in this country, nor whatever the equivalent is in Canada. It didn't even dirty it up. In fact, it showed that the system, such as it is, still works correctly, because if it really didn't? Then Apple would have won ten seconds after filing the papers, because when the system doesn't work, it never screws over the rich and powerful at the expense of the little guy.
Oh, and here's a tip for judging an issue pinging around the blogdorkosphere: The louder the blogdorksphere screams about something, the higher the probability that they're full of shit, and the truth is whatever is the opposite of their opinion.
Technorati Tags:
TEH STOOPUD, Think Secret, Everything is not about the first amendment
Posted by John C. Welch at 17:52 | Permalink
Comments
Thank you!
There are times when FSJ's term "freetards" seems so apt, and people banging on endlessly about civil rights while talking about the Think Secret case seem to fit the word precisely.
He induced people to break their NDA contracts, and that's a legal issue in itself (I understand). I've tried looking at this from the other point of view and I just can't see it.
Beyond the legal and moral issues, I always had another issue with Think Secret: it was a total piece of shit, chock full of random guesses and worthless crap that hyped non-existent products to the point that people were actually *disappointed* when Apple didn't release them. That's not a legal or moral issue, just my personal opinion about the site.
I'm okay with every part of this whole issue and how it turned out.
Posted by: GaryP | December 28, 2007 2:21 AM
Putting aside the obvious moral argument, I can't see how it can be illegal to induce someone to break a contract. Sure, if you induce someone to commit a crime, that can be an illegal act. But inducing someone to break a contract is not any tort that I've ever heard of or read about.
In this case, Apple's legal team knew they were trying to do an end-run around the law. Only those who signed the NDAs are bound by them, and Apple's recourse is only against those individuals. Suing TS, or anyone, to divulge the names of those with the information is the easy way to get the information. The hard way is to hire private investigators, and read people's Apple email, and use surveillance. Apple wanted an easy way out, and the court found that TS wasn't required to give Apple any information.
If Nick had phoned me and told me who his sources were at Apple, I wouldn't be required to tell Apple. This was a case of Apple hoping they could break TS' silence with their huge legal budget, and for once, the little guy prevailed.
What Apple did here was stupid, because now it will embolden all the other TS wannabes out there to post info received from Apple employees, because they know Apple can't get the sources' names through a civil action.
Posted by: Mitchell Smith | December 29, 2007 12:36 PM
