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Sunday, May 28, 2006

 
12:20 AM: apple confidential [#] [1]

apple lost their most recent case against bloggers publishing "trade secrets" based on info from confidential sources, establishing a precedent that online journalists have the same rights regarding confidential sources as offline reporters do.

some quotes from the full decision:

memetic!
"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."

hooray!
"The court also agreed with EFF that Apple's subpoena to email service provider Nfox was unenforceable because it violated the federal Stored Communications Act, which requires direct subpoenas of account holders."

scylla! charybdis!
"Apple also invokes the safe harbor provisions of the SCA, under which a service provider’s “good faith reliance on . . . a court warrant or order . . . is a complete defense to any civil or criminal action brought under” the SCA. (18 U.S.C. § 2707. This provision is obviously intended to protect service providers who would otherwise find themselves between the Scylla of seemingly valid coercive process and the Charybdis of liability under the Act."

vive la revolution!
"It is often impossible to predict with confidence which technological changes will affect individual and collective life dramatically, and which will come and go without lasting effects. Any of them may revolutionize society in ways we can only guess at. The lawful acquisition of information necessary to anticipate and respond to such changes is the birthright of every human, formally enshrined for Americans in our state and federal constitutions. The publications at issue here fully implicated that birthright and the interests protected by those constitutional guarantees."

thanks, eff! of course, there's probably another appeal coming, this time to the california supreme court...

Comments:

That has to be the most literate court decision I've read in a while.

Someone was an English lit major before he or she made the parents happy by going to law school and getting a boring old job as a judge.

Go freedom!

# posted by  Anonymous : Sun May 28, 05:18:00 PM PDT

 

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