As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Fuck Apple: ThinkSecret Edition
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Cult Of Steve often wonders why people have a negative view of Apple.
Well, here's exhibit A. (Edit: Exhibit B.)
It's not the marketing or the push of form over function, it's the need for control that makes even the most anally retentive person go "Whoa." And when that need for control comes up against the law, well...Apple seems to believe that you have to break a few eggs.
Some commentators have been saying that Apple needs the secrecy to keep their market position. I hope they realize that comment does not speak well of Apple. If they honestly need the secrecy to stave off competitors, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of their gear. If Apple gear is truly the best, then it should stand out no matter what.
Another point being dragged up is that Apple had no recourse. Bullshit. This was what nailed them in Apple v. Does - they could have done, as the law requires, an internal investigation. But Apple knew doing that would have hurt their "happy shiny place" image. So instead they thought they could squeeze the rumor site.
Finally, I'm rather amazed at the conduct of the EFF (not that I have a terrible amount of respect for the organization anyways, starting with how they treated Gabe over the bnetd comic) - they're just saying "well, this is for the best." No, it's not for the best - what would be for the fucking best is to see Apple get a legal smacking, which might just convince them that maybe they need to rework their policies.
Well, here's exhibit A. (Edit: Exhibit B.)
It's not the marketing or the push of form over function, it's the need for control that makes even the most anally retentive person go "Whoa." And when that need for control comes up against the law, well...Apple seems to believe that you have to break a few eggs.
Some commentators have been saying that Apple needs the secrecy to keep their market position. I hope they realize that comment does not speak well of Apple. If they honestly need the secrecy to stave off competitors, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of their gear. If Apple gear is truly the best, then it should stand out no matter what.
Another point being dragged up is that Apple had no recourse. Bullshit. This was what nailed them in Apple v. Does - they could have done, as the law requires, an internal investigation. But Apple knew doing that would have hurt their "happy shiny place" image. So instead they thought they could squeeze the rumor site.
Finally, I'm rather amazed at the conduct of the EFF (not that I have a terrible amount of respect for the organization anyways, starting with how they treated Gabe over the bnetd comic) - they're just saying "well, this is for the best." No, it's not for the best - what would be for the fucking best is to see Apple get a legal smacking, which might just convince them that maybe they need to rework their policies.
XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
AngelHedgie on
0
Posts
pleasepaypreacher.net
I think it's Steve Jobs becoming his old self again. :P
ThinkSecret and Apple came to a settlement - in exchange for Apple dropping the suit, ThinkSecret folds.
It's an Apple rumor site - the first to be sued by Apple, actually.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Propositioning Apple employees to disclose trade secrets. That's what Apple accused ThinkSecret of, and they sued for the list of sources. The agreement says that the list does not need to be disclosed, but that's about the only good thing from this.
True story.
pleasepaypreacher.net
See the OP.
The kid made it sound like it's a journalistic endeavour, but imo sounds more like mining gossip for Page 6. It's one thing to chat up the overworked programmers that aren't getting OT for their slave-o-thons, but it's quite another for him to milk them for priviledged information on an intellectual property.
Clearly, the guys who are spilling trade secrets are in the wrong, and if discovered, they would rightly be fired. Any company has a legitimate interest in not having all of its works-in-progress bleated to the press before they see the light of day. And this:
...is bullshit. There's a reason that when you have a brilliant business idea, you don't announce it in the goddamned NYT. While there will doubtless be copycats, as the first person to have that idea, you should be entitled to a few years of exclusivity while your competitors ape the shit out of your innovation, especially if your innovation is something that can't be patented (like, say, the look and feel of your OS, which certain companies might immediately try to use themselves).
That said, organizations dealing in rumor can be perfectly legitimate. If I hang out in the right crowds and people are willing to spill secrets to me, hey, cool. If I'm sitting in a bar and the CEO of RandomCompany is drunkenly blatting about his next awesome product release, that's great. But I think a line should be drawn at cold-calling companies and plying their employees to break their contracts. It's considered illegal to encourage someone to commit a crime, and I'd think it at least unethical to encourage someone to break a contract.
I'm kinda-sorta leaning towards Apple on this one, but that depends on the details of what really went on.
/Agreed. But I'd like to get an idea of what kind of info this fellow was grapevining and what his accuracy was. Obviously there must have been something to it for Steve to slap him with a complaint, but still...
The rumor mill works in H-Wood, politics, etc, but in this industry it's like playing telephone with a lawsuit for the winner.
I'm not saying that companies shouldn't control information flows - but when that's your competitive advantage, it's probably time to take a step back and figure out what's wrong. In addition, such controls may actually be harming Apple by making their management opaque.
And from what I understood, ThinkSecret basically had only an electronic "dead-drop". There was no active solicitation. So if you're going to say that journalists being open to leads is solicitation, you're opening a massive Pandora's Box.
agreed, based of the initial story here I'm with apple, and I love the precedent this could set. A movie studo finds out that the tabloids are paying laborers to get stars into revealing positions for picutres, or leaking information, so they sue the tabloid rags and the rags have to go under because of it. How awesome would that be.....? no more tabloids... seriously...
Sounds great...up till you get the Pentagon suing the New York Times and winning, thanks to that new precedent.
I was just joking, obviously, and I really don't know all the facts here, but everyone needs to quit insulting steve jobs and talking shit about him like this is his fault. This decision was made by a board of probably twenty people, I imagine four of which were corporate lawyers. ThinkSecret engaged in immoral business practices, they got caught, and rather than facing a more serious penalty, they decided to close their doors.
The reason that people are attacking Jobs over this is because he is the personification of "control freak". He may not have ordered this directly, but he created the environment.
And when you consider what happened in Apple v. Does, it's not assured that Apple would have won.
Wah wah first amendment wah. Are you really upset over it being too hard for people to publicize companies' trade secrets? I mean, do you at least recognize that these are the sorts of things we, as a society, should be trying to protect? Because you're dangerously close to sounding opposed to the whole concept.
Beyond that, nothing in those articles you posted, or their links, makes it clear that Apple didn't do an internal investigation in the ThinkSecret case. It was found that they didn't perform an investigation in the other two cases, which is why Apple lost. If they failed to do an investigation, and the law states they have to, then great, Apple should be chastised for this.
Think a bit about what you're saying. You're decrying the fact that a company is using innovation as a competitive advantage. The very second that Apple releases a product, all of the trade secrets will be revealed and/or reverse-engineered. But the idea that it's somehow problematic when a company doesn't want its good ideas broadcast to the world the very second it has them is fucking loony.
If that's true, then I don't think ThinkSecret should've been attacked. But I do think that Apple had every right to aggressively hunt down the people violating their NDAs and fire/sue the shit out of those fuckers.
Two sides in a lawsuit settling out of court doesn't create a new precedent. Especially since Apple lost 2 similar lawsuits.
I'm not sure what we should be up in arms about here, your OP and links doesn't have alot of details about this case. To me it sounds like ThinkSecret could have won the lawsuit but the site's creator decided to throw in the towel. Which is understandable.
You do know why Apple sued ThinkSecret in the first place, right? The year leading up to the Intel transition Thinksecret was spot fucking on for just about every prediction they had. Including details for Tiger, and the Intel transition itself. There was obviously a very high level source who was leaking confidential information - in violation of NDAs and employment contracts. I can't speak for what Apple did or did not do internally (how do you know an internal investigation wasn't carried out?), but I don't think it is really outlandish for a company to actively pursue the people who publish vast quantities of information that is only available to a select few people, and then only under an NDA.
There are many more Apple rumour sites, and you'll notice it was only the site that repeatedly and accurately leaked privileged information that was sued. People are perfectly free to speculate and talk about rumours. People aren't free to break contracts to which they are subject to, and ThinkSecret was both facilitating and encouraging this.
That said, I'll be very sad to see them go.
Pish. I don't need to read to maek poast.
I no longer listen to anything you say. Seriously. You really think this is going to set that kind of precedent? I fucking hate slippery slope people.
Apple sued ThinkSecret over the disclosure of trade secrets. Get over it, quit crying. Both sides were happy with the settlement.
Conversely it could be a Dirk Gently situation.
I don't have a problem with Apple trying to keep things secret. I don't have a problem with them trying to ferret out leaks in some ways. What I have a problem with is how they tried to ferret out these leaks - by trying to force journalists to surrender sources. What compounds this further is that in the last case that they handled like this, Apple v. Does, they were found to have not performed the internal investigation that the law mandated that they had to perform before they could even think about filing suit against the rumor sites.
Now, the question is why not do an internal investigation? Well, one reason is that Apple has a reputation for being an excellent employer. Internal investigations, even when handled well, are messy. They can erode employee goodwill towards the company. So, Apple probably thought that putting financial pressure on the hobbyists who ran these sites would quickly garner them the names, without inflicting any damage on their reputations. Instead, they lawyered up, and put Apple through a legal fight that harmed their reputation.
Again, I'd like to point out that when Apple v. Does was winding through the courts, everyone and their brother involved with journalism was filing amicus curiae briefs on the side of the defendants. Why? Because the case was treading new ground. Part of it was the status of bloggers as journalists in the eyes of the law, but part of it was how companies can handle leaks. One thing that's really bothered me is how the fact that one party may have signed an NDA can create obligations on another party. I don't get how that can work.
And if Apple had won the right to squeeze a reporter for their sources, how long to you think it would have been before every major company and the government would have started using that ruling to force reporters to divulge all their sources? People want to talk about chilling effects, but that would have pretty much frozen out journalists.
To make it short, I don't begrudge Apple the right to protect their secrets. But it's THEIR responsibility to do so. Not society's. Apple wants to have its cake and eat it too - it wants tight information control and the reputation of an open employer. But the only way it can get that is by offloading its responsibilities to society. And we need to tell Apple "No."
Again, the problem isn't that Apple protected their IP. The problem is how they did it.
Where is the problem?
Don't we do the same to tabloids?
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
By exercising their right to pursue the matter in court, where the courts made the correct decision?
Those monsters.
There is a fine line between journalism and espionage, and it would seem that ThinkSecret (and a couple of other sites) may have stepped over that line. Sure, it is in the interest of society for journalists to be able to publish and criticize the power structures without fear of getting jailed or having their abilities to report be unduly hindered. But what we are talking about are trade secrets - the only benefits that come about by reporting such things publicly go to the competitors of the company or organization in question. The public at large does not benefit directly, and the original company is only adversely affected.
This is not some huge moral battle that will determine the fate of open democratic societies everywhere. It's basically a question of economics and PR, and should be treated as such.
Again, let me state my point - protecting Apple's trade secrets is Apple's - and ONLY Apple's - responsibility. Joe Reporter, unless he's signed some agreement with Apple, is not obliged in any manner to protect Apple's interest, nor should he be. Apple wants to have its cake and eat it - it wants to reap the benefit of having a reputation as being an open employer and have tight control over internal information. It wants to avoid having to make decisions that would be unpopular with their staff.
Read up about Apple v. Does, and what Apple's idea of an "internal investigation" is. That's not an internal investigation, that's bullshit. And by the way, Apple tried to claim that their internal investigation procedures were, you guessed it, a trade secret. (Needless to say, the court didn't buy it.) If Apple doesn't care enough about leaks to ferret them out - why the fuck should I?
Yeah it seems kind of stupid for them to be sueing someone else and not trying to figure out where the leaks are coming from.
I mean if it is an internal leak then its not gonna stop because you close one site is it? The person would just goto someone else in the news.
I never asked for this!
Actually it seems Apple decided being an open employer was more important, leading to them losing 2 lawsuits and settling this one without getting what they wanted.
Why are you so angry about this? The courts agree with you and who said it was your responsibility to protect Apple's trade secrets?