Rant: Apple vs. Bloggers

I'm getting pretty sick of all the noise on the Mac net these days about Apple vs. Bloggers and how "bloggers are journalists!" and how Apple is just some big corporate evil trying to squash the little guy to gain world dominance, or something. I have read exactly two bloggers who have this right (The magnificent Jon Gruber, and Chuq Von Rospach, who is unfortunately saddled with a bit of a conflict of interest* and has removed his extremely coherent postings on this matter). It seems everyone else is on the other side here, including Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, and they're all just wrong.

First things first: Of course bloggers can be journalists. I don't need a court to tell me that, and anyone who thinks that you need to work for a newspaper or some sort of news organization to do work that ought to be considered "real journalism" (whatever that is) has a pretty limited worldview in my opinion. By that test, The Onion would qualify. Clearly, the definition of journalism that matters is one that speaks to the function of journalism, not the details of how or where that function is carried out. Certainly not all bloggers are journalists, but some most assuredly are.

But that's not the issue.

The issue is this: should anyone (journalists, bloggers, whoever) be compelled to reveal the names of people who have committed crimes — because it's my understanding that in California it's illegal to reveal trade secrets if you've signed an NDA. Now, my feeling is that, yes, they should. If the crime was something more heinous like robbery or rape then it would be unconscionable for a journalist or anyone else to protect such a "source". The folks who leaked this information aren't "sources" they are "criminals".

Think Secret and their ilk are going to lose this case, and they'll be lucky if that's the end of it. It seems to me that they're protecting these "sources" for purely selfish reasons: to rumor sites, people willing to violate terms of their NDAs are their lifeblood. I think it's fair to say that these sites are trying to protect their sources so that they (the sources) can continue to break the law and feed the rumor sites with confidential information about Apple. I'm no lawyer, but it takes two to tango and that arrangement seems to be dancing pretty close to 'liability' to me.

If they were journalists 'protecting' the identity of a serial rapist in order to get exclusive details of the crimes, I daresay their support would evaporate.

The shame in all this isn't that Apple's going to trample "blogger's rights", but in the avalanche of puffed-up bloggers who seem to want to pull out the stops to make this a landmark case. They're going to regret it when Think Secret et al. lose (they've already lost the first round) and if they draw too much attention to this case they're going to have the precedent swing the other way. You've got to pick your battles, and I think the EFF and others are on the wrong side here.

Boing Boing's entry into the fray with their amicus brief is stunning to me, because the point they're apparently trying to argue (bloggers are journalists) has already been dealt with in the discovery ruling: "The journalist’s privilege is not absolute. For example, journalists cannot refuse to disclose information when it relates to a crime."

When will the stupidity end? Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

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* Disclosure: I have an Apple employee in my family, so I have a similar conflict as Chuq.