A coalition of bloggers, law professors and journalist-rights groups has filed a legal brief (click for PDF) siding with the EFF, saying that "the medium though which reporters communicate is simply unrelated to the Constitutional mandate of the protecting the free flow of information and the freedom of the press."
For purposes of this appeal, Apple has agreed that O'Grady can be viewed as a reporter. But the coalition wants the California appeals court to go even farther and say that bloggers and other online writers "may invoke the protection of the newsgatherer's privilege" of protecting their sources when they act as journalists.
The brief's signers include The First Amendment Project, Reporters Without Borders, and Gawker Media. The Associated Press, Hearst Corp., the Los Angeles Times and other major media companies filed their own brief arguing that the Mac sites should not be forced to divulge their confidential sources.
Free speech vs. trade secrets
To Apple and its allies, though, the
case is about something much more straightforward: how to protect intellectual
property rights in the age of the Internet.
"The First Amendment cannot trump a property right," said Ian Ballon, an intellectual property attorney in the East Palo Alto, Calif., office of Greenberg Traurig.
As long as the courts agree that Apple is protecting a legitimate trade secret, Ballon said, intellectual property should trump free speech rights. "The law is certainly on Apple's side on this issue," he said.
A slew of other large software and hardware companies have lined up behind Apple. Intel and the Business Software Alliance (which counts Microsoft as a prominent member, along with Adobe, Apple and Symantec) said in their own filing that trade secret laws "are vital to the health of California's high technology businesses" and that there is no public interest in having trade secrets "stolen and plastered on the Internet."
The Information Technology Industry Council took a similar position, saying that EFF has "greatly exaggerated" the threat that the subpoena poses to "legitimate First Amendment interests." It involves no wrongdoing by government officials, or muckraking, or corporate waste, but simple disclosure of trade secrets, the council says.
Intel is scheduled to participate in Thursday's oral arguments, along with the actual litigants, an attorney for mainstream media organizations, and the Bear Flag League--a group of conservative bloggers that is siding with PowerPage.
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
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Why should "Freedom of the Press" be reserved for so-called "legitimate" journalists. A substitute term for legitimate journalists could be "official purveyors of propaganda." Of course, the thinking here is that only professional writers have any press freedoms as bloggers don't have the same rights as these elitists.
Posted by Daniel S. Mahan on Friday, April 21 2006 09:38 PM