I don't think anyone seriously thought that Apple would get anywhere by trying to do the whole defining who is a journalist thing, even Apple didn't go at that too hard. One of the other rules of Mitchell is that the plaintiffs have to exhaust all other reasonable means of getting the information they are after. This is where Apple was super lame. Opsahl told the judge that Apple hadn't exhausted other options, and the judge was still nodding awesomely. He went on to say "instead of using discovery as a last resort, they are using it as a first resort." Kurt was schooling all these suckers so fast that the court reporter had to ask him to slow down twice, it was way too much science for her to handle. But I'm totally used to it, so I was just like "damn, this is dope!"

Apple Computer's attempts to strong-arm Web publishers into divulging their confidential sources illustrates how bloggers, Internet journalists and other online scribes remain second-rate citizens.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:14:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments