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Apple the Loser in ThinkSecret Settlement?
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How is this bad for Apple? Think Secret did a no-no and got caught. So Apple is the bad guy? If a site is telling trade secrets from another company to the world, thats not fair to Apple. How would you like it if you worked your butt off for 2 years on a brand new product and then a mole in your company told the world about it before it was ready to be released? Think about that!
I also don't think this Nick kid got paid. He has no reason to get paid. Apple basically slapped him on the wrist and most likely part of the slapping on the wrist was maybe you should shut down your site so more trouble doesn't come for you.
Nick is a senior at Harvard. It's possible he doesn't see himself running ThinkSecret for the rest of his life.
arn
Nick is a senior at Harvard. It's possible he doesn't see himself running ThinkSecret for the rest of his life.
arn
Lawsuits are stressful and very time consuming (unless you're an attorney and you are used to this kind of stuff, you get paid for a living to litigate/settle claims/defend against claims...all the massive amount of paper work and time spent behind the scenes with the discovery process, demands for documents, your entire personal life under scrutiny, videotaped depositions that go on for hours/days- that movies never even come close to representing in proper scope), in as much as TS was being represented for 'free' there wasn't the financial burden there, and Apple would not likely go after him in any monetary judgment they might have won against him, but then there's the all consuming time burden of having to go through lengthy litigation. This case would likely have been going back and forth on appeals for another year or two, or three, disrupting Nick's entire life!
Yeah, his arrogant lawyer makes silly claims about free speech and internet...blah, blah, blah...as of right now, the law in this area cannot be said to be "it is well settled that..." in typical legal jargon. Without definitive Appellate written opinions, no case law is established. Apple definitely won in the long run for now---MR should contact Apple's legal team for a comment as to their opinion of whether or not this case set any legal precedents...which it clearly did NOT, lol. With no established case law for defense attorneys to get out of this case to rely on referencing in future cases, they simply are left with prior case law for future cases that Apple will bring.
Oh yeah, Apple made the right decisions, no doubt about it. And how does anyone know how much Nick got in the settlement? Perhaps his attorney's billable hours were applied to all settlement payments and Nick ended up with a net zero, for all any of you know?...unless you're seeing him driving a Ferrari in the next few months
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who needs journalistic integrity, upholding the constitution and saying no to multi billion dollar business bullies when there's money settlements to be won...
who needs journalistic integrity, upholding the constitution and saying no to multi billion dollar business bullies when there's money involved...
Don't judge until you've turned down $$$ to quit from a company you know won't stop bugging you...
If that's your opinion then I want a straight answer from you. Why are you still an Apple customer? If they are the new Microsoft, if they attack people who support their products, then for God's sake why do you still use the product? I don't understand people like you. You declare Apple to be the source of all evil in the world yet you're still around. Why is that?
What website do you own? How many lawsuits have you weathered? How much money have you turned down?who needs journalistic integrity, upholding the constitution and saying no to multi billion dollar business bullies when there's money settlements to be won...
Lethal
I'm sure you don't know all the details in which you are speaking. You only have the perspective of the consumer, not the corporation. I'm sure Apple is more than intelligent enough to weigh their options and make the right decisions.
Im not sure Nick got any money for the settlement of the case - however he may have received some monies for the domain name (no evidence of this yet but it would not surprise me to see the domain name be signed over to Apple - the current registration expires in march http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=thinksecret.com).
Their lawyers may have decided that they couldn't win the case, so they decided to pay him off to shut down the site, and then dropped the case, maybe.
I thought it was related to the Asteroid Rumor. Some hardware product to use with Garageband. Something that never happened. It could have just been fake info to setup a trap.
If Apple wanted to drop the case, they would have just dropped the case. If Apple wanted to have ThinkSecret gone - why would they pay for that? ThinkSecret was dead anyway. No Apple employee would ever again have dared to leak information to them.
I'm trying to figure out how succeeding in getting the site shut down constitutes "losing". Whatever. Nick is seemingly happy, so it's all good I guess.
It couldn't be fake info. A company suing for revealing a trade secret would be in deep **** with the law if it turned out that they were lying and there was no trade secret. Giving fake information to employees and checking what leaks out might be a way to find unreliable employees, but you couldn't sue them for leaking trade secrets.
This was not related to Asteroid. There were two legal actions Apple took around the same time.
#1. Subpoenaed Appleinsider, thinksecret, ogrady for information surrounding the Asteroid leak.
#2. Apple sued ThinkSecret for disseminating trade secrets.
Apple lost #1.
#2 was settled today.
arn
Who's to say that Nick really put this site together? If there was an inside source who saw that they could make $$$ from ad traffic if they sent it little tid-bits why not set up some 13-year-old kid to handle the day-to-day maintenance and feed him information (perhaps even write the stories and just have him post them). He gets a cut and you get a cut and he can be the "face" of the site. It sounds so warm and happy, might even attract some stupid VC money.
corporate espionage
Apple, like other large corporations, is very secretive about their R&D, for good reason. Because Apple is seen as some sort of other entity by its devotees,it is after all, a corporation fired by profit. If an article under development is leaked, and copied by another company, then this undermines years of research by the company. The information was apparently supplied by a 'mole' in the Apple corporation. Which in itself is a criminal activity, that is punishable by the court system. Without disclosure of the 'mole', Apple had no other choice but to close down the public leaks of the products. It's a shame that it resulted in closing down the site, because ThinkSecret was a great site.
But, wrong is wrong.
Apple, like other large corporations, is very secretive about their R&D, for good reason. Because Apple is seen as some sort of other entity by its devotees,it is after all, a corporation fired by profit. If an article under development is leaked, and copied by another company, then this undermines years of research by the company. The information was apparently supplied by a 'mole' in the Apple corporation. Which in itself is a criminal activity, that is punishable by the court system. Without disclosure of the 'mole', Apple had no other choice but to close down the public leaks of the products. It's a shame that it resulted in closing down the site, because ThinkSecret was a great site.
But, wrong is wrong.
Apple: "You shut down your site or else we'll sue you into oblivion!"
Nick: (Hmmm. I was going to get a life.): "OK"
Apple: "Ha! We win!"
Nick: (Heh, heh. Suckers....)
Nick: (Hmmm. I was going to get a life.): "OK"
Apple: "Ha! We win!"
Nick: (Heh, heh. Suckers....)
Odd how Apple was able to more than double the price of the Mini. One would expect the price of a computer to fall with time. Same with their desktop tower, the price has doubled. It used to be you could buy a Power mac for $1500