I’m sure many of you have heard about Think Secret, the blog which at one point was the place to go to hear all about the latest Apple rumors. The editor of the blog, “Nick de Plume” (an alias for Nick Ciarelli), managed to get tons of inside information right from the mouths of Apple employees. Back in December of 04′, Think Secret reported a rumor that there was going to be a new Mac computer coming out and a new word-processing suite. They were sued for violating trade secret law after publishing that, and then the rumors were confirmed shortly thereafter when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac mini and iWork.
After several years, the lawsuit has finally been settled. On Think Secret’s site, they explain that an agreement was made that “results in a positive solution for both sides.” I’m not quite sure how this is a positive solution for both because Think Secret will no longer be published. Apple wins, bloggers lose. They haven’t really published much of anything since they were sued, but today is the official end of Think Secret which is sad. I suppose the only positive side to this is that they didn’t have to reveal any of their sources, and he must have had good ones because the rumors were nearly always dead-on.
Imagine if Microsoft did something similar at this point where Blogs play an important roll as an alternative news-medium? It wouldn’t be pretty. What I don’t get is that Think Secret gave Apple free publicity! Apple fans loved to go there to get the latest scoop on what might be coming out of Cupertino and it just fueled their interest. Sure Apple likes to protect all of their upcoming products, but in this situation, I think they went a little too far. What do you think?
I totally agree with you. Secrecy about products and/or services creates a certain distrust amongst users. I like to find out everything I can about the products/services I use and think securing factual information is fair play.
We are living in the “Information Age” where the most valuable asset a company has is shared information. Bloggers find fertile ground by providing information to its readers. If you seal information, what do we have? A Gestapo regime?
I honestly think Apple went too far, and it’s a sad moment for bloggers.
Regards,
Omar.-
A couple things.
While I think it was probably pretty misguided of Apple to be so controlling of their IP. I don’t completely fault them for wanting to release information on their schedule rather than on whenever TS thought it should be out there.
However. I also don’t think that shield laws should apply at all to cases like this. When TS accepted and published the information, they KNEW that they were cooperating in someone’s willful violation of the nondisclosure agreement that the person had signed with Apple. And in my mind, TS was almost as culpable in that violation. I don’t think for a second that they should have been allowed to keep the identity secret. The person violated a contract, and broke the law in doing so.
Microsoft and Apple.
2 US creations More Hate worthy than even the Al-Qaeda and Saddam combined.
Apple made a BIG mistake. Sites like that can generate lots of hype, and hype sells. Look at the iPod, iPhone etc.
APPLE IDIOTS!
I honestly think contrary to Microsoft’s evil image, that they respect momentum behind their under-development products.
I don’t really think that it is ThinkSecret’s place to tell that information to Apple though. Sure the Apple employee’s shouldn’t be doing that, but it’s not like they revealed manufacturer plans for the iPhone before it was released, or leaked source code.