Most people are missing a subtle but very important point in regards to the Apple v Think Secret case. Whether or not bloggers are considered journalists is completely irrelevant to this case. Under California state law, this is a trade secret violation. With all due respect to Dan Gillmor, this really isn’t a free-speech thing or even a new media thing. California makes it a crime to encourage someone under NDA to divulge what they know. This is completely asinine, but it is the law. And this is what Nick DePlume faces. The same rules would have applied to David Pogue of the New York Times, though Apple might not have been as quick to pull the trigger knowing they’d have to face the Times’s legal department.
The real story here isn’t that blogg�rs are second class citizens. Just ask Dan Rather about that one. The real story is that Apple is engaging in completely legal suicide from a marketing perspective. I can understand why leaks like this drive Stevie J. crazy, but he’s attacking the very enthusiasts that line up at midnight to buy a new Apple product. Attacking your fans isn’t a smart business strategy, especially for Apple, whose low market share makes them dependent on customer loyalty.
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