Apple Loses Case Against Online Journalists

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

In what is clearly a win for online journalists, particularly large blog sites, a California Appeals court ruled on Friday that Apple did not have the right to access the records of AppleInsider in relation to a leak that occurred on an unreleased product.

The court sided with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who had filed the appeal. The three-judge panel said that online news sites and blogs are no different than newspapers, television and radio broadcasters and that, as such, they are protected by, among other things, California’s shield law. Within the context of the shield law, the judges stated:

“The open and deliberate publication on a news-oriented Web site of news gathered for that purpose by the site’s operators … appears conceptually indistinguishable from publishing a newspaper, and we see no theoretical basis for treating it differently. Beyond casting aspersions on the legitimacy of petitioners’ enterprise, Apple offers no cogent reason to conclude that they fall outside the shield law’s protection.”

Additionally, with regards to protection under freedom of the press, the judges wrote:

“We can see no sustainable basis to distinguish petitioners from the reporters, editors, and publishers who provide news to the public through traditional print and broadcast media. It is established without contradiction that they gather, select, and prepare, for purposes of publication to a mass audience, information about current events of interest and concern to that audience.”

Sources for the above: Ars Technica, SFGate, News.com

We Say: Kurt Opsahl, one of the attorneys for the EFF stated it well when he said “”Does Walter Cronkite stop being a journalist if he blogs for the Huffington Post? What makes a journalist a journalist is not the format. If you’re engaged in journalism, you’re a journalist. You have to look beyond the medium selected.” I would wholeheartedly agree.