Apple To Pay Double The Legal Expenses ($700,000) in Landmark Ruling Where Bloggers / Online Reporters Were Equalled With Professional Journalists

In 2004 Apple had asked the courts to compel two Mac rumor sites, Apple Insider and O’Grady’s PowerPage, to disclose the names of their sources for a series of stories on an unreleased Apple audio device. In its lawsuit, Apple argued that amateur websites are not eligible for the legal protections afforded to professional journalists under the First Amendment and California’s shield law.

Shield laws are designed to prevent journalists from being held in contempt of court for refusing to disclose a source. The California shield law specifically offers this protection to any “publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or so employed.”

In March of 2005, Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg issued a decision (PDF) in favor of Apple, asserting that the legal protections conferred upon journalists by the first amendment and the California shield law do not imbue reporters with the right to disseminate trade secrets divulged to them by others. Fortunately subsequently California Court of Appeals rejected this argument, ruling that “We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish ‘legitimate’ from ‘illegitimate’ news,” and that the the rumor sites appear “conceptually indistinguishable from publishing a newspaper, and we see no theoretical basis for treating it differently.”

The ruling concluded that trade secrets do not categorically transcend freedom of the press, that there is no relevant legal distinction between journalistic blogging and journalism with regards to the shield law, and that Apple’s attempt to subpoena the e-mail service provider of one of the sites was a violation of the federal Stored Communications Act.

In an email interview with MacNN, EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote that like their print counterparts, online journalists “must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information. Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society.”

The court broadly affirmed that online reporters, bloggers or otherwise, were entitled to the same legal protections as their print counterparts, without regard to a site’s format or level of professionalism.

The apellate court awarded the two sites more than twice their actual legal expenses in order to deter companies like Apple from harrassing journalists with lawsuits. The decision sets an important precedent regarding freedom of the press online and effectively gives bloggers an equal footing with professional journalists as far as legal protection and freedom of speech is concerned. via 1 & 2