Apple Fiends

Apple's recent suits and resulting court case against Apple 'rumor' weblogs to get them to reveal the names of the Apple staffers who leaked trade secrets, has caused much concern among journalists who are worried about losing their rights to privacy of sources if a legal precedent is set.

Whether these Apple news webloggers are indeed journalists is unclear: they may be producing news articles but without any journalistic ethics or methods. Apple's methods in going after these one-man-bands with heavy lawyers reminds me of America's war against cocaine. It is not fought at home.

Unable to police its millions of coke addicts, the USA is defoliating coca crops — and any other crops in the vicinity — in Colombia and putting many innocent farming families on the breadline in the process. (If they do succeed, the coca will no doubt be grown in another country to satisfy the US market.)

Similarly, Apple is not questioning its staff about the leaks. Perhaps Apple does not want to demotivate its employees by investigating them too heavily internally(!?), or maybe they prefer their buyers to be deprived of advance information on their products, but Apple's image and fans are suffering as it switches from being the cool alternative to being The Man.