BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Bloggers win Apple.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that a Court of Appeal in the State of California has ruled in favour of that organisation's petition that said the Powerpage web site journalists - or bloggers - had the same right to protect the confidentiality of their sources as any other media.

Apple Computer had sued the PowerPage and Apple Insider websites in 2004 to find out who had leaked for the information published in articles about a Firewire audio interface code-named Asteroid. As Apple argued that bloggers were not proper journalists and because of that, didn't have the right to protect their sources, the case is seen as the first real test of bloggers' rights.

At first, things were looking dire as a trial court upheld Apple's subpoena for discovery of emails and unpublished material from PowerPage's provider Nfox. This was however overturned by the appeals court as unenforceable as Apple had violated US federal law by not subpoenaing the account holder directly.

This is of course great news for bloggers and online journalists in the USA. There is now a precedent set that says online journalism isn't "illegitimate news", which is very important indeed.


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