Seriously – is the reach of the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom really so narrow?

"Unlike the whistleblower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials, (the Macintosh news sites) are doing nothing more than feeding the public's insatiable desire for information," Kleinberg wrote at the time.

This is a position which is completely alien to American notions of liberty to speak and write.

Using this argument, gossip columns, tabloids, and human interest stories are not covered under the First Amendment, given that they are merely “feeding the public’s insatiable desire for information.” The same would be true of magazines like “Popular Mechanics”, “Field and Stream”, and “Sports Illustrated”. Heck, we’d have to divide newspapers into two sections – those sections which have First Amendment coverage and those that do not.

That is not to say that there are not legitimate questions of trade secrets and industrial espionage. But what Apple is attempting to do is nothing short of building a fence around the guarantees of the Bill of Rights and posting a giant “KEEP OUT” sign directed at citizen-journalists using the very technologies Apple’s products are designed to use.

The judges need to slap the computer giant down – with extreme prejudice.

Posted by: Greg at 01:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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