A sad day for Apple customers and bloggers

Dec 20th, 2007 | By Steven Hodson | Category: Technology, The Social Web

Apple wins - We lose As is being noted by a few bloggers today is the day we can all say goodbye to ThinkSecret. If you don’t know who or what ThinkSecret is then you are not a Mac user or are just not interested in all things Apple which is okay but you should care. Even more importantly you should have cared when the blog was being pounded into oblivion by Apple and its lawyers over the past couple of years.

The back story to this closing of a blog is fairly simple. A couple of years ago ThinkSecret published some inside information about the upcoming release of some Apple products. Apple got pissy over that and let loose their lawyers from the bowels of Cupertino on Nicholas Ciarelli the person behind ThinkSecret and sued him to get the names of those that dared to leak information about Apple. A lower court in California said Nicholas wasn’t a journalist and therefor entitled to any type of journalist shield laws. That decision was overturned by an appeals court but that wasn’t enough to get Apple to see any sense.

The end result is that Nicholas announced today that he and Apple had reached a positive agreement for both sides but that part of the agreement was that ThinkSecret was shutting down. Besides the fact that in my opinion the only clear winner hear was Apple; even if they didn’t get any names, and the biggest losers in the whole mess is Apple customers and bloggers across all spectrums.

What gets me as well is what I really see as a lackadaisical “Oh well it is Apple after all” attitude coming out of the whole Mac community. It’s as if it is okay that Apple has stomped on the rights of free speech and that its okay to set back any moves blogging has made to be recognized as legitimate news providers. Where the fuck is the outrage that Apple gets a walk on this. Hell I’m a Windows user and I’m more outraged over all of this than anything I have seen on any of the Apple type blogs I follow or the blogs of folks I know use Apple products.

Instead we get the obligatory deadpool type posts or the it was nice knowing you type posts. The only person I have seen yet today to have said anything of substance is Rex Hammock but even that was more of a eulogy than anything else.

If this had been done to a Windows or Microsoft type of site such as Bink.nu or istartedsomething.com you would have been hearing howls coming from all over the blogosphere. The phones at the Department of Justice would probably have been ringing off the hook. Congressmen, Congresswomen and Presidential wannabes would be pontificating at the pulpit of public opinion on how bad Microsoft was and that this was an attack on free speech.

The fact that a company like Apple has used its money and power to shutdown a blog; regardless of how the spin of positive for all makes it sound, is terribly wrong and I am so disappointed in the whole Mac community for letting down one of their own and I am disappointed in the tech blogosphere as a whole for letting Apple get away with weakening the inroads we have made. The effects of this may not seem all that important but trust me this will come back to bite us all on the ass.

My hat goes off to Nicholas for lasting as long as he did but also so does my apology for the fact that the blogosphere; of which he was a shining example, let him down.

Listening to: Dream Theater - Dark Side Of The Moon (Official Bootleg) - Money (Live)

[tags]Apple, ThinkSecret[/tags]

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