Oh My God! Apple Killed Think Secret! Those Bastards!

Shame that ThinkSecret will not be published in the future

I bet there are some hardcore apple fans feeling uncomfortable about this. The shine is coming off apple in a big way of late.

Perhaps I’m not alone on this, but when someone is praised for “high moral ground” and a company such as Apple settles a dispute, could it be that the “journalist” perhaps, did something shady in the first place to get the “scoop”?

Or, do we automatically blame “Big Business” because, well, business is all about money, eh?

Just a thought.
Peace,
Chris

@Danny Stuart

Not really if you actually look at the case. ThinkSecret had a source inside Apple who was leaking everything. Apple wanted to find out who was leaking this information to them. Its nothing against rumor sites per se. But the stuff that was being leaked (like the Intel move and unreleased products) was a bit too close for comfort. It was more than “heard it on the grapevine” rumors.

Chris,
ultimately it comes down to protecting your sources, and a blogger should have the same rights to protect their sources as any other form of journalist does. Without whistle blower/ source protection we lose a free press, and risk totalitarianism..not that I’m saying in this case that Apple = Totalitarianism, but it’s a broadly hold concept, you don’t get to pick and choose.

This is really disgusting that a company who claims to be the morally right choice(I think there was some advert they released ages ago about being different) Is actually far more evil than microsoft chooses to be. Seeing the way that they are behaving regarding shutting down this site and the way they act to restrict competition on the iphone and itunes, makes me glad that they are not the dominant player in the market.

Microsoft may be bad, but they are definitely less evil than Apple.

IMHO Rotten Apples indeed…..

Is Deadpool Selective? Why isn’t John Battelle’s SearchMob in the DeadPool?
http://battellemedia.com/archives/004091.php

I’m kind of glad, I think it spoils some of the fun to already know whats coming up in the apple keynotes.

It’s a sad day. I haven’t found another Apple site that can match the information provided by ThinkSecret.

If the stuff that was leaked, as Project points out, was “too close for comfort”, then doesn’t Apple have a right to protect their business by making sure such secrets don’t come out until it is presented on a keynote or something? Having too much personal info leaked makes it easy for other companies to play catch-up….Besides, no sources were revealed, so Apple fanboys will probably get their fix sooner or later once a new blog springs up, which it will.

Duncan says: “Without whistle blower/ source protection we lose a free press, and risk totalitarianism..not that I’m saying in this case that Apple = Totalitarianism…”

Kinda’ ironic considering where Apple started… no?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFtuNPTBZ2k

Apple do not have a problem with rumor sites as such. I recall Jobs joking about them in a keynote a while back when he made an apple rumors podcast while demonstrating GarageBand. But when you have an employee leaking details of Asteroid, the Intel move, the Mac Mini (with size and price), Pages etc with 100% accuracy, something had to give.

Its a fine line between journalism and leaking trade secrets, granted. But in this case I don’t think you can call Apple the bad guy here. They wanted to find the internal leaker and ThinkSecret were the only ones who knew who that was.

Are you SURE they go into the Dead Pool? It sounds like someone got paid off big time. Dead Pool doesn’t sound right if you just cashed out! More like Bigbucks Pool!

They paid to make him quiet, sure. But still a big “David versus Goliath” story especially since he didnt sell his buddies.

If you’ve got a hole that large in your organisation, you have to plug it. Especially if you’re a public company and subject to rules about what information you have to release and when. This isn’t like government leaks and whistleblowing which are part of the normal political process, this is sensitive information on which profits and share prices depend which a company is perfectly entitled to keep secret.

That said, getting the entire blog shut down seems over the top. Sacking the leaker and making sure he never works again without a cardboard hat on his head should fix the leak. If I understand the bit about protected sources right, they haven’t even managed to do that, so the mole is still there waiting for another blog to come along and make him an offer. As is clear above, this solution doesn’t do any favours for Apple’s image.

Water pollution effects vary depending on the type of water pollution. The type of pollution can be devastating. Water is the number one natural resource that all life depends on here on Earth and it is up to us to take care of it. Many of the effects of water pollution are passed right up the food chain.

I am amazed that you believe the author of thinksecret should be praised for his high moral ground in not giving up his sources, in todays competitive world companies cannot be so naive as to open up their product development plans to anyone who wants to listen about them. i don’t believe what he was doing was right even though some might argue that people were hungry for information, i imagine some of those people could be apple’s competitors as well.

Apple was wrong!
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I would have sent them to jail!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Gotta love FSJ thoughts

“Boom
ThinkSecret is gone. We shut that motherfucker down. Anyone else want a piece of the Jobsmeister? Step up, bitches.”

Apple ist judt another Microsoft. Let’s get Ubuntu rolling.

This news really saddened me. I used to be an avid reader of ThinkSecret, I was there in their glory days and their not-so-glorious days as well. I remember when the news first broke about the Apple lawsuit… I guess I never thought anything would come of it because thats what happens when major corporations sue website owners these days *cough*piratebay*cough*. I stopped reading ThinkSecret when they stopped putting up content frequently enough to keep up with the other 50Bajillion Mac Rumorsites. I wonder if Nick will anonymously startup a new rumor site now, afterall he DID get to keep his super secret source…

Nice Post. Sad to see TS go. Anyhow, tomorrow is a new day, which means 5 Bazillion new mac rumor sites will spring up. haha

Thanks.

@Duncan Riley

I agree, in spirit, with the “blogger should have the same rights to protect their sources as any other form of journalist does” idea. If anything, we’re seeing how that is playing out since Matt Drudge (perhaps) “broke the story” before the major media ran the story.

But I’m not sure if a site such as ThinkSecret could be considered as journalism as much as gossip and verification of rumor. Whom does the information benefit?

I’m interested in his quote: “I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.” This doesn’t seem to be the quote from journalistic triumph…it seems like a deal was struck that somehow benefited Ciarelli (and this, btw, is pure conjecture).

How do you know Ciarelli didn’t sell out his sources? The agreement is private. I sure hope he didn’t, but he could have revealed his sources with a proviso that they wouldn’t be terminated and that his revelation wouldn’t be made public. Even with those restrictions, Apple would be glad to know who they couldn’t trust within their organization.

sound like you should employ him!

techsecrets? crunchsecrets? rumourcrunch? etc. etc ?

STOP POSTING SHIT UNTIL YOU RELEASE THE CRUNCHIES. YOU’VE MISSED TWO DEADLINES.

Steve Jobs is the devil!

Since when did the “moral high ground” include conspiring to violate NDAs? Riley clearly has some messed-up ideas about what morality is.

ThinkSecret was getting information from people who had voluntarily accepted employment agreements– and money– in exchange for a promise to protect Apple’s secrets. ThinkSecret knew that was the case.

Newspapers aren’t legally allowed to do what ThinkSecret did, either, unless there’s some compelling public-interest justification. That means something like exposing shady political dealings. Business plans do not qualify.

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“High moral ground” for revealing company secrets? I guess I must be old old old school because I still believe in something called trust.

You people are really nasty.
What would you say or do if all of your SECRETS, personal habits, moral and immoral, were posted for all to know because of some spy in your midst(business or personal)?
Wouldn’t you go after the publisher of the “DIRT”?
The kid was a scum bag trying to make a name and MONEY for himself by committing a crime that you fools call freedom of the press.

How much do they walk away with?

http://www.whatshottoday.com

Why is it OK for kids to commit crimes? They can cause just as much harm as an adult. If they get away with it, they grow up and become adult criminals. Their morals go uncorrected and they become adult criminals. It seems that morality has gone to hell in a hand basket. People seem to get a thrill out of doing immoral or illicit acts if they think that they can get away with it or won’t be prosecuted because they are underage.
Why is Apple the bastards? Think secret and Tech Crunch are the bastards. Where is Tech Crunch’s morality. Right is right and wrong is wrong. This forum ought to be shut down.

I am now absolutely convinced that Techcrunch is in love with Apple. Apple kills an information blog, much like Techcrunch, and you write a flimsy paragraph about it? Come on, where are the polls and the picket signs? Where is the list of sites where we can go and say our formal goodbyes. Now if this was a site or service that one of your board members were on we would have a full two page write-up of how it came to be and is no more. So sad.

Dave #24 hits it closest…Since the agreement is private, how do we know he took the moral high ground? How do we know that he didn’t in fact have to pay Apple? How do we know that Apple didn’t have him by the short hairs and took the moral high ground and settled for no payment from him? After all, what got him in trouble was publishing proprietary documents, not just the rumors.

Apple won their suit because legally they were right, as one commentator reported : “statutes forbid you from acquiring or publishing without authorization information you know or have a reasonable basis to know is a trade secret. They are usually invoked when the secret that is revealed gives a competitor an advantage”

They think secret guy actively enticed Apple employees to break their confidentiality agreements. In this case Apple is more right than he is.

if this was about MS it would be on national news not TC.

the guy wasn’t stealing secrets, he was trying to guess what products Apple would com up next.

Apple has an obligation to protect their investors. Employees sign non-disclosure agreements. Think Secret stepped into the middle when they published proprietary information — freedom of the press is *not* unlimited.

If you think that Apple is in the business of creating some sort of utopian ideal of a company you’re bound to be disappointed by reality.

Nick Ciarelli committed industrial espionage. That is a CRIME. Being a child does not excuse him.
Yannick Desjardins, #27, is a miscreant and needs some kind of mental rehab. or counseling. He should look in the mirror when he tries to demonize someone and ask himself just who the devil is that reflection?

WHen will you get off your title crisis Duncan On a flip side, apple fans and share holders will miss ThinkSecret for sure..

The moral high ground in this particular case would have been to give up the source, who was breaking the law (or at the very least his/her signed agreement with Apple) by giving up trade secrets.

And I should also point out that the reason so many people love Apple is because they create such innovative products. No trade secrets equals no more reason to be innovative.

Apple would have a difficult time arguing that anyone got a “competitive advantage” from the leak of this information. Good luck finding an example of anyone but fanboys benefiting from the info released by Think Secret.

The “how would you feel if your trade secrets…” argument does not hold water. How many years has the iPod been on the market? How many companies have tried and failed to copy it’s success? It’s competitors can’t even use existing products that have been out for years to “play catch up” so why in the world would Apple be so fearful for some details to get out before the product is even out? Product information is released all the time pre-launch and very rarely does anything other than promote the product. This is just BS corporate paranoia that hurts Apple in terms of PR much more than the leaks could ever could.

Peter G@28 (and several others):
“Newspapers aren’t legally allowed to do what ThinkSecret did, either, unless there’s some compelling public-interest justification.”

This is absolutely, 100% false.

The law does not dictate what is morally right. Apple is protecting their investment, albeit in a heavy-handed blunderiffic sort of way, but that doesn’t mean it was the right way to do so.

It would have been funny if they’d been able to find the leaker by feeding them fake info to disseminate to TS, then mock them in a keynote or something.

What brain dead losers. All ThinkSecret did was excite the base - nothing was revealed that hurt apple. I love it that leaking on the Mac Mini, easily one of Apple’s LEAST interesting products, is what finally put him over the edge.

EH@46, what I said certainly isn’t false. You may not like it, but that’s a different matter. Newspapers simply don’t have the legal freedom you think they do to publish illegally obtained trade secrets.

And although there’s a strong First Amendment argument to protecting confidential sources– the one issue that did get addressed in court in this case– that still doesn’t mean ThinkSecret owned the “moral high ground” in the original conspiracy.

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I keep reading posts that this guy enticing employees to illegally break confidentiality agreements doesn’t hurt apple. This is nonsense.

1) Releasing product information allows competitors to change their strategies maybe weeks in advance. For example if someone had leaked the details of the iphone before it’s announcement perhaps Nokia, Research in Motion or Microsoft (famous for vaporware) would have announced that they are also planning an “advance touch screen interface” — that would have stolen the thunder from the iphone announcement and maybe hurt sales.

2) Allowing employees to break confidentiality agreements with impunity sets precedence. If this breach is OK then staff might think other leaks might also be OK. We don’t even know if some employees took bribes to release info. In the high competition world of tech the smallest chink in your armor might bring you down — look at high flying AMD or Palm (or a hundred other tech companies) now.

I think TS got a cool $2,000,000 out of it.

Jobs is a scumbag, Maczealots are retards, nothing new here, move on.