The definition of journalist in the blogosphere age and the technological opportunity enabling anyone to be a publisher sets up a significant challenge to the legal system's interpretation of the first amendment.
"Bloggers are becoming a more and more critical source of news," said Kurt Opsahl, the lawyer representing the two sites and a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in California. "A lot of confidential tips first start out on the blogs before being picked up in the mainstream media."
Apple, however, makes a strong argument that certain information is protected and should not be published. Basically this is the same message the federal government makes in the case of NY Times reporters who outed a CIA agent.
"'Apple does not seek to discourage communication protected by the free-speech guarantees of the United States and California Constitutions,' Apple said in the suit. 'These constitutionally protected freedoms, however, do not extend to defendants' unlawful practice of misappropriating and disseminating trade secrets acquired through the deliberate violation of known duties of confidentiality.'"
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