Blog Coalition Bear Flag League Weighs in on Apple Case

April 17th, 2005 at 3:00 PM - News by Brad Cook

On Monday, the Bear Flag League, a coalition of 80 bloggers, filed a friend of the court brief in OiGrady vs. Superior Court, an appellate proceeding that came out of the case that Apple filed in December 2004 against several unnamed "Does." The anonymous defendants were presumably the source of product rumor articles published on the OiGradyis Powerpage, Think Secret and Apple Insider Web sites.

The brief takes the same position as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which believes that bloggers should be afforded the same protection as journalists. Enterprise Counsel Groupis Jeffrey Lewis, one of the attorneys who filed the friend of the court brief, told The Mac Observer that "bloggers should have the same rights as Dan Rather and other mainstream journalists." Lewisi blog is part of the Bear Flag League.

Lewis noted, however, that not all bloggers fall under this protection. "You have to look at what the bloggers are doing," he said. "Thereis a world of difference when youire talking about ten-year-old girls writing diaries and a site that gathers news with the intent to disseminate it to the public." Lewis said that while such distinctions should be made on a case-by-case basis, this particular case should give the reporters for the three Web sites the same protection as their print, TV and radio counterparts.