Don't let me reduce the importance this post and many others place on the EFF and its continuing efforts on behalf of digital free speech. The EFF is doing important and necessary work.

Do, though, read the article closely. Apple made two arguments-- first, that bloggers weren't real journalists, and second, that Apple ought to be able to go after people who disclose its trade secrets no matter whether they disclose those secrets to journalists (however defined) or to other kinds of folks.

The judge ruled for Apple, but the article doesn't say which one of Apple's two arguments he bought. Other recent cases (there's one in Rhode Island) have limited traditional newsprint journalists' ability to resist subpoenas on First Amendment grounds. This case may not be about bloggers' status so much as about what all journalists (digital or old-media) can and can't do.

Re: "...we are going to have to create some sort of blogger defense organization that protects our rights as political activists and as journalists."

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) is that organization. It would make huge sense for the blogosphere to mount a major push to shore up the EFF defense funds and their ranks of committed volunteers. They've been incredibly strong on First Amendment rights, on open source protections and on raising serious questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. Check them out at http://www.eff.org

Steve
OperationEnduringVote.org

The three Web sites in question are not "blogs." They've all been around for 7-8 years, selling tons of advertising to Macintosh owners, and reeling them in through rumors and speculation. The sites never called themselves "blogs" until the subpoenas came down, have never advertised themselves as "blogs," don't use blogging software, don't act like blogs, and don't function like blogs.

EFF was quick to use the word, though, because it generates lots of sympathy, as this thread plainly shows. Now, if we want to have the debate about whether Web journalists deserve protection when reporting on matters that are only questionably of public concern (like a company's trade secrets that have no policy impact whatsoever), that's cool. Bring it on. It'll have to happen sooner or later.

Let's just, please, get the terms right, and not indignantly rush to defend "bloggers" when that's not what the court is considering.

(Caveat: I have written on this issue before outside of my work.)

...this time, in its own lede on the story:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Free speech advocates asked a state judge Friday to grant the same protections mainstream journalists enjoy to three independent Web publishers embroiled in a lawsuit that Apple Computer Inc. filed over company trade secrets they obtained.

That is, in fact, the issue in question.

In fact, if I were to suggest any kind of organizing effort in blogosphere, I'd tend to look for a way of making sure that no opposition activity, no matter how benign it may appear, lacks for attention from one blogger or another.  The right wing is much, much better organized that we are.  They love to send us skittering off in en masse after Gannons and Decalogues.

However they are wrong to state that the freedoms of speech and the press do not cover blogs because "they aren't conventional media". Oh in that case, we should consider restraining the 2nd amendment freedom to bear arms to only flint and powder muskets, since that's what was available for personal arms back in the day of the founding fathers!

Oh, and Apple sucks.