Apple, it’s time to call off the legal dogs.
Jason O’Grady, the long-term publisher behind PowerPage, is being sued by Apple.
Would you ever want to be on the business end of legal action from a company with US$9 billion in cash? What about being targeted for deletion by one of most powerful multi-national corporations in the world? What if a company with US$14 billion in revenue and 14,000 employees wanted a piece of your ass?
Welcome to my world.
This is stupid, and not just because the story that O’Grady originally posted is about some dinky little Garageband add-on.
- It’s stupid because Apple is suing someone who loves and supports Apple.
- It’s stupid because Apple is hurting itself by suing O’Grady by getting tons of bad press.
- It’s stupid because in the US, the first amendment right to free speech is fairly clear.
- It’s stupid because Apple’s love of secrecy, blended with small leaks that tell part of the story, is the perfect guerrilla marketing mix.
- It’s stupid because, even if you’re Steve Jobs, you can’t control the whole world or make every person do exactly what you want him or her to do.
- It’s stupid because controlling all information at all times is impossible, or at least impractical.
Apple: stop this. It’s wrong, and almost everyone at Apple should know it. Call off the lawyers.
There’s a much newer company just up the road from you that has a fairly idealistic slogan: Do No Evil. Apple’s never explicitly adopted anything like it, but the community of Mac lovers and users has always felt that the people at Apple were “the good guys.”
Don’t let a little success get to your heads. More importantly, don’t let a little success get to your hearts.
Update:
John Welch at bynkii.com is solidly on Apple’s side in this discussion. I wonder if he’d feel differently if he was getting sued?
Actually, the suing bit would be tricky. I don’t break NDA, nor do I facilitate those who do. I was raised in the old school of news reporting, where the only time reporters broke “off the record”, was when there was such an overwhelming need to, that to NOT do so would be an abandonment of their responsibilities.
Rumors about Apple products are no more “in the public interest” than the news of a new mole on Paris Hilton’s ass. To say that anything published anywhere at any time is all the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers is inane and stupid.
But then, that’s what rumor sites are: Inane and Stupid. Such synchronicity.
Hmmm … OK. Many Apple rumor sites are a little off the wall.
However, there’s at least one (Apple Insider) that is anything but inane and stupid.
Do you have any comments, btw, on my main point, which is that all the legal nonsense (which, btw, no longer exists) hurts Apple more than helping it?