Alex Reid

California’s Appeals Court ruled that Internet bloggers have the same legal protection that traditional journalists have.

The ruling came after Apple had successfully argued in a lower court that the publishers of Power Page and Apple Insider be forced to reveal their sources, with Intel Corporation backing Apple in court after they published an “exclusive” account of a new Apple product that they claimed to be in development.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which fought the case for the three online journalists who had seen information which Apple maintained they shouldn’t have seen. Apple wanted them to spill the beans about their sources. Apple went even so far to try to subpoena the bloggers’ email service provider, without luck. The subpeona couldn’t be enforced as that would violate United States’ Stored Communications Act.

The case started to wain for Apple in September 2005, after it was suggested that Apple failed to internally investigate the leak before initiating legal action. In California, companies like Apple can only subpoena journalists after having conducted their own thorough in-house investigation.

“The First Amendment requires that compelled disclosure from journalists be a last resort,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Apple must first investigate its own house before seeking to disturb the freedom of the press.”

In response, Apple had attempted to argue that their internal investigatory procedures were also trade secrets, but the judges didn’t buy it and challenged the adequacy of Apple’s internal investigation.

In the end, the judges made little distinction between online journalists and traditional journalists.

“Does Walter Cronkite stop being a journalist if he blogs for the Huffington Post (an online news site)?” Opsahl said. “What makes a journalist a journalist is not the format. If you’re engaged in journalism, you’re a journalist. You have to look beyond the medium selected.”