WhenMacworldasked to reissue some ofMWJ ’s coverage of the late appellant motor inn decision inO’Grady et al . v. Superior Court ( Apple ) , we sleep together were in for a chip of fuss . The progeny affect are complex , even for lawyer . Therulingwas 69 pages long , with 67 of those pages have actual sound content on them . MWJ ’s own coverage extended to 21 pages , using reasonably succinct type and multiple columns . We recognize that , work with theMacworldstaff , we ’d have to excerpt and blue-pencil the analysis down to something more inline with what you expect to see here .
The job with that idea is that if we could have made it a lot shorter without leaving out central peak , it would n’t have been 20 page long inMWJ , either . You might not get laid it from the offprint , but we look up to brevity . The ruling was just too complex to distil to a few talk point and get everything right .
Since the reissue omittedMWJ ’s net analysis and conclusion about the court ’s opinion , some commenters came away believing that we do n’t view Web intelligence as “ journalism , ” or think that O’Grady ’s casing had any merit . That ’s not the instance — we’ve never really query that journalism can happen in a kind of outlets , and that sites likePowerPageprobably should qualify under California ’s carapace constabulary .
The bountiful problem with the appellant court decision are simple : the law include a narrow listing of professions covered by the cuticle , and “ on-line author ” is not among them . The court of justice interpret broadly to admit O’Grady , even while reading other statutes narrowly when that was necessary to prefer his case .
The newsperson ’s shield in California is qualified , not downright : two decades of precedentrequirecourts to try out whether the content of an clause is in the public interestingness , among many other factors , before make up one’s mind if a reporter has to expose a source under oath anyway . The appellate judicature brush all this aside and said it refused to make up one’s mind what was and was not “ intelligence , ” while simultaneously declaring that O’Grady ’s workwas“news . ” There are hard balancing tests that are supposed to be at work here , and the court for the most part skipped out on them to get to the ending that online newsshouldbe covered by the shield law , even though the letter of the constabulary does not admit it . California ’s legislature couldeasilyfix this , but even while strengthening the shield law of nature in 2001 , take not to do so .
All of this and more is covered in the parts ofMWJ ’s analysis that were too foresighted for a standardMacworldarticle . We ’re therefore happy to bring you a reprint of theentireanalysis , inMWJ ’s stock PDF formatting , for your holiday weekend read leisure time .
Download the PDF here .
We ’re not lawyers , and we ’re not sure we ’re right . We ’re glad we ’re not the ones deciding this , because the Libra between Freedom of the Press and of property rights is very dodgy . We ’re not indisputable any decision would please everyone , but we ’re pretty sure agooddecision would emphasize both of these constitutional principles and fight to find a Libra the Scales .
We do n’t think this decisiveness reached that standard , and we ’re pleased to work with Macworld.com to bring you ourcompleteargument as to why that ’s true , reprinted from MWJ 2006.05.31 .
[ PDF file reprinted with license from MacJournals.com . Copyright 2006 , GCSF , contain . The MacJournals.com faculty is busy this calendar week on the 2005 - 2006 MDJ Power 25 , to be unwrap in full in this weekend ’s issue of MWJ . For a free tryout that includes this class ’s influence list , visitwww.macjournals.com . ]
