É este o próximo desafio na liberdade de expressão? Empresas [e políticos] vs. jornalistas e "bloggers":
Apple demanda a periódico online y que divulgue las fuentes de sus artículos: Apple ha cumplido sus amenazas realizadas hace pocas semanas y ha emprendido acciones contra uno de los más populares boletines electrónicos dedicados al mundo Mac, Think Secret (www.thinksecret.com).
Apple en su petición al juez afirma desconocer quien es el autor de las informaciones publicadas y hace responsable de ellas al propietario o editor del contenido publicado. También demanda la retirada de los informes publicados y la revelación de las fuentes sobre las que se ha basado el autor o autores de los artículos para publicar la información.
Bloggers Blur the Definition of Reporters? Privilege:
As two prominent Washington journalists struggle to avoid jail time over their refusal to disclose confidential sources, one of the biggest obstacles the reporters face is America?s fastgrowing army of citizen Web loggers, or bloggers. [...]
The crux of the reporters? contention is that the public would be less well informed if journalists could not promise their sources confidentiality. If [Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine] are entitled to claim special treatment in the courts, so too could hundreds of thousands of Americans who use the Internet to post comments about their views on current events.
?They?ll say anybody with a modem and a computer is a ?journalist,?? said a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, Jane Kirtley. ?No court is going to be comfortable with that sort of wholesale privilege.?
Ms. Miller?s attorney, Floyd Abrams, said he is bracing for questions from the court about the perils of granting legal protection to the burgeoning ranks of bloggers.
?There?s no doubt that?s the potentially dangerous aspect of it,? Mr. Abrams said in a telephone interview from his Manhattan office yesterday. ?If everybody?s entitled to the privilege, nobody will get it.?
Mr. Abrams said he thinks many bloggers should be entitled to the same kind of protection he is seeking for his client and other traditional journalists. ?I think a blogger who communicates with and tries to communicate with thousands of people is not less deserving than a journalist who may communicate with a smaller audience through a small-town newspaper,? the attorney said. ?There should be protection so long as information was obtained for the purpose of dissemination to the public at large in some sort of analogous way to what ?journalists? do.?
However, Mr. Abrams said bloggers who confine their comments to matters of a personal nature should not enjoy any special privilege. ?I don?t think one can sustain the position that everyone who has a Web site that they may put comments about their former girlfriends on is therefore a journalist,? he said.
