A "whistleblower" is one who reports on activities at a company or government entity which are illegal.  These people should be protected.  But Apple developing new products is hardly illegal and those who report it should have no expectation of being protected.

As I understand it--and I may be wrong--part of what judges decide in these cases is whether or not society benefits from the disclosure of the person's name.  For example, in a criminal trial, the right of the accused to know where evidence came from is more important than the whistleblower's privacy because the evidence cannot be used (and, possibly, any evidence that was generated from the whistleblower).  I'd have a hard time believing that there is any benefit to society when it comes to leaking new Apple products and whatever benefit that might come up is easily countered by Apple's argument.

While I recognize the slippery slope that the journalists comment about, I think you're blowing it out of proportion.  Again, there is a difference between new products coming from Apple and corporate malfeasance.  And I expect that judges will recognize this.

This is, frankly, one of those things that bothers me about "journalists."  They want to consider themselves to be "The Fourth Estate."  However, all of the other estates have checks and balances which make certain that no one group has too much power.  However, the press does not want to accept these checks--"our readers will decide."

Whistle-blowing has the same effects, but balances the harm with the good of revealing legal or ethical problems.

The first amendment should protect the second, but not the first, as the second serves the good it was created for.  Regrettably, you cannot legislate morality effectively, nor good sense, so we have to judge the results instead.  That means lawsuits.

Put another way, if you are going to reveal proprietary information, you should take a moment to consider whether what you are revealing is really in the public interest.  Telling the world what Apple is going to show at the keynote cannot do much good, and can do harm.

Telling the world of fraud, or flaws they knew of and decided to ship anyway still does harm, but has an associated good.

Since the recent spate of screenshot-equipped rumors and uploads of Tiger, Apple has released no new Tiger betas to developers, and has closed the seed discussion lists they tried out last year.  I suspect that they trust their developers less, and given that screenshots of every previous seed have shown up on the rumor sites in hours, along with detailed analysis of beta software, I cannot really blame them.  That lack of trust is problematic for developers, and inevitable if they have no legal recourse to even find, let alone prosecute, the leakers.  Companies need appropriate legal protection of their ability to ship what they want, when they want to, at least if we want them to trust non employees.  Not a wall of silence, just the ability to face their accusers like any other.

I must admit, I was very unhappy with one of your (Ed's) responses.  The original article had a point I disagreed with, but at least it was clearly a discussion.  The innuendo that "someone high up at Apple was behind the rumors" is yellow journalism, along the same lines as claiming that the Atlanta security guard who found the bomb at Olympics was a public figure, because he had done something that would be of public interest.  If you have proof of a high level Apple exec revealing this information, by all means reveal it.  That counts as whistle blowing, in that it damages the credibility of the lawsuit against the rumor sites, but just making the unsubstantiated claim hurts your credibility.

My point is not that a planned leak is impossible - it surely is possible.  My point is that journalists need to use the first amendment for its constitutional purpose - limitation of governmental power and revelation of corruption.  Reporting on legal and ethical violations with corporations surely fits that mandate as well.

If the first amendment starts looking like a shield behind which baseless accusations can hide, then it will cease to be societally useful, and it will go away.  That would not be good for any of us.