The three-year court battle between popular rumor site Think Secret and Apple has concluded. Sadly, the end result is that Think Secret will no longer be published.Speaking by phone Wednesday morning Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, refused to say whether he was angry or not that Apple is forcing him to shut down his website. All he would say is that he was "very satisfied" with the settlement. "It's great," he said, "it's great to put this behind us. It's great that we got a settlement that satisfies both parties." It's possible the settlement may prevent him from reporting on Apple ever again, although Ciarelli, 22, wouldn’t specify whether this was true.For a time, Think Secret was one of the most successful of half-a-dozen Apple rumor sites. The site reported a string of high-profile scoops, consistently revealing details of Apple's product plans all through the mid-2000s. But the site also got many things wrong, and missed several important products.Apple brought a civil lawsuit after Think Secret published details of an unreleased music product codenamed "Asteroid" in January 2005. Specifically, the company went after Think Secret for "posting Apple trade secrets and encouraging and inducing persons to provide product information in breach of agreements," the lawsuit said. Ciarelli did say he was "looking for other opportunities," but that journalism was still one of his main interests"It continues to remain a strong interest of mine," he said. "And I think I'll continue to follow that path."Ciarelli, who is majoring in social studies at Harvard and will graduate in June, also wouldn’t say how he feels about Apple. "I didn’t enjoy being sued, he said. "I've always been an enthusiastic fan of Apple's products. I was before they sued me, and I was after they sued me. That hasn't changed."Apple never talks about unreleased products, a situation that has sparked a cottage industry of web sites trading in speculation about Apple's future product plans.It's widely believed that Apple's ultimate goal wasn't to get the site closed down, but rather to hunt down mole(s) feeding Think Secret information."I'm not going to speculate on that," Ciarelli said. "I'm not going to weigh in on the company's motivations."Think Secret, which launched in 1999, tried to have the lawsuit dismissed calling it "an affront to the First Amendment, and an attempt to use Apple's economic power to intimidate small journalists...." The case, and a similar lawsuit against Apple Insider and PowerPage.org, attracted the legal assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, and became a cause célèbre amongst journalists. Even while the Apple lawsuit was active, Think Secret continued to post news and software screenshots, in spite of threatening legal letters from Apple. Ciarelli says he actually has a stack of cease-and-desist letter, although they are not framed.Think Secret was one of the few websites to publish galleries of unofficial screenshots of Leopard before the operating system was released. Ciarelli said Think Secret received cease and desist letters from Apple's lawyers, but refused to pull the pictures down for some time. When it comes to screenshots, Apple rumor websites typically comply with these cease and desist letters because Apple has a strong copyright claim on images of its products or software, which can’t be published without the company's permission. In fact, a cease and desist letter from Apple is widely regarded as confirmation of a picture or screenshot's accuracy. If Apple forces a site to remove it: it was likely true.While the Leopard galleries could be viewed on the site for several months, they have since been removed without explanation. Apple and Ciarelli's lawyer, Terry Gross, didn't immediately respond to our request for comment.
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