When Daily Variety broke the news that Pixar had hired writers for the pitch that became the 2007 release ‘Ratatouille,’ Steve Jobs tracked the reporter down at the Sundance Film Festival, demanding to know her sources and threatening to fire the film’s writers. He called her on the private line of a rented condo–a number she had not given out to anyone. She still doesn’t know how he found it.”
–Daily Variety, June 18, 2006

Apple’s long-running war with the Fourth Estate–well, the Black Bag ops portion of it, anyway–has finally claimed its first victim. Think Secret, a Mac rumor site Apple sued for misappropriation of trade secrets back in 2005 after it pre-announced the Mac mini and the iLife ’05 software suite, has agreed to cease publication as part of its settlement with the company. “Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides,” Think Secret said in a statement. “As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published.”

A bit of an about-face for Think Secret and its 21-year-old publisher Nicholas Ciarelli, who up until this point had fought the suit tooth-and-nail, painting it as an effort to chill free speech and Apple as the tech industry’s version of the Nixon-era White House for filing it. “Apple’s lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and an attempt to use Apple’s economic power to intimidate small journalists,” Think Secret said in a 2005 Anti-SLAPP filing. “If a publication such as the New York Times had published such information, it would be called good journalism; Apple never would have considered a lawsuit.”

Probably not. And it would never consider a suit against analyst Gene Munster, who’s essentially Piper Jaffray’s version of Think Secret. So why settle? We may never know, though in his statement, Ciarelli seemed to suggest he simply wanted to get on with his life without the specter of Apple legal hanging over him. “I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement,” he said. “[I] will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”

UPDATE: The Think Secret camp describes the settlement as a loss for Apple. “It’s clear that Apple filed the lawsuit with such fanfare, but then stopped the entire litigation because they thought they were going to lose, and that they’d end up paying [Nick] a lot of money for it,” Ciarelli’s lawyer, Terry Gross of Gross & Belsky LLP, told Computerworld. “This shows that lawsuits like Apple’s can be stopped dead. … Other companies are going to realize that if they try something like this, there will be an uproar, and groups like EFF will do what it takes [to represent defendants]. … I would have loved for Apple to go forward on this. Apple would have caved, which they should have in the beginning.”

It is more important for us to participate, not only for economic reasons, but to be able to [help shape where the industry is going]. You have to balance the risk of not participating. And people don’t realize that being in the market every day there, and being on the ground, we are seeing changes, on the whole, for the positive.”
–-Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang on China, March 2006

Sure, Yahoo signed China’s “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry,” a voluntary agreement to monitor and restrict information deemed “harmful” by Beijing, but did it have to take it quite so seriously? Was it really necessary to divulge the identity of a Chinese journalist who was subsequently arrested and sent to prison for a decade? Can’t Yahoo do business in China without helping its government jail political dissidents (three at last count)?

We may never get a staight answer to those questions, but at least they’re being asked. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has ordered an investigation into Yahoo’s role in the prosecution of Shi Tao, a journalist and Yahoo Mail user, who was arrested in 2004 by Chinese officials after Yahoo cooperated with their request for information. The committee’s interest in the matter was sparked by new documents that suggest Yahoo gave information to Chinese authorities knowing that it could lead to the reporter’s arrest. An interesting revelation, as Yahoo has long maintained it had no information about the nature of the investigation.

“This new documentation suggests that Yahoo’s Beijing office was at least aware of the general nature of the crime being investigated in the Shi Tao case even if it was unaware of the specific circumstances or the name of the individual involved,” said Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights organization. “One does not have to be an expert in Chinese law to know that ‘state secrets’ charges have often been used to punish political dissent in China. We must remember that before Shi Tao there were three other Chinese dissidents about whom Chinese police obtained user information from Yahoo in Beijing. If we assume that law-enforcement agencies investigating these cases followed the same procedures to obtain that information, three other notices would have been provided specifying investigations into subversion or incitement–crimes of a more unambiguous political nature.”

A scathing indictment and one that may mean Yahoo is finally called to answer for its conduct in China. “It is bad enough that a wealthy American company would willingly supply Chinese police the means to hunt a man down for shedding light on repression in China,” said Tom Lantos, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Covering up such a despicable practice when Congress seeks an explanation is a serious offense. For a firm engaged in the information industry, Yahoo sure has a lot of secrecy to answer for. We expect to learn the truth, and to hold the company to account.”