A California appeals court ruled last Friday that Apple can’t force website operators to divulge sources that gave them details of an unannounced product. The decision overturns an earlier ruling that gave Apple the power to force the disclosure.

One interesting aspect of the ruling is that the court specifically deals with blogging, declaring that constitutional free-press protections do apply to bloggers. See the footnotes on page 44 for a discussion of the definition of blogging and the similarity of blogs to other forms of publishing. I’m not familiar with a precedent to this case that deals with first amendment issues around blogging, but maybe somebody could set me straight.

I was also surprised to note extensive references to Wikipedia in the court’s footnotes. Given that there is ongoing debate over the reliability of information on Wikipedia, I thought it was interesting that a state appellate court considers the source reliable enough to cite extensively in a legal decision.

Thanks to Alice LaPlante for pointing out this story on the Informationweek Blog.