Well, SFist got our legal history off to a good start -- we're involved in a court case, and we're not the defendant! Nor are we the plaintiff -- though if you don't abide by the terms of our Creative Commons license, we will come after you, and we've been in the same room as Lawrence Lessig, so watch out.

We read a post on BoingBoing in which their counsel Lauren Gelman over at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society requested that bloggers with examples of journalism that used confidential sources to break stories send them in. So we did, and she invited us to sign on to a Brief of Amicus Curiae [PDF] in the Apple v. Does case. Not wanting to hoard all the historical glory, we invited the rest of the 'ists to join us, and now they appear under the banner Gothamist, LLC alongside fellow amici and SFist heroes The First Amendment Project, Gawker Media, Happy Mutants, Ben Hammersley, Joichi Ito, Markos Moulitsas, Peter Rojas, Jay Rosen and Kevin Sites.

We'd like to thank Lauren for her hard work putting it all together, and say that we are truly honored to be included. The brief argues that the practice of journalism, in Donna Wentworth's words, 'is a verb, not a noun,' and that bloggers shouldn't be denied journalistic protections simply because of their publishing medium -- cases should be judged based on the merits of the story. The issue in this particular case is whether or not trade secrets were coerced from sources and illegaly published, but SFist feels that it would set a precedent whereby companies would be excused from an exhaustive internal investigation before subpoenaing journalists.