The long-running Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) fan site Think Secret is being shut down after almost three years of litigation and a confidential settlement. Nicholas Ciarelli, a 22- year-old Harvard student has been running the site since he was thirteen years old.

Think Secret's claim to fame was publishing top-secret information about upcoming Apple products before it was supposed to be made public. Apple unveils new products every January at its Macworld conference, and the race is always on in December to scoop Steve Jobs on his company's offerings.

And Think Secret apparently did an excellent job of tipping everyone off on Apple's secret plans. Apple filed suit to try to get the names of Ciarelli's sources.

At one point it seemed as if Ciarelli had the upper hand in the litigation. Apple filed suit on the basis that ThinkSecret was publishing trade secrets about Apple's strategic plans. Ciarelli's attorney, Terry Gross, filed a motion to dismiss the suit, citing First Amendment rights. Apple essentially stopped litigating at that point.

Finally, Fox did something I can applaud. Today Fox's parent News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) announced that it was canceling the OJ Simpson book If I Did It, and corresponding TV interview. The project was so vile, so immoral, that even the media's most whorish member bowed to universal disgust and kaboshed the thing. So much for its Sweeps week zinger.

"I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project," Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman said in an Associated Press report. "We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

Books have been pulled out of contract or off shelves when there are questions of accuracy, but it's almost unprecedented, thanks to the First Amendment, to pull a book solely due to objectionable content. Certainly this may be the first time such a high-profile book has been pulled this close to publication. The only book that springs to mind that spawned such widespread vitriol from publishing circles was Brett Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" in 1991.

It's not surprising that Fox's affiliates, many of whom bear the mantle of Conservatism proudly, would protest loudly. How many of its Christian-family- values" audience want to see this sort of content on the tube? As for bookstores, Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP) one of the nation's largest, said it would donate any profits resulting from the book to charity.

Absolutists on the First Amendment might disagree with the decision to pull the project from public consumption, preferring to let the marketplace decide for itself, but in today's world, that's going to happen anyway. The book is now officially a collectible. And eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is there to make sure there's a market for it.