The drama of "Apple vs. Unknown NDA-Violating Scumwad And His Twenty-Four Lowlife Friends" continues apace; faithful viewer Julie Stephens notes an Associated Press article which reports that soon "John Doe 1" might sprout a real name. Apparently Apple has managed to secure a subpoena from Superior Court Judge Gregory H. Ward, demanding that Yahoo! "turn over records of a member using the computer pseudonym 'worker bee.'" Worker bee, as you know, frequented the AppleInsider message boards and frequently posted information about upcoming products that Apple claims are (or, uh, were) trade secrets. Hence the ruckus.

Despite the fact that John Doe 1/worker bee/whatever you want to call him is probably halfway to Tijuana by now, leaving a trail of scattered iBook DV photos in his wake, Apple seeks to learn his "name, e-mail and street address, phone number, and Internet protocol address." In addition, several highly-placed AtAT sources reveal that Apple has also specified that Yahoo! disclose worker bee's registered political affiliation, sexual orientation, favorite color, turn-ons and turn-offs, and what kind of car he drives. Yahoo! has reportedly expressed some puzzlement over these additional requests, stating that it does not collect that sort of information from GeoCities members. Apple's response was supposedly a broad wink and the cryptic phrase, "You know what we're talking about."

And so, the net begins to close; if he hasn't scarpered, soon worker bee will be dragged out into the daylight and beaten viciously with the Civil Liability Stick. While it's possible that he may have taken steps to cover his tracks, we doubt that he anticipated an actual lawsuit when he created his GeoCities accounts for the purpose of leaking Mac info. The only ways out we can see are Mexico and ritual suicide. (Well, not both together-- that'd just be silly.) Meanwhile, all we'll have left are worker bee's voluminous postings to the AppleInsider forums, of which there are many.

By the way, isn't it curious that Apple hasn't included the divulging of Cube information in its list of grievances? Because a quick scan of worker bee's posts reveals that he did post quite a lot of info pre-release about Apple's "mini-Mac"-- and there's even an interesting tidbit from just a week and a half ago about how the Cube's delay may in fact be due to the addition of a fan because the ATI graphics circuitry is running too hot. And then there's all the stuff about both the new iBook and the PowerBook G4. Which means that worker bee's legacy may remain for quite some time, even if Apple does manage to string him up and... well, we won't go there. Suffice it to say that the damage worker bee has done will linger for months, and that we bet Apple's looking to make its punishment last even longer.