The site’s current traffic is as high as several million page views a month, according to Ciarelli, who also says that the site generates a healthy profit.

In the course of developing his site, Ciarelli, who is also a Crimson editor, says he came to see himself more as a journalist covering Apple than a technological whiz.

“I have a lot of technology sitting on my desk, but at the same time I know lots of people who are much, much more technical than I am,” says Ciarelli, who adds that the experience has helped to foster his interest in journalism.

BEING WATCHED

And his stance as a journalist is a part of his defense against Apple’s lawsuit.

Apple Inc. alleged in a suit filed in the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara in Jan. 4, that Ciarelli had published “trade secrets” which he illegally solicited from Apple employees who had signed contracts of confidentiality.

“Defendants’ knowing misappropriation and disclosure of Apple’s trade secrets constitutes a violation of California law and has caused irreparable harm to Apple,” the lawsuit states.

Apple could not be reached for comment for this article.

Ciarelli has denied any wrongdoing, saying that he is a journalist who obtained information through legal news-gathering practices.

The freshman devoted most of his January reading period to searching for a lawyer.

He eventually found prominent internet lawyer Terry Gross through the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which advocates the protection of civil liberties as related to technology and the internet.

Gross says he decided to represent Ciarelli pro bono because “I thought that what would happen is a large corporation trying to bully a small journalist.”

Gross says that big corporations use lawsuits as a strategy to intimidate journalists who cannot afford sufficient legal representation.

“Corporations have been doing this for years, for decades, using the legal system improperly as a way to intimidate and silence people they don’t like,” Gross says.

Ciarelli is protected by the First Amendment, Gross says, and cites Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the media defendants who had legally published information that was illegally obtained by others.