A California judge has turned down the requests by several media houses to make public a videotaped deposition of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, citing the transcript of footage now serves as an official court record.
Jobs’s videotaped deposition, which was taken just six months before his death in 2011, was used in a decade-old class-action lawsuit that accused the tech giant of abusing its power of monopoly in the music industry.
Apple had won the lawsuit earlier this week, and hence the company was not required to pay damages in the antitrust trial.
The request to release the videotape was made by a bunch of media outlets including the Associated Press, CNN and Bloomberg.
While denying the media request, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that as cameras are prohibited in federal district courtrooms, the video was used instead of live testimony. As the court does not permit other live testimony to be taped, the video transcript (and not the tape itself) will serve as the official court record, the judge decided.
During the ruling, the Judge said, “As is typical of all live testimony, it is properly made available to the public through its initial courtroom presentation, and subsequently, via the official court transcript.”
The court ruling also said that if such video depositions are released in a routine manner, then it may discourage the future witnesses from taking part in taped depositions as the fear for getting publicly broadcasted someday would loom large on them.
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