Wired identifies iPhone 4G finder
wired.com
wired.com
1. Brian asks the techy guys at Gizmodo for their help in identifying and returning a strange phone to its rightful owner
2. Gizmodo hires Brian as a consultant on the project for $5000, pictures and notes are taken while identifying its owner and origin
3. Phone is shipped back to engineer/Apple within 24 hours
4. Gizmodo publishes a blog entry detailing the successful investigation and return of the phone
:)
Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or would consider the laptop "lost".
If, say, this guy had conspired to break into Apple and steal this thing or stalked the engineer and thieved it outright, then there is a difference. I don't know and don't care if there isn't one by law, it's just not the same.
I think this guy made a bone head decision. I think Gawker did too. I also think mistakes happen and that punishment should fit the crime. What do we know about this crime and the damage it did? It's hard to gauge, but I don't think it's so criminal that people belong in prison for it. This wasn't the nuclear launch codes.
I'll tell you: I would feel nothing, because I would never ever find out.
He belongs in prison if he is found guilty on the broader principle of justice. I am referring to the principle that says that a man that robs you as a private citizen should get at least as severe a penalty as someone that robs a large group of people (in this case, Apple's employees and shareholders). This is required if we are to maintain our rule of law and the benefits that it entails.
His theft resulted in Apple's loss of millions of dollars in trade secrets and marketing. That's one claim that would require a mountain of proof. Until then, prototype or not, its a $400 phone.
When Apple almost went bankrupt in 1997, they were one really leaky ship. Everyone knew what they were working on, so when Macworld time came around, there were no real surprises. Steve Jobs realized that they were losing millions in publicity by screwing this up, and he stopped the leaks and saved Apple. Obviously he did a lot of other things that had a lot to do with their success, but stopping the leaks did have a very measurable impact on them.
Edit: I forgot to mention this earlier, but the Osborne effect is probably the larger factor to consider here. Lots of people will be waiting to get new iPhones now (myself included).
Of course, using reality-based logic, the story is a little different. The reality is that if this incident caused Apple to reschedule the iPhone unveiling by one day, or pushed the release date of the phone back by a week, or took an engineering team offline for a couple days, or forced Apple to spend 80 billable hours with outside counsel, or... look, there's probably not a single action Apple could have taken in response to this that doesn't immediately incur 5-6 figure damages.
Could this guy have possibly realized that? Not Apple's problem. Not the world's greatest caper, this one.
Once he suspected what it was he made no effort to return the device, but made a good deal of effort to sell it to a tech blog. Err... excuse me, his lawyer wants people to say share it with a tech blog.
Before I would leave word at the bar, on the theory you would backtrack.
After I became aware it was a highly sought after prototype I'd extend that to the local police and I'd try to contact HTC but probably fail because they don't want Joe Consumer calling them.
HTC have a lot of phone models, Apple has exactly 3 which most tech savvy folks could identify readily.
Since Apple only has 3 models identifying an Apple phone which is not one of those models is much easier and strongly suggests it's a prototype particularly since Apple is based near the bar in question.
HTC isn't they are based in Taiwan (which most people on the street probably wouldn't know).
The attorney keeps stressing this like it's the cornerstone of their defense. Are they trying to say that he was paid for access to review, not in exchange for the (stolen) iPhone itself?
Things for the jury to consider include: whether it was reasonable to assume that the device was lost and not abandoned, whether he had any malicious intent (his state of mind), and so on. As I mention above, it's not clear-cut at all.
This defense is also good for Gizmodo. It's not illegal to pay someone $5000 to not talk about something to the media. It's the basis for pretty much every employment contract in existence.
Like most high-profile cases, this is not particularly clear-cut. He didn't walk into Apple headquarters, gun down a few guards under the watchful eye of a security camera, take the iPhone, and sell it to the highest bidder. That would be clear-cut "grand theft" (not to mention, murder). Instead, he found it lying around in a bar, asked everyone in the bar if it was theirs, was told no, the excitement and curiosity went to his head, and he ended up with $5000 for letting Gizmodo take some pictures of the thing. A crime? Maybe. But not obviously.
(There is a lot of hate for this guy, but think about it. If you found a cool electronic gadget laying around in a bar, wouldn't you play with it? And when you found out it was a fucking top-secret prototype of one of the most secretive companies in existence, wouldn't you be a little excited? And when you're excited, do you always make the best decisions? If not, you don't belong on HN.
Sure, the guy is a sleaze-bag for pocketing the five grand. But Apple is a sleaze-bag for paying slave children build the phones in the first place. Two wrongs don't make a right, of course, but it is helpful to treat both parties with the same scrutiny; at least when we are using words like "sleaze-bag".)
Mandatory Futurama Quotes:
Fry: You know what the worst thing about being a slave is? They make you work all day but they don't pay you or let you go.
Leela: That's the only thing about being a slave.
Oh HN, why...
Your posts would be a lot more convincing without the unsubstantiated defamation thrown in.
He made no serious attempt to return the phone - he couldn't even contact Apple Care himself? Heck, it's not hard to snap off an email to sjobs@apple.com.
Simply not true. If I find your car and sell it to a chop shop for $300, then what was your car worth? If I paid you back the $300, would we be even?
You wouldn't want $300 back, you'd want to be "made whole." There simply is no way that Apple can be made whole in this situation. The genie is out of the bottle.
Re: the criminal angle, there was no crime in finding the phone, and possibly none in taking it home. It seems possible that there was a crime in converting it to his own benefit instead of turning it into to Apple or the police. So far the DA seems to agree.