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.