Quote: In other news, Coke leaves secret formula in Miami strip club, dares Pepsi to pick it up.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
And I'm not sure you can use journalistic privilege as a defense against paying for a stolen mobile phone just because you want the latest scoop on the technological shinies. [rolleyes]

It's not paying for a stolen phone. It's obtaining mislaid property after completing finder's duties.

Gizmodo bought the story and got the phone free. They made serious attempts to return the phone, but Apple denied the phone's existence. They only published after waiting long enough for Apple to change it's mind and claim the phone, as advised by their attorney.

It's pretty much entirely Apple's fault, because if they would have owned up to losing the phone, they would have gotten their phone back in it's original condition. By not claiming the phone, it became property of Gizmodo by a large number of legal precedences.

The law isn't always fair. The only difference from what we normally see is that it's the big corporation getting screwed by the law instead of the individual.

Quote: Original post by BronzeBeard
That being said, are you really trying to back up apple? ...

So now Apple is the devil, because Apple's security company used inappropriate "interrogation techniques" or whatever? Again, this link also says nothing about Apple doing anything.

Look, I find Apple obnoxious at the moment, but given that both the links you've mentioned have absolutely nothing to do with the reasons I dislike Apple, I have absolutely no reason to agree with you.

This has become a first amendment issue, not a crime and punishment issue.

Quote:
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Gaby Darbyshire, chief operating officer of Gawker Media, Gizmodo's parent company wrote in a letter to the office in charge of the search that the company believed the warrant was invalid because Chen is a journalist and the material seized was unpublished information that is protected by state and federal law.

Darbyshire cited California law that says search warrants may not be issued for a reporter's "notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort" that was not published as part of a report.

"The California Court of Appeals has made it abundantly clear," Darbyshire wrote, "that these protections apply to online journalists," citing a 2006 case that also involved an Apple product. In that instance, the court held that Apple could not force writers at a technology blog to identify their sources.
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Steve Jobs' iPhone police state

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Four days later, on Friday evening, the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team launched into action. Terrorists can waltz into New York City with pounds of explosives loaded in the trunk of their car, but in Silicon Valley, you mess with Steve Jobs and you are going to get an unfriendly visit from The Man. Maybe Mr. jobs should be appointed the next head of Homeland Security?

Granted, we all knew Jobs was an all-powerful despot worshipped by a fanatic cult and capable of extraordinary feats of techno-magic. But the fact that he can twitch his fingers and send local police smashing through the locked doors of a private citizen's home gives one pause. Apple fanboys are cheering him on, and a noxious aura of sleaziness surrounds the entire "lost" iPhone saga, but any serious journalist who makes a living reporting on anything Apple-related is likely to be feeling a tad nervous about the news. Isn't getting a scoop, by any means necessary, part of our job description? What if a Salon reporter paid money for documents proving the maltreatment of Chinese workers in Apple's offshore iPhone assembly plants -- and then came home to find police rifling through his or her computer?
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Gizmodo's COO, Gaby Darbyshire, immediately condemned the seizure of the computers and other devices as illegal under California law. Darbyshire cited Section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code, which states that a search warrant may not be served for "any items or items" covered by Section 1070 of California's evidence code, which in turn states: (italics mine)

a) A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed, cannot be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose, in any proceeding as defined in Section 901, the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.

It will be interesting to see what a judge thinks of such an argument. Protecting the right of a journalist to protect a source is a non-trivial bulwark of a free society. But does someone who pays cash for a consumer product that could technically be considered a stolen good deserve the special legal protection normally granted to reporters? Just because someone found a lost iPhone doesn't give that person the automatic right to sell it to Gawker -- under California law it may even make Gawker guilty of theft.

And whatever happened to a simple subpoena? Did the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team really have to break Jason Chen's door down? (And why aren't they busy fighting Russian and Chinese hackers, anyway?)
...

Quote: upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed

Is Gizmodo any of that?

Isn't traditional media dead?

Here is an interesting problem. With everyone cheering at demise of traditional infrastructure - does that mean law no longer applies?

I have no clue with regard to legal status of Gizmodo, but are they a publication? Are they press? By the letter of the law?

It's easy to call a blog "press", but it's just a web page. It's easy to dismiss formal titles, such as "journalist", but writing about an event does not one a journalist make. It may seem silly to argue semantics, but letter of the law is final. People were very quick to dissect the warrant - but what about the other side?


A while back, a reporter wrote about something related to bittorrent and in article mentioned he downloaded something and compared quality. He got fired the next day, with that paper distancing itself and denouncing any involvement, or something similar. Real media wouldn't touch a phone of this type if it lay in the middle of a bar with blinking lights on it. Let alone pay for it.

Car industry is similar. Publish the wrong thing, and not you, nor anyone associated with you will ever get a press statement or be invited to any event. The notorious Elchtest proved this point once and for all, despite actual safety being at stake there.

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed

Is Gizmodo any of that?

Isn't traditional media dead?

dying, but not dead yet. It's working on it though, thankfully.

Quote:
Here is an interesting problem. With everyone cheering at demise of traditional infrastructure - does that mean law no longer applies?

I have no clue with regard to legal status of Gizmodo, but are they a publication? Are they press? By the letter of the law?

Looks like (googled a bit ago) that the seized computers were returned. Does that mean that the law applies? No, but it may mean that there wasn't enough evidence available for them to press it and possibly set a precedent that would protect gizmodo and other online publishers against such raids.

Quote:
It's easy to call a blog "press", but it's just a web page. It's easy to dismiss formal titles, such as "journalist", but writing about an event does not one a journalist make. It may seem silly to argue semantics, but letter of the law is final. People were very quick to dissect the warrant - but what about the other side?

Yes and no, see a recent case in new jersey where a blogger was not afforded the full standing as a journalist in a defamation case (Too Much Media, LLC v. Hale).

Quote: A while back, a reporter wrote about something related to bittorrent and in article mentioned he downloaded something and compared quality. He got fired the next day, with that paper distancing itself and denouncing any involvement, or something similar. Real media wouldn't touch a phone of this type if it lay in the middle of a bar with blinking lights on it. Let alone pay for it.

Piracy (as a recent federal study showed) is a vastly overblown subject, but none the less... can you expect any less? Said newsprints and other medias are sponsors of groups like the MPAA, RIAA, and others. As such they can't be seen as being in favor of (in any manner), said actions.

Quote:
Car industry is similar. Publish the wrong thing, and not you, nor anyone associated with you will ever get a press statement or be invited to any event. The notorious Elchtest proved this point once and for all, despite actual safety being at stake there.

Not true, see Top Gear. They give cars bad reviews all the time, and yet they continue to be provided with cars to review by those manufacturers. At the same time Dodge didn't give them a challenger because they said they dissed their cars too much (yet they still bought one, and found they liked it).

[Edited by - phantom on April 27, 2010 4:50:23 PM]

Quote: Original post by Washu
Not true, see Top Gear. They give cars bad reviews all the time, and yet they continue to be provided with cars to review by those manufacturers. At the same time Dodge didn't give them a challenger because they said they dissed their cars too much (yet they still bought one, and found they liked it).

Reviews are more about internal ethics, but here is a better example.

An automotive industry online journalist is walking down the street and is stopped by a shady person. For only $5000, he can have the latest Mercedes prototype. It doesn't work, since it uses electronic ignition, and the key was disabled. But apparently, this car was being tested on nearby race track, then on the way home, they stopped for lunch, and the driver got food poisoning.

The car was left in front of the restaurant (obviously disguised, as such cars are), and was to be picked up by another driver in an hour or so. Or not. Either way, this shady person saw the car there, all alone, so he walked up, yelled: "Is this someone's car?". Since after 5 minutes nobody responded (being abandoned parking lot and all that), he assumes it doesn't have an owner, so he puts it on his trailer and drives away.

For a week now he has this car in garage. He doesn't want to give to local Mercedes dealership, since those 20 year olds would just put it among used cars and perhaps even damage it. After looking through glove box, there is a registration in there: "Mercedes Test Driving Engineer: Max Power".

Now, 3 weeks later, he's selling it for measly $5000. Obviously Mercedes doesn't care about it, or they would have, dunno, done something by now.


The reporter buys the car, publishes photos of it, partially disassembled, claiming that it they "found it".


Granted, phone is much easier to pick up than a car. But to paraphrase Treebeard: "A journalist should have known better." And they did. $5000 bought them more page views than any other ad campaign ever could, all that at effectively zero legal repercussion (they knew what would follow).

Quote: Original post by Antheus

There is a reason why industry test tracks (like VW's) are in no fly zones, or other hard to access zone.

Should Gizmodo have expected something like this? Probably. Did they? Well, since I don't see it on their front page... they might not even care.

Per your example: It's clear that the person who acquired the phone new what it was and didn't try their hardest to return it to Apple. At the same time, Apple's own secrecy hampered their efforts at recovery as the only people who knew about the new phone would have been those involved directly with it.

Now, we've already seen knockoffs of the iPad that look ALMOST like an iPad (except running Windows, which makes them a lot better [grin] even if they are Chinese knockoffs). So this phone could have easily been a hoax... except that they took it apart.

Would any regular news outlet do this? No. Certainly not. Part of the reason is that current news outlets are heavily corporate centric... which means they will not report or do anything that would upset the people upstairs (or will take actions to correct behavior that might do so). This is also part of the reason why I don't watch CNN (hey, lets have a Korean adulterer bash Japan!... ignoring the fact that she's a hypocrite and from Korea which hates Japan more than they love Starcraft), nor really any news at all. I prefer to get it from generally more global sources that are just a tiny bit less influenced by the corporate big boys than American media is. Even Reuters, which sources their stories from more than just Reuters, sometimes falls prey to that.

But this is the new world of technology, and so things are changing, how media works and behaves is changing. It's a hard problem this one, because while we are evolving our content delivery methods, the laws are not evolving with them.

Quote: Original post by Washu
There is a reason why industry test tracks (like VW's) are in no fly zones, or other hard to access zone.

And why the bushes around them are crawling with reporters carrying zoom lens.

Quote: Would any regular news outlet do this? No. Certainly not. Part of the reason is that current news outlets are heavily corporate centric... which means they will report or do nothing that would upset the people upstairs.

They are not that ethical. Or practical.

If a big company did this, they'd get sued into oblivion. And since their income model is different, the increasing views would not cover the cost of legal proceedings.

But if a single insulated story can boost revenue (assuming page views are proportional to revenue), then tabloid style reporting will have huge impact on bottom line. Until you grow big enough to matter, that's when laws start to matter.

Quote: But this is the new world of technology, and so things are changing, how media works and behaves is changing. It's a hard problem this one, because while we are evolving our content delivery methods, the laws are not evolving with them.

Only until the agile players get big and infringe onto someone's turf. See Apple vs. HTC.

Which is why this evolution is not progression. It encourages chasing absolute short-term mindset above everything. The leaked iPhone is a non-story for everyone, except for Gizmodo who might have received some exposure. It has no long term impact, doesn't affect Apple, doesn't affect the industry. It's just picture of a celebrity on Page 3. Tomorrow it will be back to business as usual, and nothing will have changed.

Oh - he won the lawsuit and had to be paid damages.

This is why bigger names avoid publishing tabloid news.

Quote: Original post by Antheushref="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/pl_motor_prototypes/">disguised, as such cars are), and was to be picked up by another driver in an hour or so. Or not. Either way, this shady person saw the car there, all alone, so he walked up, yelled: "Is this someone's car?". Since after 5 minutes nobody responded (being abandoned parking lot and all that), he assumes it doesn't have an owner, so he puts it on his trailer and drives away.

he didn't just yell around... he called apple. Don't paint him as a dick when this was clearly an accident that got out of hand.

Quote: Now, 3 weeks later, he's selling it for measly $5000. Obviously Mercedes doesn't care about it, or they would have, dunno, done something by now.

yea... cuz that ipod was totally worth the $5000 retail. It would be more like if he sold the mercedes for a measly $500,000