We had a recent case where a suitcase was bought from a thrift store. It had $100,000 AUD in it. The people who found the money kept it, but the police found out due to their boasting, and they are now being charged…

Finders Keepers is a statement of intent to steal over here :)

*It is the problem of defining things like “reasonable effort” that keeps lawyers well paid

You’ve nailed it for me, I was totally into the journalistic angle for the first 50 or so, but you’ve classed the debate perfectly.

It’s a damned toy, a toy that’s popular.
The morals before this guy realised it wasn’t anything but a 3GS were shitty, and it just got woeful from there.

Using the term abandoned in this case is just bending reason too much. Abandoned implies that it’s no longer wanted. That it may belong to someone, but they’ve abandoned it because they don’t want ownership anymore. This clearly isn’t the case. Someone forgetting to pick up their phone is not justification for someone else stealing it.

Please stop linking to your blog in every comment.

But in the tinnnny chance that I am wrong: couldnt have happened to a nicer bunch of people. ;)

Journalism is publishing something that someone doesn’t want you to publish. This so rarely happens in gadget blogs that I just can’t take it seriously when people look at actual bona-fide news scoops like this and say that the way they went about it is evidence of bad journalism. It’s like saying the only live horse in the race is a loser because it’s lame.

Glibly asserting that the ends justify the means is a pretty tired cliché, Rob.

BTW…guess who powers Giz/Gawker mobile ads? Quattro Wireless…and who owns Quattro Wireless?

Apple

Why? He attempted to return the phone to it’s owner, but after waiting for 3 weeks, it would appear that they weren’t interested.

What *should* he have done?

Also, this isn’t journalism. Journalism is when you get some facts, you write a story, you double/triple check the facts with other sources and then you go with WHAT YOU HAVE at the time. You don’t get/fabricate the entire story all at once, then dole it out piecemeal with the “tune in tomorrow to see if Lassie saves little Timmy” mindset. Gizmodo was going for page hits and nothing more, and boy they sure got them. I wouldn’t even call this tabloid journalism because I don’t think “journalism” should even be used to describe what this is.

But hey, Nick Denton that runs Gawker and it’s incarnations (which Gizmodo is part of), is from the world of British tabloids. So he doesn’t really care as long as people click on the websites and hey, click on an ad or two while your there!

This hypothesis would be tested by watching to see if Gizmodo/Engadget is routinely snubbed by Apple’s PR machine, denied advance access, not offered press credentials, etcetera. They got the scoop of the (uh, year? year.) year, but they also might be flogged and keelhauled as a warning to any other publication that doesn’t heave or row in time to Apple’s boatswain’s call.

“If you know any of the people in these pictures, please let us know at tips@gizmodo.com and we’ll pass the information along to the rightful owner of those two stolen MacBooks.”

Unless, of course, the MacBooks are unreleased models, in which case we’ll pay you handsomely *not* to return them to the rightful owner. ; )

1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA

Or there is always emailing Steve Jobs…I bet he’d take it pretty seriously.

I don’t really think he tried that hard…do you?

The objection does demonstrate the limits of the subject matter as a journalistic enterprise, however. And if the only way to go about it is either by engaging with PR or with a checkbook, there’s no much point fantasizing about less compromising ways to find stories until someone out there actually does it.

The best gadget journalism IMO is hacking stuff (the golden age of iphone hacking at TUAW should be praised more often, but everyone covers it well), stories that focus on creativity enabled by gadgets (x made with y — I really think we’re on the top shelf of this ourselves), and high-quality analysis. There’s not a lot of the latter, but Joel and Gruber are always great, even when they talk bollocks.

This brings me to my point:

Why would Apple sue for theft? AFAIK, that requires something to be stolen. Since the device was returned, nothing is stolen anymore. (the act of theft still occurred though, but more on that below) That takes Apple out as an interested party. They have their property back; what happened to it in the meantime is irrelevant to Apple IMO.
One could even argue that Gizmodo helped Apple recover the item, since if someone else bought it Apple might still not have recovered it.

Apple could report a crime (theft), which would leave it to the police, and eventually the DA, to charge people with a crime, after which this would go to court.

Apple might be able to sue for trade secret breach, but I have no knowledge whatsoever on the intricacies of that part of the law.

But suing someone for theft who returned the item in question is ridiculous.
As for the journalism angle: regardless of how Gizmodo got the item, you cannot blame them to do what they are supposed to do (ie. be journalists and scoop an item). That includes opening it up; those are the risks of testing prototypes in public.

And as for suing the original “finder”, I don’t know to what extent that person falls under the right of journalists to keep their sources secret.

But again, why; the item was returned, case closed.
All that’s left is bruised egos (combined with an overly abused US legal system that could be a bad thing) and a prematurely revealed iPhone. Better to let cooler heads prevail, close this and start gearing up for the official reveal, than to have this issue live on any longer than necessary (distracts from the PR message and threatens to breach the reality distortion field).

Lemme put it this way:
If I lost a phone, someone picked it up, sold it on, and the buyer subsequently contacted me to return it, i’d be thanking the buyer, not suing their ass.

On the gadget beat — Gizmodo’s entire reason for existing — very little could be more important than scooping an unannounced Apple product.

“Gadgets is a trivial subject” doesn’t change anything. Criticism is exactly as meaningful as praise, proportional to how important you think the subject is.

Are you saying that the ends justify the means?

Journalism is publishing something that someone doesn’t want you to publish. This so rarely happens in gadget blogs that I just can’t take it seriously when people look at actual bona-fide news scoops like this and say that the way they went about it is evidence of bad journalism.

Or maybe what this is telling us is that gadget blogs aren’t necessarily ‘journalism’.

“Journalism is publishing something that someone doesn’t want you to publish.”

Really? So…there are no rules to that game? I respectfully disagree. I guess all the sites like TMZ are journalism now?

To me, “journalism,” whether it takes risks or not…or pays for access to a story or not…comes down to some basic questions including how does this story I’m breaking serve my audience, and by pushing the story, who benefits and who gets hurt?

This story didn’t serve the public…it broke some specs on a device that we all knew was coming…and then Giz took it further by telling the salacious story about some programmer who got “drunk” and lost the device…making the story of how they got it pure sensationalism…and we don’t know if he was drunk…all we know is he was there and had some drinks…so now they’ve colored him in even a worse light.

The scoop wasn’t the story here…the scoop was the story behind the story…and to make matters worse…they hung this poor kid out to dry who did what so many of us have done and that’s misplace something.

Good journalism is providing a critical eye and balanced reporting on a topic…the problem with Giz is they took a page out of the Gawker playbook and went right for the juicy aspects…and took great delight in being able to fuck Apple after Apple has “controlled” access for so long. They are loving every second of it…and in the pursuit of that desire they have completely shit all over this poor kid who becomes a victim regardless of whether or not Apple fires him.

That to me isn’t journalism. Giz could have simply taken the photos, found out the specs, put it in a box and shipped it back to Apple…instead they went on this “fuck you Apple” parade which took this programmer and thrust him in the spotlight for all to see and mock…and that is just disgusting and why I won’t go to another Denton property ever again…and I generally like those properties.

But this was not journalism.

The reason I come to Boing Boing is that you often put your neck out there…and if it gets cut off because you were wrong…you do the right thing and admit it. More importantly the moral compass of this blog is something I’ve always respected because you always try to take the high ground. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you push something to hurt someone simply in the name of pageviews.

The problem with Giz and Denton is that they were wrong and instead of just putting it to bed and moving on they are doubling down and defending their actions…which cannot be defended

So, if this had been, say, a 2012 BMW 5-Series, instead of an iPhone, would the guy who sold it, and Gizmodo exec be going to jail for Grand Theft Auto? Why, yes. So, exactly how is this different?

He could have contacted Grey via Facebook perhaps.I’m sure Grey knew it was missing.

The person who picked up the phone was guilty of theft the moment he decided to sell it.

Gizmodo was guilty of receiving stolen property the moment they bought it. I don’t even know WHAT they were thinking when they dismantled it.

The reason they are covering for the guy they bought the phone from is that he could do some jail time if his identity was known, plus the damage that Apple would do in their inevitable lawsuit. Gizmodo protects their criminal source and thus encourages other people to do the same thing in the future.

I’m pretty certain that Giz will skate on the receiving charge since they turned the phone over to Apple upon receiving a claim.

They are still total douche-bags though. I’m done with them. Not because they will probably have gotten the engineer fired (let’s face it, Apple probably knew who had the phone and thus, who lost it) but because they broadcast him on the web so that nobody else is likely to ever hire him.

This isn’t journalism. This is a school yard bully and his pals tossing the stolen iphone over the poor kid’s (ie the engineer) head while saying “Dude, is this your phone. Don’t you want it?” and then handing it over to the kid’s parents with a smile and a wink saying “Oh, you only had to ask.”

If you don’t, the law calls it theft.

On the other hand it might save his current job, as his sudden celebrity might make him harder to fire but not much.

Overall I think what they did to him was terrible, and the person that sold the phone to Giz is a certifiable jerk.