Sooo, if you lose something, you're automatically an idiot? If you're not arguing the legality, then what's the point to your rambling? Just to feel superior to the alleged victim of a crime? Good for you, you win.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Authorities Begin Evidence Examination in Gizmodo iPhone Case
- Thread starter Mark Booth
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sooo, if you lose something, you're automatically an idiot? If you're not arguing the legality, then what's the point to your rambling? Just to feel superior to the alleged victim of a crime? Good for you, you win.
I'm not up on my journalism law, but doesn't the fact that a crime occurred during the transmission of the phone mean the journalist's protections are out the window?
it's Obvious that MH01 is trolling for a argument, Just ignore this fool and his/hers attempt to keep baiting for a argument it is useless.
Both "shakenmartini" & "skottichan" have tried to show attempts at reasoning with this poster, But you can't reason with a childish mind that has one purpose only to keep a non argument alive.
Just put "MH01" on your ignore list, its obvious he/she has no clue in understanding the concept of the differences in American & European Culture and things are seen differently in both places.
Having Lived in Both Europe and America it is obvious that "he/she MH01" does know the difference of what this is about but is using the differences in "Culture" to fuel his/her Meaningless Point, Whatever that may be.
Also if you look back at "MH01" post you will see this poster is a Apple Hater and will argue with anyone that he/she does not agree with.
And so now goes another on the ignore list "MH01" Todays Troll Baiter.
What's the difference between a drunk posting on line and a very bad troll?
Not much from what I can tell.
Well, that will be up to the DA and (eventually) a judge or jury to determine.
One thing is for sure, I'm more inclined to believe Powell's accounting of the events of that night vs. the statements of a thief that was in the process of selling the phone to Gizmodo.
Mark
I wonder if they'll find child porn on Jason Chen's computers, and whether they might just overturn the special restrictions. 
Thanks, I should have checked his history before trying to demonstrate the obvious.
Not stolen, huh? No crime committed? Okay, fine, remember that when you see your car being sold on eBay. It wasn't stolen. You just lost it. That someone else paid for your car is just, well, unfortunate for him. But you do not believe a crime has been committed, remember.
If the thief had posted a step-by-step outline of how they stole your phone/car—complete with their AND your real name and contact information, videos of them taking it apart, and the assertion that they still had it—on a high-traffic website, then, yeah, the police would probably follow up on a lead like that. Gizmodo really couldn't have helped law enforcement any more if they'd tried.
And to the guy harping on the "it was a beer garden" thing, I'm going to repost a question I posed in the last thread on this, because nobody ever really answered...
For the sake of argument, let's assume that, when Powell lost the phone, he had a BAC of .30 and was snorting cocaine off of a hooker's back while wearing shoes made from the skins of orphaned, blind kittens.
...how would this affect the criminal case in the slightest? From a legal standpoint, it doesn't matter whether he was healing lepers or eating infants when he lost the phone. It still isn't OK for Hogan to keep it and then sell it or for Gizmodo to buy it and then take it apart.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)
The point of shield laws are to protect chen's sources. Not chen himself. The special person was appointed to avoid expsing chen's other sources beyond this case.
Interstella5555 said:
The point of shield laws are to protect chen's sources. Not chen himself. The special person was appointed to avoid expsing chen's other sources beyond this case.
I will be surprised if Gizmodo isn't shut down. Anytime you post your own crime on the internet and take credit for it you are asking for trouble.
I guess California doesn't have real crimes to investigate
There is so much BS from Apple in this matter.
- Apple have never prosecuted a tear-down site for exposing their "corporate secrets".
- Apple have never prosecuted previous genuine "leaked" photos. They thrive on the publicity.
- Apple only decided the phone was "stolen" after Gizmodo published.
- Embarassed, Apple pushed their tech police into an illegal raid on a journalist's property. And don't tell me it wasn't, or they would have been going through Chen's gear the minute it was confiscated. All this "legal" nonsense is to save face because a judge authorised an illegal raid on a journalist.
You don't bloody Jobs' nose and not pay for it the rest of your life. And that's exactly what's happening here. A billionaire's childish revenge. This situation has Jobs written all over it.
Not that it matters, but there's a lot of hot air about this, so let's get it clear, Gizmodo had no proof it was "stolen" when they paid for access to it. Sure it came with a story, but a story isn't proof. Would you believe the teller of the story? It could have been made up to make a fake seem legit. The only difference this time is that it was a real Apple prototype. Apple's legendary secrecy created demand for information (if you don't believe me, count the hits). Apple gains a lot of "free" publicity from their secrecy and this is the down-side. Their situation, their creation, and now they want their cake and eat it too.
No, Apple. Hopefully the law will win out. There's too much publicity around this and too many reputations at stakejudge, police, billionaires. I don't see any room for justice here.
Apple won't return stolen phones to their rightful owners unless they've been reported to the police. Deciding it's stolen weeks later, after photos have been published on several tech news sites should not wash in a democracy. Too many reputations at stake, I'm afraid. And Jobs revealed this week that he's decided to make an example of Chen. Money wins. Justice loses.
Highly respected journalist Andy Ihnatko has been quietly on Gizmodo's side and I completely agree with him.
How can a baseless assertion that is contrary to the known facts be "clear"?
Well, that's authoritative. Have Andy call the DA and explain everything to him.
I was on Gizmodo's side until I read the affadavit
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31379912/iPhone-Affidavit
On page 12, Gizmodo tried to extort access from Apple (very valuable for clicks), erstwhile claiming that Apple had not acknowledged ownership.
The rest of the affidavit acknowledges that the iPhone was obtained illegally thereby making Chen and Lam both party to receiving stolen goods.
The person who "found" the phone is also guilty of theft.
At this point a crime of extortion was committed.
If you read the article, the authorities only confiscated Chen's gear. An independent person will actually search the gear for evidence (independent of the DA, police and the court).
This is all why Engadget and PC mag passed on paying for the phone.
How should have Giz done this? They should have paid the "finder" $5k to observe (i.e. report) on this person showing off the phone, taking it apart etc. Giz would have had full journalistic right to observe the crime (theft and then destruction of property). Giz by having observed and not participated would be completely innocent and would have had full right to publish pictures, videos and stories about the phone. Also by not having committed a crime, Giz would not have been compelled to reveal their source, nor could have Chen's gear been seized by the authorities.
Instead, Chen wanted to play with it and have his ugly mug next to it and now he is guilty of receiving stolen property and Lam is guilty of try to extort apple in the return of the illegally obtained property back to apple.
I am positive Engadget's and PC Mags lawyers told exactly this to their bloggers and hence why these two passed on such a great opportunity to see the new iPhone (since my guess is the finder knew he was guilty and didn't want to be filmed showing off the device).
Also and additional note, just because you are a blogger does not mean you are a journalist. It is hard to say these days where the line between blogger and journalists is. Since Lam and Chen are primarily employed to report tech news, they possibly could be considered reporters, but this is a huge grey area at the moment.
No but they knew that the person who had sold them the phone knew the identity of the Apple employee who had 'left it behind'. Why not get it back to that person? They even surmised that the Apple employee might lose his job over the ordeal. I guess they really had no proof it was stolen goods... lol
My bad. Naturally Apple would paint Gizmodo in a flattering light in their complaint to the police.
A complaint to the police is not the facts. Given Apple's legal muscle, you'd expect it to look bad for Gizmodo. What I'm pointing out here is that the order of events is important in establishing the facts from the "two sides of the story". And Apple fails miserably in a rational assessment of their "story".
There's an example on this page of someone locating their lost phone. If you're telling me Apple couldn't do the same if they wanted to, you really are naive. This is a publicity stunt gone out of control. iPhone sales are falling and Android has passed Apple in a fraction of the time iPhone took. Apple needed the publicity badly and they've fumbled it.
Why am I "clearly" not a lawyer?
And if the facts have not been established yet, how is it "clear" that Gizmodo had no proof the iPhone was stolen when they "paid for access to it" (i.e., bought it)?
Read the full 10-page affidavit. You'll excuse me if I place more validity in the statements of Powell and a concerned roommate vs. the "story" put forth by a thief. You'll excuse me if I find the actions of Hogan and his friend (once the police were closing in) to be highly indicative of Hogan knowing he committed a crime. You'll excuse me if the sworn affidavit of an experienced police detective holds more weight with me than the page view grabbing headlines and story from a blogger that stands to personally profit from the increased page views.
Mark
I'm trying to find the link again, but I've read somewhere that in May, the iPhone saw a bit of a surge. IIRC, aren't Android phones only like 5% of smartphone sales, compared to the iPhone's 30-something%?
This is a burr in my panties, why does everyone insist on Android v iPhone? Last I checked, RIM is the market leader, but every Android fan i see acts like RIM's Blackberry line doesn't exist. Though, i find it amazing how Apple, with only what, 5 SKUs, on one carrier is the #2 smartphone manufacturer in the US.
You know- I absolutely love Apple products, I even admire Steve Jobs for what he has accomplished since the 90's, it's nothing short of an amazing turn-around that should be written about for decades to come, but I'd like to see all this litigation stop already. I don't believe axing these guys will deter future incidents, it could encourage them as people know it's a good way to directly piss Apple's CEO off, and we all know people love drama. Pissing off a corporate giant CEO makes for good headlines.
I want to read about what Apple has for the next Mac Pro refresh, what plans they have for the next generation iPad, not about lawsuits and investigations everyday. So nail these guys body parts to a board and get on with it, move forward and focus on the future- which I believe Apple seems to have a better grasp of than any other company out there of its kind. Apple don't waste your time with these people, you're better than that.
When someone commits multiple felonies, they need to be prosecuted and hopefully corrected.
It would have made the phone stolen, still. Maybe it would have put all the crime on the finder, not sure.
It would have made the phone stolen, still. Maybe it would have put all the crime on the finder, not sure.
Read the affadavit. Even being skeptical and assuming some of the interviewed witnesses are fudging the truth, it still looks VERY bad.
For the the clincher is that the guy who "found" the iPhone (and probably stole it from the backpack) removed the serial number from the phone and attempted to destroy and hide evidence. He even hid his computer in the bushes of a church.
To me, if he was innocent and even ignorant of the law and only found the phone and mistakenly sold it, I would probably give him a pass.
My problem is the finder/thief was well aware of what he was doing, well aware that it was probably illegal. I also now know that Gizmodo knew full well it was apple's phone and even whose phone it was all the while pretending that apple was not claiming it as theirs. Far from it, while posting blog posts that they couldn't confirm it was apple's they were emailing Steve Jobs trying to get access in return for sending it back.
It is these things that changed my perception of the whole story.
The big unanswered questions in my mind are:
1) Did the finder actually find it or did he steal it? I have now heard Giz tell 4 stories about how it was found and so I suspect it was instead stolen from the backpack. I suspect Gray was targeted because the finder knew Gray was a baseband engineer.
2) Are other journalists going to stand behind the actions of Gizmodo? I think because Brian Lam's emails clearly show that they were complicit and knowledgeable of how the iPhone came to be in their possession, Giz is going to have a lot of trouble getting sympathy from the press. It will be interesting though.