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I never said that so please don't put words into my mouth. With misquotes like that no wonder you're terrified of journalism.

Hi, pot, this is kettle. So, which part of news reporting gives you "kicks", then? That was certainly your implication.
 
He (both Gizmodo and the actual idiot that found it) seemed to be positive. But that is what the court will decide. No doubt Giz's case hinges on this. (although the damage they caused may change it all, anyway)
".


Actually, it wouldn't matter whether it was aapl's phone or not. The idiot sold a valuable phone he "found" and to which he had no ownership rights, and Gizmodo bought what it knew to be the property of someone else. Both are crimes.
 
Steve,
In America, our 'core values' lie with giving our journalists a super-wide legal berth, not with mega-corporations unleashing their unlimited legal power on them when their employees get drunk and leave prototypes laying around.
You mean criminals, not journalists, right?
And WTF does "unlimited legal power" means? lol.

Just like Adobe (whose Mac support was the tentpole of early Mac sales)
Because they had interest in doing it and let's not forget how they turned their back on Apple.
and Bill Gates (Largest third-party Mac software seller on earth who invested $170M and publicly promised to support Mac with Office when your chips were down)
LOL. The samaritan Bill Gates. Whatever.
 
Actually, it wouldn't matter whether it was aapl's phone or not. The idiot sold a valuable phone he "found" and to which he had no ownership rights, and Gizmodo bought what it knew to be the property of someone else. Both are crimes.

Oh, I have no doubt the idiot goes down, probably belongs on all the dumb criminals sites. But, Giz (or individuals of Giz) may come out differently. It is still people that make up juries and judges, and there are a lot more issues surrounding Giz's actions that can create grey areas in people's minds.
 
Oh, I have no doubt the idiot goes down, probably belongs on all the dumb criminals sites. But, Giz (or individuals of Giz) may come out differently. It is still people that make up juries and judges, and there are a lot more issues surrounding Giz's actions that can create grey areas in people's minds.
Some areas maybe. But buying stolen property and destroying it...
 
Unless Gizmodo called up and asked for some hostages or some money in return for the phone there was no extortion.

The moral consternation is unneccesary.

Extortion doesn't mean ransom or kidnapping. Extortion isn't black and white like that. From that same reasoning, you might assume that robbery is only done at gun or knifepoint. ;)

What Lam did is mostly certainly coercion, but they could push for plain extortion if they wanted.
 
So let me get this straight if i have someone's property and i demand a letter from them in order to return it or else. Thats not extortion? Well no matter what shade of lipstick you put on that proverbial pig. It is still a pig or in this case still a form of extortion/Coertion which is not legal.
 
Hi, pot, this is kettle. So, which part of news reporting gives you "kicks", then? That was certainly your implication.

Lame analogy. It's serious news that I get something from, not the kind of celebrity stuff underpinning your implication. You were bashing journalism as a whole.
 
So let me get this straight if i have someone's property and i demand a letter from them in order to return it or else. Thats not extortion? Well no matter what shade of lipstick you put on that proverbial pig. It is still a pig or in this case still a form of extortion/Coertion which is not legal.
What if it was your phone? With something unique that would actually make it newsworthy, special case or engraving or something. So now Gizmodo has it and you want it back. But 20 of MR's most faithful followers all claim to own it. What are you going to do to prove it is yours? Best is something in writing, including the serial number, which you should know and not the others. And submitting a false letter would be a criminal act.

Obviously, the prototype's situation was different. But asking for written proof is hardly extortion. It's pretty much the only part of this that Giz did appropriately. (well, almost appropriately)

Or hey, I could be wrong.

Lame analogy. It's serious news that I get something from, not the kind of celebrity stuff underpinning your implication. You were bashing journalism as a whole.
That's a cliche, not an analogy. And note that I first said:
Journalism is the biggest source of privacy infringement
Privacy refers to individuals' lives, not whether Chicago or Philly wins the Cup. I'll admit it wasn't a long-winded, detailed explanation of my viewpoint. Which offtopic explanation is probably not warranted in this thread.
 
Right. That's why they paid $5000 for it, because they didn't know whether it was an Apple prototype or a Chinese knockoff.

That means nothing. People pay a lot of money for fakes all the time. Fact of the matter is that he didn't know what it was with 100% certainty.



Read the letter (and it wasn't Chen, it was Brian Lam)

Who cares. Someone tried to return apple their property and apple didn't want to claim it. That's not extortion. The theft accusation is stupid as well and apple cannot prove it. If I lose my iPhone somewhere and a person finds it that's not theft.

Oh and one more thing. I find it ironic that all u turtleneck inerds come to a rumor site to find out leaks for your precious iPhone and when u get a big one that gives the info u all been foaming at the mouth for u want the Guy who gave it to u in jail. Wtf is wrong with u people
 
What if it was your phone? With something unique that would actually make it newsworthy, special case or engraving or something. So now Gizmodo has it and you want it back. But 20 of MR's most faithful followers all claim to own it. What are you going to do to prove it is yours? Best is something in writing, including the serial number, which you should know and not the others. And submitting a false letter would be a criminal act.

Obviously, the prototype's situation was different. But asking for written proof is hardly extortion. It's pretty much the only part of this that Giz did appropriately. (well, almost appropriately)

Or hey, I could be wrong.


That's a cliche, not an analogy. And note that I first said:

Privacy refers to individuals' lives, not whether Chicago or Philly wins the Cup. I'll admit it wasn't a long-winded, detailed explanation of my viewpoint. Which offtopic explanation is probably not warranted in this thread.

Apologies, you're right it wasn't an analogy. Journalism can be covered another day! :)
 
That means nothing. People pay a lot of money for fakes all the time. Fact of the matter is that he didn't know what it was with 100% certainty.

Nobody pays $5000 for an Apple prototype even though he thinks it might be a fake. Please give one example of your ridiculous position. Interesting you think you know the "fact of the matter" when you haven't bothered to acquaint yourself with the facts of the case.

Who cares. Someone tried to return apple their property and apple didn't want to claim it. That's not extortion. The theft accusation is stupid as well and apple cannot prove it. If I lose my iPhone somewhere and a person finds it that's not theft.

Again, you're just demonstrating your ignorance of the facts.

Oh and one more thing. I find it ironic that all u turtleneck inerds come to a rumor site to find out leaks for your precious iPhone and when u get a big one that gives the info u all been foaming at the mouth for u want the Guy who gave it to u in jail. Wtf is wrong with u people

Why bother to learn the facts when sophomoric name calling is so much easier?
 
So let me get this straight if i have someone's property and i demand a letter from them in order to return it or else. Thats not extortion? Well no matter what shade of lipstick you put on that proverbial pig. It is still a pig or in this case still a form of extortion/Coertion which is not legal.

No, Brian Lam demanded better treatment from Apple on getting inside info on new products.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31376177/Gizmodo-iPhoneOrder

Page 12 there is an email from Brian Lam to Steve Jobs clearly outlining the extortion attempt and what Apple would be given. For those who cannot read

Chen and Lam were also fully aware of who the rightful owner of the iPhone was at this time (before the article appeared on Gizmodod BTW) and are thus likely guilty of receiving stolen property.

The funny thing is

1) Gizmodo will probably lose access to Apple events forever, the opposite of their intent.

2) If Gizmodo had proper lawyers, they would have never taken possession of the iPhone (probably why PC Mag and Engadget passes on this huge story).

Instead they should have paid a consulting fee to the thief to observe and photograph the finder/thief examining the iPhone and taking detailed pictures along the way. As long as Gizmodo just observed what was going on and did not take part nor take possession of the iPhone, they would be perfectly innocent and exercising their journalistic rights. By taking possession of and knowing the origin of the stolen (I don't believe for one second it "fell out of a bag" and that someone realized that its was disguised as a iPhone 3Gs) iPhone and trying to extort both Chen and Lam are in a sticky situation. Chen is an idiot and wanted his ugly mug on the web video next to the leaked iPhone and now he will probably be found guilty of a crime of some sort.
 
What if it was your phone? With something unique that would actually make it newsworthy, special case or engraving or something. So now Gizmodo has it and you want it back. But 20 of MR's most faithful followers all claim to own it. What are you going to do to prove it is yours? Best is something in writing, including the serial number, which you should know and not the others. And submitting a false letter would be a criminal act.

Obviously, the prototype's situation was different. But asking for written proof is hardly extortion. It's pretty much the only part of this that Giz did appropriately. (well, almost appropriately)

Or hey, I could be wrong.


That's a cliche, not an analogy. And note that I first said:

Privacy refers to individuals' lives, not whether Chicago or Philly wins the Cup. I'll admit it wasn't a long-winded, detailed explanation of my viewpoint. Which offtopic explanation is probably not warranted in this thread.

The only reason Giz wanted a letter would have been to post it on the front page of Gizmodo along with pictures of the iphone. They knew who it belonged to and they knew what they were doing.

I hope they suffer for it too. Gawker is a rag and no better than a pile of fecal matter
 
Give them the benefit of the doubt that the iphone was found, a reasonable attempt was made to return it, and the money which exchanged hands was only for access to the phone. Even in that best-case scenario, it's considered stolen under the law as the proper amount of time had yet to pass.

Brian Lam's e-mail said they wanted to make some money off the letter declaring ownership. Extortion is forcing something of value out of someone, so he hung himself there. It may be hard to convict of something more than attempted extortion if Apple didn't object. "Mr. Lam, extortion rejected. Return it now or face the legal consequences."

Jobs' comment made me wonder if he'd have dropped it had Lam kept his big mouth shut. We'll never know.
 
This whole problem could have been avoided if AT$T had announced their new data plans earlier. The phone would probably still be sitting in that bar.
 
This is such BS.

What did Gizmodo try to extort from Apple?

"Hi, we know the phone is yours but we're not gonna give it back unless you give us something we can post on our blog so we can make money. And we're also doing it because you never give us any special treatment... (so if you give us special treatment in the future, stuff like this won't happen again.)"
- written in a smart-ass tone of voice
 
They should probably hit out at the guy who lost it instead of Jason.

I certainly got the impression from the D8 video that Steve believes the phone was taken from Powell's bag, not "lost". May also explain why Powell isn't out of a job and Jobs is taking Gizmodo to task for it.

You know what, good. Anyone who's read the Daring Fireball article on the matter knows that Gizmodo weren't some innocent party in this. They knowingly bought something that wasn't theirs to buy, and they probably knew full well how it got out of Apple's hands. It was shoddy journalism at its absolute worst.
 
The only reason Giz wanted a letter would have been to post it on the front page of Gizmodo along with pictures of the iphone. They knew who it belonged to and they knew what they were doing.

I hope they suffer for it too. Gawker is a rag and no better than a pile of fecal matter

Wow!! Your opinion really clears up this whole matter for me...why not tell it to the Judge :)
 
Could not agree any more. Fair enough can understand the top secret we dont have a phone no comment before the iphone came out out but heck its been out a few years now there only just starting WE HOPE to bring what other phones have done for years. I see there logic they probaly thought meh no one wantsto use a small screen for video etc then the chants of we want video we want video so if the so called gizmo iphone dose have video both sides then they listend and did as was asked of as for all the other dribble meh its a phone dose what a phone dose and then some
Apple should have denied everything. People would have thought the story was fake if Apple had let it slide and now have dig themselves into a PR hole. The majority ( out side of this forum - regular people not Fanboys ) of people I expect would side with Gizmodo, being the underdog, and consider Apple being overly aggressive.
 
Give them the benefit of the doubt that the iphone was found, a reasonable attempt was made to return it, and the money which exchanged hands was only for access to the phone.
You too, you didn't read the affidavit.

Even in that best-case scenario, it's considered stolen under the law as the proper amount of time had yet to pass.
And what that law might be?
 
Now that Chinese companies have begun to knock off the phone by making horrible copies, this proves how important it is for huge companies like Apple to keep things under wrap, until they decide to reveal details. It's not up to some amateur blog on the internet to buy stolen Apple property and reveal it to the entire world. Rumors about the Mac and Apple are fine, otherwise I wouldn't be here obviously. But, if certain misguided people like and defend what gizmodo did, then there should be a site called Stolen Mac Rumors for those types of people.

Maybe the FBI can get involved and charge those clowns at gizmodo with international industrial espionage, since the Chinese are now knocking it off, companies are already making cases for it etc.

Steve Jobs is 100% right on his decision to follow this through. Go Apple!
 
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