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Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

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Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#21

Post by evgen »

sabat wrote: post #18
jvdh wrote: post #11

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for…

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#22

Post by sigzero »

evgen wrote: post #21
sabat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.

I fail to understand why people don't get that point.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#23

Post by mustpax »

sabat wrote: post #18
jvdh wrote: post #11

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for…

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

I don't remember Gray Powell ever making a statement to that effect. That was Gizmodo side of the story.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#24

Post by mechanical_fish »

evgen wrote: post #21
sabat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.

You even left out the part where they disassembled it, which crosses the line even more blatantly.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#25

Post by Freebytes »

raganwald wrote: post #19

Why is this opinion Hacker News? Does the system need to be hacked? Do people think the system has been hacked? How is the presence of this story on HN different than the presence of the same story on reddit?

Hacker News is not only about hacking. Hacker News is about delivering content that is entertaining and useful to people that are programmers or people that are planning or currently running a start-up.

This is actually completely relevant because anything involving this story could involve a small business that finds itself in a similar situation. Gizmodo could have been a small startup idea that only had a few viewers, for example. It could happen to any of us that are starting a new business. However, not everything must be relevant. Sometimes stories are simply entertaining and break the monotony.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

fierarul wrote: post #5

People are ignoring the media aspect to all of this. You do not want such a public case to go unpunished or ignored by the state. If some random phone gets lost obviously you aren't going to spend too much resources on this because there aren't enough available. I'm pretty sure not all such individual cases are ignored, so it's not like only the corporations "receive justice". But, having such a public case about a p…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#27

Post by Freebytes »

jvdh wrote: post #11

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for…

I was viewing this as a positive situation for Apple. They had lots of free advertising, and I actually thought the 'lost phone' was on purpose to generate buzz. Nonetheless, entering into the homes of journalists to find out information about a stolen phone is bad publicity for Apple, and they should have considered the incident over after the phone was returned.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#28

Post by ezran »

Terretta wrote: post #4

Asking "Why were two completely different crime department cases in two completely different jurisdictions handled in two completely different ways?" is just glomming onto current news in an attempt to raise the profile of some other complaint. The complaint (her TRO should have been enforced) is valid, but has nothing to do with the handling of trade secrets investigation elsewhere in the country.

The cases may be different crimes, and in different areas, but it's just illustrative of how out of balance the justice system is. When the victim is high-profile, the enforcement is swift and overbearing. When the victim is unknown or powerless, the enforcement is often nonexistent.

Seizing personal computers, cameras, cell phones, servers, and paperwork, for a case where the property has already been returned, might be legal but is also a completely inappropriate response. There's already a very clear case here, and lives are not in danger. It doesn't matter if he's a journalist or not, this is just not the level of action that should have been taken. We should be able to expect fairly consistent responses to legal situations, based on the severity of the crime and the impact, rather than based on the identity of the victim or the media attention focused on the case.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#29

Post by allwein »

sigzero wrote: post #22
evgen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.

I fail to understand why people don't get that point.

I don't understand it either. Especially since everyone agrees that an analogous case is theft.

"I walk into a coffee shop and see an unattended laptop sitting on one of the tables, so I decide to close it up and take it home with me."

Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or consider the laptop "lost". So I don't know why people are so quick to consider this iphone lost.

Re: Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

#30

Post by MaxwellKennerly »

evgen wrote: post #21
sabat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.

Maybe so. But that doesn't answer the question as to why this stolen phone -- apart from the millions of other items stolen in California and reported to the police -- deserved special treatment by law enforcement, and warranted the use of unusual and aggressive measures to obtain information about it.

It's still just a single phone, a phone that's been returned to its owner. Maybe Apple was damaged by the loss in a way the law recognizes. If so, then they can file a civil lawsuit just like everyone else with a grievance against someone else.

The part that's troubling here is how, if anyone else reading this post reported to the police that an employee had lost a ready-for-market prototype and that a blog had published pictures of it and then returned it, the police would politely file the report at the bottom of the pile and then get back to pursuing real crimes. Apple, however, gets an unannounced seizure of a journalist's home and work computers.

Such preferential treatment demands an explanation.

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