Gizmodo Blows Whistle On 4G iPhone Loser 853
Stoobalou writes "Not content with its iPhone scoop, Gizmodo has probably ruined the career of a young engineer. The tech blog last night exposed the name of the hapless Apple employee who had one German beer too many and left a prototype iPhone G4 in a California bar some 20 miles from Apple's Infinite Loop campus. Was that really necessary?"
It also came out that they paid $5K for the leaked prototype and that Apple wants it back.
Not Quite (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't out their source (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still not convinced (Score:5, Informative)
The answers to all this and more, when you RTFA [gizmodo.com]! :)
But the short answer: some guy at the bar apparently tried to figure out who owned it, failed (because the guy who lost it had already left), and started messing around with it trying to figure out the owner. Eventually he found the guy's Facebook page, and thought "Aha! I'll return this tomorrow". Unfortunately, when he woke up, the phone had been remotely bricked, so he couldn't get the contact info back again.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
They already knew. They wiped it remotely the very night it happened. The next morning, it was a brick. A shiny brick with interesting electronics inside.
To wipe it remotely, they obviously knew that it was lost, which means one of two things. Either the guy reported the lost phone immediately or they figured out that it was lost by GPS/whatever else. Either way, they knew exactly which phone and exactly who lost it.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
I still think it was a dick move from Gizmodo and feel bad for the guy.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone really think that Apple hadn't already figured out who lost it already?
No. But when he starts applying for jobs (little j) next week, many potential employers are going to recognize his name (or find it when Googling) and think twice about hiring him.
Re:Semantics, bah (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, the engineer screwed up, but legal or not, it ain't right to keep the phone.
"Right" is subjective, but I'd agree that giving it back is the decent thing to do. It still isn't theft.
Actually, according to CA law, it is http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/13/5/s485 [findlaw.com] :
One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
Seems to me that it's all part of Steve's marketing campaign... This guy probably never existed in real life and the guy playing his role will soon start shooting videos threatening to disclose more information, prototypes, etc a la Bin Laden and leaking them to Arab news networks from time to time so everyone at Apple is scared and work harder...
The guy exists in real life. "Friend of a friend."
Re:First visit in 3 weeks... Nothing but Apple. (Score:0, Informative)
Slashdot with the Apple section switched off. Bliss!
Re:Not Quite (Score:5, Informative)
Not an advert (we do run ads on Slashdot, of course) but a badge indicating I'm one of a few Rackspace employees here on Slashdot and willing to be helpful if someone has questions, etc. If you check my bio you'll notice I'm a Linux Sr Sys Engineer, not sales (though "There's nothing wrong with that" if someone is in sales :) ).
I do the same thing for Rackspace elsewhere. We're able to do this due to our relationship with Slashdot.
Re:Nothingtoseeheremovealong (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently CA is almost nowhere as the law there requires you to turn over anything over $100 in value and wait 90 days.
Gosh didn't you watch the Brady Bunch as a Kid!!!
Oh and CA law also clearly defines what he did as theft.
And truly in almost NO circumstance does finding an object make it yours. In almost every state there are laws requiring you to wait a set period of time before you can claim lost or abandoned property. And in this case it was misplaced property which the finder can never make a legal claim on.
Re:Two Strikes... (Score:3, Informative)
I spend most of my time reading http://www.engadget.com/ [engadget.com] and http://arstechnica.com/ [arstechnica.com] depending on whether I want 'gossip' news or 'newspaper' news. Engadget was created by the original founder of Gizmodo, so to me it's a fairly close match minus the over the top Apple slant.
That isn't to say that they don't go pro-Apple sometimes, but it's far less "I love Apple and here are some of the reasons why you are an idiot if you don't" than Gizmodo's articles are.
Re:Nothingtoseeheremovealong (Score:5, Informative)
Almost nowhere are you required to report such things to the police. If you find an abandoned item, it's yours. Anything beyond that is good-Samaritan territory.
Not quite. According to California law you are required to report to the police if you find a thing that has been lost.
This is what it says in the CIVIL CODE SECTION 2080-2080.10 [justia.com]
If the owner is unknown or has not claimed the property, the person saving or finding the property shall, if the property is of the value of one undred dollars ($100) or more, within a reasonable time turn the property over to the police department of the city or city and county.
Re:Nothingtoseeheremovealong (Score:2, Informative)
It's a goddamned conspiracy! Drunken engineers leaving phones in bars-now that's how you do PR! We're THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE, people!
Re:First visit in 3 weeks... Nothing but Apple. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but then I'd have to create an account, which I'm not going to waste my time doing.
Yes, that creating an account procedure is not to be attempted unless you have at least an MS in Computer Science and three weeks to spare.
Re:Nothingtoseeheremovealong (Score:5, Informative)
Almost nowhere are you required to report such things to the police. If you find an abandoned item, it's yours.
Hey dude, I found your car!
And sold it to a somewhat shabby scrapyard for a few hundred bucks!
Silly of you to leave it on the street like that :-p
re: Legality of "found" goods (Score:2, Informative)
I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" [wikipedia.org] and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.
Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.
The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple [gizmodo.com]... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.
Here's the CA penal code on the matter: Lost and Unclaimed Property. Article 1. Lost Money and Goods. [animallaw.info]
Re:Criminal? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but the law of the land is not "finders, keepers". The law requires the finder of a lost item to attempt to return said item to the owner, generally by turning it over to the police. After a period of time, which is set by law, unclaimed property is turned over to the finder.
The crime was not in finding the item, but in selling it to a third party. The third party can be liable if he knew or reasonably should have known said item was not the sellers, i.e. if one purchases a top of the line blu-ray disc player, new in the box, for $100 from a guy selling several of them out of the trunk of his car, one can reasonably assume that they are stolen. Failing to ask if the seller is the owner or an authorized agent is no excuse and can be seen as willful ignorance which, in turn, is evidence of guilt.
Refusing to return found property is theft.
Selling found property without following the found property laws is theft.
Demanding a reward to return found property is extortion.
Maybe you should check out your local laws and post them here. Or, if you are too lazy, post what state and city you live in and I will post them.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
He didn't just make a mistake. He left a prototype in a bar while out drinking. That's flat out incompetence and he should be fired for it. I have zero sympathy for the guy, this growing trend of business people and government officials leaving sensitive equipment and data behind is just pure incompetence and being lax.
It's a prototype of a new phone. It's not a list of undercover CIA operatives.
Get some perspective.
And Apple's a computer maker, not the CIA. From Apple's perspective, marketing and new product hype is a large (albeit intangible) corporate asset. They take this kind of thing very seriously.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
Or, they remotely bricked all of them, and then everyone could bring theirs in the next day and un-brick it.
Just FYI, if you can "un-brick" it (without the use of a soldering iron, anyway), it wasn't bricked to begin with.