> without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him
See, the problem is that according to the law you quoted simply picking up and taking the lost phone home is itself not equivalent to theft. You must prove that no "reasonable and just efforts" were made. That paragraph doesn't even say all reasonable and just efforts or even that the most reasonable and just efforts (such as returning it to the beer garden) must be made. Only that some reasonable and just effort must be made. It doesn't even define success as a test for determining if an effort was reasonable and just. Calling and contacting Apple when you realize you have a prototype that has been deactivated remotely so you cannot identify the user is reasonable. The law does not support the blanket assertion that all lost property is stolen. It's just more nuanced than you want to believe. Sorry your absolutism doesn't jive with reality.
You seem to think that language is there to protect owners of lost property. In reality it's there to protect finders of lost property i.e. business owners so that they can dispose of abandoned junk.
Do you have any sort of specific criteria for what is considered a journalist? It seems like the discussion here tends to equate journalists with reporters and then speculate to what extent Chen should be considered a reporter. The problem is that reporters are actually a proper subset of journalists.
I believe the Gawker CEO has said publicly something to the order of: Our employees are not journalists. Journalists have to do it right, we just have to do it first.
That's interesting, but I don't think that's what positr0n was describing. The Washington Post reporter describes Gawker's work repeatedly as journalism. Even the photograph caption uses "Gawker Web site reporter" to mean blogger.
It does say that the CEO cares more about breaking the story first than verifying facts and sources--but I don't see where he goes so far as to state or imply that he doesn't consider Gawker to be journalism. And he is quoted as saying: "We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention." I can see how that might mean what positr0n says but I can also see how that could have a nuanced meaning in the context of the WP article.
I think a bigger question is whether the warrant would have been issued/executed against his home if he didn't work from home. Somehow I doubt the DA would have had the balls to raid Gawker's offices over this.
Did Gizmodo return the phone to Apple immediately when Apple finally admitted it was theirs? Did Gizmodo demand payment from Apple in return for the phone? Did Gizmodo ever dispute Apple's claim to the phone? It doesn't really seem reasonable to me that anyone at Gizmodo ever thought they were "buying" the device.
Quite, but Gizmodo/Gawker are in the business of getting attention. It's not as if they normally toil in obscurity and suddenly found themselves singled out for publicity.
Okay, this type of reasoning really is starting to get to me. You aren't the first to mention it in this thread, but it is wrong. Let me ask you this: if you are designing a phone, how else would you test it?
You have to take it out into the real world and test it in real world situations. They gave it to a trusted employee and disguised it as much as they could. And the guy lost it. It's a known risk and it happens.
The choice then became to either activate the GPS and track the phone (potentially making the leak worse) or wipe it. Apple chose to remotely wiped it as soon as they could.
They did what they could to adequately test the new phone and protect it at the same time.
So, how exactly is it necessary to test the phone while the user is inebriated with access to the public? They couldn't host a private party for that? Test it at workers houses? Why is access to the public so vital? It's not. If Apple condoned this form of testing they have to accept the risks. Crying for the nanny state to save you from your own actions is bullshit.
If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public. Apple seems to be OK with that risk. I don't understand the clamoring for gestapo police to swoop in and correct corporate mistakes.
>If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public
So, if you lost your wallet, it would be okay if I then knew your credit card numbers? Even if I didn't use them? I promise not to tell...
This isn't clamoring for a police state. It's recognizing that when property is lost, regardless of how, it still belongs to the person who lost it. I'm normally not one for "corporate rights", but in this case it doesn't matter that the entity that owned the phone was Apple. Hell, it could have been the next gen Blueberry (yes, I meant Blueberry) for all I care.
If you lose your wallet and assume that credit card numbers are not compromised you're an idiot.
Are you saying Gizmodo refused to return the phone to Apple claiming it was now their own property? Or that Gizmodo demanded reimbursement from Apple in exchange for returning the phone?
If Apple is claiming trade secret protection, they need to demonstrate that they attempted to protect the secret. Apple authorized taking the phone into the public. These "secrets" were not taken from the Apple campus or workplace.
I believe that if I have a briefcase full of confidential documents, it would be logical that I can leave my workplace with them without them suddenly not being trade-secrets anymore. I can bring them to the airport. I can put it on a chair next to me while I eat and if I forget them, they are not suddenly considered open.
To me, the point of this law is that the finder's-keepers attitude is encouraging theft. I think "I found it" is a common alibi for theft. If you get rid of that alibi (which doesn't harm people who would return the items) then you discourage actual theft by making it harder to buy and sell.
The only people who are inconvenienced are those who truly did find an item and keep it. There's an exemption for items of small value so as not to burden those people too much. That's just my view of it.
Gizmodo never disputed that the phone was Apple's property and they returned it to Apple as soon as Apple claimed it. If Gizmodo physically damaged the phone they should be responsible for the damage caused to the device.
I actually don't see a huge problem if I lose my phone, someone else pays $5000 to the finder and then turns around and returns it to me when I demonstrate that it is mine.
Taking photos of the device isn't the issue. Anyone could easily have taken a photo of the phone at the bar. If you are saying the visual appearance of the product is a trade secret then it should not be paraded about in public by employees.
See, the problem is that according to the law you quoted simply picking up and taking the lost phone home is itself not equivalent to theft. You must prove that no "reasonable and just efforts" were made. That paragraph doesn't even say all reasonable and just efforts or even that the most reasonable and just efforts (such as returning it to the beer garden) must be made. Only that some reasonable and just effort must be made. It doesn't even define success as a test for determining if an effort was reasonable and just. Calling and contacting Apple when you realize you have a prototype that has been deactivated remotely so you cannot identify the user is reasonable. The law does not support the blanket assertion that all lost property is stolen. It's just more nuanced than you want to believe. Sorry your absolutism doesn't jive with reality.
You seem to think that language is there to protect owners of lost property. In reality it's there to protect finders of lost property i.e. business owners so that they can dispose of abandoned junk.