Yes I agree it's not relevant. Also, if they want to know the identity of the person who sold the iPhone to Gizmodo, the police can just contact Engadget instead. The person also tried to sell the phone to Engadget remember?
And i'm sure Engadget will be more than willing to cooperate with the police
You wrote four sentences. Did you have to use red to draw one's attention to you post?
I am curious how this would work if somebody say outright stole a Madame's little black book with the names of several high profile clients. Would public interest justify the theft of such property? Or is it automatically wrong because it's a theft. And would there still be legal consequences if the little black book was returned but the names of several of those clients were sold to a newspaper who then published them? And what if the little black book was left unattended and somebody picked it up and started perusing through it and realized what he had, and sold the information? Does that finder count as a journalistic source or a thief, legally speaking, if the item was never reported stolen? Lots of questions, I am sure the lawyer types can answer them.
I am also curious about the trade secrets bit. What is considered a trade secret in this case? Is the fact that a next gen iphone exist considered a trade secret? Or the fact that Apple uses wires labelled Apple inside considered a trade secret? Are the phone's specs considered a trade secret? What's the supposedly violated trade secret that everybody keeps brining up?
Must be nice for Apple to be on a committee that runs such a quick responding police force.
Money doesn't buy you influence. Yeah right.
Actually, police tend to like to work on cases that are easy to solve. In this case, the criminal announced his crime to the whole world. So, for a very small investment of time, they get to add a grand larceny conviction. Then there is the value of the item. While Gizmodo paid $5 K for it, that prototype is undoubtedly worth millions of dollars based on Apple's investment, plus potential lost iPhone 3G sales now that people have seen it plus the lead time advantage it gives the competition. They also like to work on public cases - they like publicity as much as most people, plus, it avoids the "why are the police letting all this crime occur and not doing anything about it" nonsense. Those explanations account for their fast action without resorting to silly conspiracy theories.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetz
I am curious how this would work if somebody say outright stole a Madame's little black book with the names of several high profile clients. Would public interest justify the theft of such property? Or is it automatically wrong because it's a theft. And would there still be legal consequences if the little black book was returned but the names of several of those clients were sold to a newspaper who then published them? And what if the little black book was left unattended and somebody picked it up and started perusing through it and realized what he had, and sold the information? Does that finder count as a journalistic source or a thief, legally speaking, if the item was never reported stolen? Lots of questions, I am sure the lawyer types can answer them.
I am also curious about the trade secrets bit. What is considered a trade secret in this case? Is the fact that a next gen iphone exist considered a trade secret? Or the fact that Apple uses wires labelled Apple inside considered a trade secret? Are the phone's specs considered a trade secret? What's the supposedly violated trade secret that everybody keeps brining up?
Your Madame example is completely irrelevant - even if there WERE a public interest in the matter. One might (arguably) say that the public has a right to know about criminal activity of politicians. That does not give them the right to know about a company's confidential development work.
As for the trade secrets, it's pretty stratightforward. If it is not known to the public and the company makes a reasonable effort to protect it, it's a trade secret. Apple's effort is reasonable by most standards:
- Require an NDA for anyone working on it
- Require an NDA from suppliers
- Require an NDA from developers
- Keep it restricted to a small number of trusted employees
- Disguise it before sending it out in public
Apple did all those things. The fact that someone made a mistake and left it (if that's really what happened) does not break those protections. If Jobs went on the Today show and showed al the features and other details, then it probably WOULD void their trade secret protection - at least for the items he showed publicly.
For the following, I'm going to assume that this is real. Even if it's not, the same things would probably be trade secrets, anyway.
So what is a trade secret?
- the new case appearance
- new camera location
- battery size and rating
- appearance and layout of internal components
- construction materials
- in short, almost everything about it - since Apple hasn't announced anything, nor has anything been confirmed by Apple publicly.
Over the years, many people lost their livelihood so YOU had something 'neat' to read about some future Apple product!
It's one thing to receive information from somebody in the knows, which is usually what most rumors sites do. It's a whole other story when you buy a stolen item.
CNET: "If I were prosecuting, I'd go after (any blogger who bought the phone) vigorously," said Michael Cardoza, a prominent San Francisco defense attorney and former prosecutor. "I'd fight them tooth and nail to see that they wouldn't get protection under the shield law. I'd play hardball, in this case. They didn't find the phone as part of their reporting but instead bought property that they knew or should have known wasn't the property of the seller."
Armed with a warrant, California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home last week and seized four computers and two servers in its felony investigation of an obtained prototype iPhone.
Gizmodo revealed the information, along with a copy of the warrant issued by a judge of the superior court in San Mateo County, Calif. In response, the website's post argued that it believes the warrant was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.
What kind of lawless place is California? Stuck in the Wild, Wild West mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later?
I'm shocked by what happened. In Canada, the search warrant would be illegal and open the door to civil damages as showing no cause for breaching the constitutional right to privacy.
Let me explain. First, a criminal offence must be proven or probable cause that a crime was committed must be shown before a search warrant is issued. Second, theft has never been proven nor alleged. Finding lost property never constitutes theft.
It never is a criminal offence to find lost property.
In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences. Policemen must establish probable cause that a crime was committed before they can be issued a search and seizure warrant. Here, no proof was ever offered before the warrant was issued.
I thank God (for the first time!) that Canadians are protected against such abuse of power. Corrupt or unqualified judges are not acceptable in Canada.
My strong advice to Jason Chen: Seek legal advice from the lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Association and SUE for damages and unlawful breach of your civil rights of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.
The lesson of the story is: Don't make the Siligods mad.
If there were abuses, I wonder where is EFF stands on this one.
Just where they always stand - on the side of anarchy.
More often than not, you can look at where EFF stands on a topic and choose the other side - you'll be right 95% of the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ouragan
What kind of lawless place is California? Stuck in the Wild, Wild West mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later?
I'm shocked by what happened. In Canada, the search warrant would be illegal and open the door to civil damages as showing no cause for breaching the constitutional right to privacy.
Let me explain. First, a criminal offence must be proven or probable cause that a crime was committed must be shown before a search warrant is issued. Second, theft has never been proven nor alleged. Finding lost property never constitutes theft.
It never is a criminal offence to find lost property.
In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences. Policemen must establish probable cause that a crime was committed before they can be issued a search and seizure warrant. Here, no proof was ever offered before the warrant was issued.
I thank God (for the first time!) that Canadians are protected against such abuse of power. Corrupt or unqualified judges are not acceptable in Canada.
My strong advice to Jason Chen: Seek legal advice from the lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Association and SUE for damages and unlawful breach of your civil rights of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.
My strong advice to you - stop offering legal advice on things you don't understand.
There WAS a crime committed. Period. Apple filed a complaint AND Gizmodo's public admissions were sufficient proof that there was a crime.
The police had probable cause and obtained a valid, legal search warrant, so they searched the home.
Now, Chen can raise some legal objections and has the right to challenge the validity of that search warrant, but it would be completely inappropriate to just leave all the evidence in place so it could be tampered with. If we adopted your approach, then any time the police showed up anywhere with a search warrant, the person would say "I'm a journalist. You can't search here" and search warrants would no longer have any use.
There is absolutely nothing wrong here - except with your understanding of the law.
So his profession is stealing things and dealing in stolen property?
By that logic, I'm going to start a web site dedicated to driving cool cars - so I can go out and steal a Ferrari and a Lamborghini.
Strawman. Really, you can't get away with that here. Not when posting with someone who has spent 10 years posting in AppleOutsider.
Quote:
Or maybe a mass-murderer should put up a web site about how it feels to kill people - so he can't be prosecuted?
That is obviously ridiculous.
Quote:
The very site you posted specifically says that the exception is if the 'journalist' is accused of a crime. In this case, the journalist is accused of several crimes. The law was never intended to allow journalists to be above the law.
Uh, really? Which crimes? Could you post the indictment? The police are gathering evidence to ascertain if a crime has been committed. The issue is with how that evidence was collected. This goes to the very heart of the law dealing with different rules for journalists.
Quote:
You keep repeating that you're not sure it's been stolen. Since the relevant CA law has been cited here dozens of times, I'm not sure it's my problem that you can't either read or understand the law. The law is about as clear as it can be - it was stolen.
No, that is simply not settled yet. The thing is that it wasn't actually stolen, it was lost. Legally though, it might be considered stolen, because the person who found it didn't return it in a certain period of time and used it for his own purposes. You keep making these insane comparisons about "going out and stealing cars" or what not, but that's simply not what happened. If it was, we wouldn't have a debate at all. If that was the case, Gizmodo would be done-zo.
I'm just asking you to take a realistic view of this thing (as in, how we all know the legal system works). All of the following will come into play:
--Gizmodo did not "steal" the phone. They purchased it.
--The phone was not "stolen," it was lost.
--It's unlikely that Gizmodo knew that phone might be legally be considered "stolen" under the CA law (no idea if this is a defense...it might be).
--Gizmodo voluntarily returned the item to Apple.
--Evidence collected was probably done with an improper warrant. It may have been served at the wrong time of day as well.
I think you're misunderstanding here--I am not saying the phone isn't or won't be considered legally "stolen." Despite the considerations I posted, here is my opinion:
--The prosecutor/courts will decide that the phone was "stolen" under the CA law that dates back to 1872.
--The person who sold the phone will be prosecuted.
--Gizmodo will face a civil suit involving the UTSA and misappropriation.
--Gizmodo employees will not face criminal prosecution for buying stolen property. My prediction (and that's all) is they'll get off on this one, because it's unlikely that they knew the phone was considered legally stolen under a relatively obscure statute.
Quote:
Why should I care if your brother is a lawyer? if HE wants to chime in with a legal opinion, that might be interesting. But simply the fact that you have a brother who is {almost} an attorney doesn't change the fact that you're about as wrong as you can be.
I won't go to Gizmodo any more. I wonder if anyone archived it. They could simply publish it since Gizmodo obviously believes that it's OK to appropriate anything you find for your own use.
Or maybe they only believe that when it's their justification for stealing Apple's phone.
Comments
Money doesn't buy you influence. Yeah right.
Yes I agree it's not relevant. Also, if they want to know the identity of the person who sold the iPhone to Gizmodo, the police can just contact Engadget instead. The person also tried to sell the phone to Engadget remember?
And i'm sure Engadget will be more than willing to cooperate with the police
You wrote four sentences. Did you have to use red to draw one's attention to you post?
I am also curious about the trade secrets bit. What is considered a trade secret in this case? Is the fact that a next gen iphone exist considered a trade secret? Or the fact that Apple uses wires labelled Apple inside considered a trade secret? Are the phone's specs considered a trade secret? What's the supposedly violated trade secret that everybody keeps brining up?
Must be nice for Apple to be on a committee that runs such a quick responding police force.
Money doesn't buy you influence. Yeah right.
Actually, police tend to like to work on cases that are easy to solve. In this case, the criminal announced his crime to the whole world. So, for a very small investment of time, they get to add a grand larceny conviction. Then there is the value of the item. While Gizmodo paid $5 K for it, that prototype is undoubtedly worth millions of dollars based on Apple's investment, plus potential lost iPhone 3G sales now that people have seen it plus the lead time advantage it gives the competition. They also like to work on public cases - they like publicity as much as most people, plus, it avoids the "why are the police letting all this crime occur and not doing anything about it" nonsense. Those explanations account for their fast action without resorting to silly conspiracy theories.
I am curious how this would work if somebody say outright stole a Madame's little black book with the names of several high profile clients. Would public interest justify the theft of such property? Or is it automatically wrong because it's a theft. And would there still be legal consequences if the little black book was returned but the names of several of those clients were sold to a newspaper who then published them? And what if the little black book was left unattended and somebody picked it up and started perusing through it and realized what he had, and sold the information? Does that finder count as a journalistic source or a thief, legally speaking, if the item was never reported stolen? Lots of questions, I am sure the lawyer types can answer them.
I am also curious about the trade secrets bit. What is considered a trade secret in this case? Is the fact that a next gen iphone exist considered a trade secret? Or the fact that Apple uses wires labelled Apple inside considered a trade secret? Are the phone's specs considered a trade secret? What's the supposedly violated trade secret that everybody keeps brining up?
Your Madame example is completely irrelevant - even if there WERE a public interest in the matter. One might (arguably) say that the public has a right to know about criminal activity of politicians. That does not give them the right to know about a company's confidential development work.
As for the trade secrets, it's pretty stratightforward. If it is not known to the public and the company makes a reasonable effort to protect it, it's a trade secret. Apple's effort is reasonable by most standards:
- Require an NDA for anyone working on it
- Require an NDA from suppliers
- Require an NDA from developers
- Keep it restricted to a small number of trusted employees
- Disguise it before sending it out in public
Apple did all those things. The fact that someone made a mistake and left it (if that's really what happened) does not break those protections. If Jobs went on the Today show and showed al the features and other details, then it probably WOULD void their trade secret protection - at least for the items he showed publicly.
For the following, I'm going to assume that this is real. Even if it's not, the same things would probably be trade secrets, anyway.
So what is a trade secret?
- the new case appearance
- new camera location
- battery size and rating
- appearance and layout of internal components
- construction materials
- in short, almost everything about it - since Apple hasn't announced anything, nor has anything been confirmed by Apple publicly.
You wrote four sentences. Did you have to use red to draw one's attention to you post?
He was trying to jog our memory... remember?
Over the years, many people lost their livelihood so YOU had something 'neat' to read about some future Apple product!
It's one thing to receive information from somebody in the knows, which is usually what most rumors sites do. It's a whole other story when you buy a stolen item.
Gizmodo has some balls.
Love to read it ... sure it's interesting, but won't give them the hit.
Careful, your slip is showing ...
ReallY?
I can' believe this is still going. I'm getting popcorn.....
ReallY?
I can' believe this is still going. I'm getting popcorn.....
Say you got it from Gizmodo and you won't have to share.
The lesson of the story is: Don't make the Siligods mad.
If there were abuses, I wonder where is EFF stands on this one.
This seems a LOT like the MPAA/RIAA "directing" and "assisting"
the feds in piracy raids.
Smacks of using public servants as a private police force.
If a company, or even individual wants to settle a beef like this
where the property was already returned to the rightful owners,
shouldn't they go to court instead of narcing out the person who
returned it?
Maybe those turtlenecks are a bit to tight for mr big britches.
Gizmodo has some balls.
hehe - ya gotta luv em - thanks Sol
Armed with a warrant, California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home last week and seized four computers and two servers in its felony investigation of an obtained prototype iPhone.
Gizmodo revealed the information, along with a copy of the warrant issued by a judge of the superior court in San Mateo County, Calif. In response, the website's post argued that it believes the warrant was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.
What kind of lawless place is California? Stuck in the Wild, Wild West mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later?
I'm shocked by what happened. In Canada, the search warrant would be illegal and open the door to civil damages as showing no cause for breaching the constitutional right to privacy.
Let me explain. First, a criminal offence must be proven or probable cause that a crime was committed must be shown before a search warrant is issued. Second, theft has never been proven nor alleged. Finding lost property never constitutes theft.
It never is a criminal offence to find lost property.
In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences. Policemen must establish probable cause that a crime was committed before they can be issued a search and seizure warrant. Here, no proof was ever offered before the warrant was issued.
I thank God (for the first time!) that Canadians are protected against such abuse of power. Corrupt or unqualified judges are not acceptable in Canada.
My strong advice to Jason Chen: Seek legal advice from the lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Association and SUE for damages and unlawful breach of your civil rights of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.
In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences.
So, Canadian police cannot search a property at all?
or
They can search... but cannot look for evidence?
Sounds a little odd to me.
The lesson of the story is: Don't make the Siligods mad.
If there were abuses, I wonder where is EFF stands on this one.
Just where they always stand - on the side of anarchy.
More often than not, you can look at where EFF stands on a topic and choose the other side - you'll be right 95% of the time.
What kind of lawless place is California? Stuck in the Wild, Wild West mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later?
I'm shocked by what happened. In Canada, the search warrant would be illegal and open the door to civil damages as showing no cause for breaching the constitutional right to privacy.
Let me explain. First, a criminal offence must be proven or probable cause that a crime was committed must be shown before a search warrant is issued. Second, theft has never been proven nor alleged. Finding lost property never constitutes theft.
It never is a criminal offence to find lost property.
In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences. Policemen must establish probable cause that a crime was committed before they can be issued a search and seizure warrant. Here, no proof was ever offered before the warrant was issued.
I thank God (for the first time!) that Canadians are protected against such abuse of power. Corrupt or unqualified judges are not acceptable in Canada.
My strong advice to Jason Chen: Seek legal advice from the lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Association and SUE for damages and unlawful breach of your civil rights of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.
My strong advice to you - stop offering legal advice on things you don't understand.
There WAS a crime committed. Period. Apple filed a complaint AND Gizmodo's public admissions were sufficient proof that there was a crime.
The police had probable cause and obtained a valid, legal search warrant, so they searched the home.
Now, Chen can raise some legal objections and has the right to challenge the validity of that search warrant, but it would be completely inappropriate to just leave all the evidence in place so it could be tampered with. If we adopted your approach, then any time the police showed up anywhere with a search warrant, the person would say "I'm a journalist. You can't search here" and search warrants would no longer have any use.
There is absolutely nothing wrong here - except with your understanding of the law.
So his profession is stealing things and dealing in stolen property?
By that logic, I'm going to start a web site dedicated to driving cool cars - so I can go out and steal a Ferrari and a Lamborghini.
Strawman. Really, you can't get away with that here. Not when posting with someone who has spent 10 years posting in AppleOutsider.
Or maybe a mass-murderer should put up a web site about how it feels to kill people - so he can't be prosecuted?
That is obviously ridiculous.
The very site you posted specifically says that the exception is if the 'journalist' is accused of a crime. In this case, the journalist is accused of several crimes. The law was never intended to allow journalists to be above the law.
Uh, really? Which crimes? Could you post the indictment? The police are gathering evidence to ascertain if a crime has been committed. The issue is with how that evidence was collected. This goes to the very heart of the law dealing with different rules for journalists.
You keep repeating that you're not sure it's been stolen. Since the relevant CA law has been cited here dozens of times, I'm not sure it's my problem that you can't either read or understand the law. The law is about as clear as it can be - it was stolen.
No, that is simply not settled yet. The thing is that it wasn't actually stolen, it was lost. Legally though, it might be considered stolen, because the person who found it didn't return it in a certain period of time and used it for his own purposes. You keep making these insane comparisons about "going out and stealing cars" or what not, but that's simply not what happened. If it was, we wouldn't have a debate at all. If that was the case, Gizmodo would be done-zo.
I'm just asking you to take a realistic view of this thing (as in, how we all know the legal system works). All of the following will come into play:
--Gizmodo did not "steal" the phone. They purchased it.
--The phone was not "stolen," it was lost.
--It's unlikely that Gizmodo knew that phone might be legally be considered "stolen" under the CA law (no idea if this is a defense...it might be).
--Gizmodo voluntarily returned the item to Apple.
--Evidence collected was probably done with an improper warrant. It may have been served at the wrong time of day as well.
I think you're misunderstanding here--I am not saying the phone isn't or won't be considered legally "stolen." Despite the considerations I posted, here is my opinion:
--The prosecutor/courts will decide that the phone was "stolen" under the CA law that dates back to 1872.
--The person who sold the phone will be prosecuted.
--Gizmodo will face a civil suit involving the UTSA and misappropriation.
--Gizmodo employees will not face criminal prosecution for buying stolen property. My prediction (and that's all) is they'll get off on this one, because it's unlikely that they knew the phone was considered legally stolen under a relatively obscure statute.
Why should I care if your brother is a lawyer? if HE wants to chime in with a legal opinion, that might be interesting. But simply the fact that you have a brother who is {almost} an attorney doesn't change the fact that you're about as wrong as you can be.
I was just thinking out loud. Relax.
Strawman. Really, you can't get away with that here. Not when posting with someone who has spent 10 years posting in AppleOutsider.
[...]
I was just thinking out loud. Relax.
Great post! The potential outcomes you mentioned seem most likely to me, too.
Gizmodo has some balls.
I won't go to Gizmodo any more. I wonder if anyone archived it. They could simply publish it since Gizmodo obviously believes that it's OK to appropriate anything you find for your own use.
Or maybe they only believe that when it's their justification for stealing Apple's phone.