Silicon Valley Cops raid Gizmodo editors home

hubris said:

And yet.....

iPhone 3GS Review - Iphone 3gs review - Gizmodo

by "alleged culprit"

Promotional action.?

To be honest, I would not be surprised with any sort of stunt these companies pull nowadays.

Is it a case of cahoots gone wrong, or just straight out collusion?

Realistically though - who cares? It's just a bloody gadget.

jorpe said:

Didn't the guy who found it make several attempts to give it back to Apple without any luck?

Yep. He called into Apple, and they basically told him that they had no idea what he was talking about.

And yet.....

iPhone 3GS Review - Iphone 3gs review - Gizmodo

by "alleged culprit"

Promotional action.?

That article is from last year, about the current gen iPhone.

That's one story I heard, though I don't know if we'll ever know the truth. If it was true though, then I'd say finders keepers is fair enough then.

Zen00 said:

That's one story I heard, though I don't know if we'll ever know the truth. If it was true though, then I'd say finders keepers is fair enough then.

So, for example, if you were to leave your laptop somewhere and I picked it up, and the next day you saw me using it and you then asked for it back and I said No - you'd be cool with that?

Apple asked for 'lost' iPhone criminal probe - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

Apple asked for 'lost' iPhone criminal probe

(ecerpt)

Wagstaffe [the San Mateo County DA] said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated. The District Attorney’s office then referred them to the Rapid Enforcement and Allied Computer Team, or REACT, a multi-jurisdictional, high-tech crime task force that operates under the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.

smarteyeball said:

Zen00 said:

That's one story I heard, though I don't know if we'll ever know the truth. If it was true though, then I'd say finders keepers is fair enough then.

So, for example, if you were to leave your laptop somewhere and I picked it up, and the next day you saw me using it and you then asked for it back and I said No - you'd be cool with that?

I was responding to that Apple refused to acknowledge that the prototype was theirs. If you picked up my laptop after I'd left it somewhere and tried to hand it back to me, and I refused to accept it, I guess it would be yours then.

Let’s look at this from another point of view. Let’s say CBS found the new iPhone and put a story together about it then aired it on 60 Minutes. I bet Apple would never sue CBS or say the iPhone was stolen by CBS. Why? CBS is bigger than Apple they (CBS) have a lot of money and power including high paid lawyers so nothing would have happened Apple would have caulked it up to freedom of speech and then used the 60 Minutes story to help them promote their new iPhone. But since this is some little guy all Apple can do is bully him. Come on Apple do the right thing use this as great PR and stop all actions against the little guy.

(PC: Little guy is a metaphor for a small company and has nothing to do with size of people)

They do make a good point about the issue over at The Register.

Is it possible that Denton has overreached himself? We don't criticise him for paying for stories - we don't do that ourselves, but we're not about to get onto any moral high horse about it. It does however seem to us that the way he and his merry men went about this story was reckless. They've bought something they knew was hot, then they've compounded that error by telling the world how they got hold of it, and what they paid for it.
If they had simply said that the device had come into their possession, then they'd have still had the story, and Apple would still have known it was Gray Powell's...but where's the case?

I wonder if that's what would have happened if he hadn't gone and blabbed that he bought a "semi-stolen" device.