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Gizmodo Blows Whistle On 4G iPhone Loser
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.
The summary is kind of slanted. Apple already knew who had lost the phone - they knew from the day after when they wiped it - Gizmodo just made that name public and did so in a fairly classy way. As a lot of comments on Gizmodo have pointed out, the public naming of the engineer isn't going to do anything more to hurt him, and could protect him a little from Steve Jobs firing him.
Their source is the one they paid $5K to, not the poor sap/purposeful leaker who left the iPhone in the bar.
The answers to all this and more, when you RTFA! :)
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.
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.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Yeah I mean the last guy who lost an iPhone prototype killed himself. Maybe this is like a public suicide watch notice. Or the media frenzy may just drive him to the same fate.
I still think it was a dick move from Gizmodo and feel bad for the guy.
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.
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 :
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.
This
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.
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
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.
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
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.