I agree with you (in fact if you look at some of my other posts you'll see I've said exactly that - he should have turned it in to the police).
I wasn't attempting to excuse his choice (though I can see how it could come across that way), I was merely attempting to show that his choice was based on selfishness rather than anything vaguely resembling altruism.
Instead of the bartender, a different 3rd party in the form of Gizmodo seemed like a better option.
It's not like "selling it to Gizmodo" was the only option left after your 1st and 2nd options there.
There's another legal option: turn it in to the police (as required by California law).
Furthermore, you can't claim he "outsourced" his duties to a third party - to even have a vaguely plausible chance at that defense working, he would have had to pay the third party; instead, he got paid himself, and not just pocket change.
Sorry, I meant "unreasonable" search and seizure. If a judge grants a search warrant, then I'm willing to assume it was reasonable until proven otherwise. Probably should have double-checked the wording of the Fourth Amendment before I hit Submit.
In any case, the Fourth Amendment does not require that anyone be notified, only that a warrant be issued under probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. The Gizmodo guy had purchased stolen goods (under California law), which provides probable cause.
Sorry, where does the US Constitution say "finders keepers" isn't theft?
Oh, right, it doesn't. Which part of the Constitution in particular do you think trumps that California law?
Furthermore, the Constitution protects us from unlawful search and seizure, and does not require that a warrant be presented to the owner or resident of the premises in question. In other words, if the cops have a warrant, they can search the place, whether or not the owner or resident is present. Yes, they eventually have to hand the person a notice that their premises was searched, but it does not have to be done before the fact.
If you say it does, please point me to the bit of the Constitution which says so, or some other law which says so.
Have you ever actually read the Constitution?
Are you seriously claiming that if the Constitution doesn't explicitly mention something, no state can make a law about it? Sorry, but the Constitution explicitly reserves for the individual states the right to make laws about whatever the Constitution doesn't mention. I'll quote the Tenth Amendment for you:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Since the Constitution makes no reference to laws regarding theft, it is left to the States individually to determine their own laws on the matter.
I hope that helps you understand the Constitution you obviously adore (but also obviously haven't read).
In California you're supposed to turn it in to the police, not take it home and sell it to Gizmodo for $5k.
Come on, you seriously don't think there's anything shady about that?
"I *tried* to call Apple but their first-tier phone people didn't know what I should do, so I figured Apple didn't care what I did with the phone. Hey, did you see my new $SHINY_TOY?"
If you believe the $5k was for the "story", then I have a story about a bridge to sell you. (The guy's "story" was just "I found the phone, took it home, half-heartedly tried to contact Apple, didn't turn it in to the police, then sold it to Gizmodo for $SACK_OF_CASH.")
Not according to California law, where it's illegal to keep something you find if it's worth more than $100 or so - you have to either return it to its owner, or turn it in to the police.
So by that law, yes, the guy keeping the iPhone he found made him a thief regardless of whether he tried to return it to Apple, because he should have turned it in to the police. Selling it to Gizmodo didn't improve the situation any (selling stolen goods is generally frowned upon by courts).
Rather than entrusting the phone to a 3rd party such as the bartender at the bar where the phone was found, the finder believed a 3rd party like Gizmodo was more likely to be trustworthy and more likely to be able to ascertain the true owner. It's not an unreasonable assumption to have made.
His choices were more like "turn it in to the police and get a pat on the head (if that), or give it to Gizmodo and get a fat check".
Gee, I wonder why he chose Gizmodo.
At any no time, as money was changing hands, did anyone believe that they owned the phone in question.
I don't think you understand how "selling stolen property" laws work. You don't get out of it just by saying "neither of us believed we were transferring ownership of the property in question". Or do you think the "I'm not guilty of selling stolen property - my buyer and I both knew the painting belongs to the museum!" excuse should fly?
By your logic, it's not possible to be guilty of buying or selling stolen property unless you're actually innocent. In other words, you've got it exactly backward.
If you know the device is not yours, and you give it to a third party in exchange for money - I don't believe for a second he would have given it to Gizmodo for free - then you've sold stolen property. It doesn't matter whether either party believes you're transferring ownership or not. The guy who found the phone shouldn't have given up after he couldn't get a hold of anyone at Apple who would know whether it was missing; he should have given it to the police.
I don't know about you, but my high school didn't teach an economics class. Anything high school may have taught me about economics was incidental to whatever other subject I was supposed to be learning. I didn't have an actual economics class until college (and that one was actually valuable).
I think perhaps it would be an improvement if high school taught economics.
Some people seem to have better luck with them, but mine lock up once or twice a week and need to be power-cycled. People told me to get one of the older wrt's, which had more memory, so I did. That's what I have now, and it's not really any better.
I think the older WRT54Gs (v1 and v2, I have a v2) just start getting unstable after a few years (which means, they're probably dropping like flies now that they're so old). Mine was working rock-solid until about two months ago; now it requires a hard reboot every day or two (and it usually forces my hand by crapping out when I'm in the middle of something).
I have a WRT300N sitting on a shelf unused that's effectively new (my dad bought it, opened it, then never used it). I've been meaning to swap it out for my 54G, since most of the various open source firmwares support it... maybe I'll do that right now. (Cue a 45-minute pause while I start working on that before realizing I didn't hit "submit".)
If anyone's interested, Sony's response to my inquiry was as follows:
You choose whether or not you wish to update the system. We cannot force you to update the system. You just will not be able to use the PlayStation(R)Network without updating. Eventually, you will need to download Blu-Ray key updates to be able to continue to use the Blu-Ray discs as the information will expire and you no longer will be able to use the Blu-Ray player. These new keys are in firmware updates.
So if you believe Sony Customer Support, they have explicitly stated that they cannot ninja-update the system.
And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
Have you ever registered a domain name? What address did you use?
Anyone could find where you live just by looking at your car plate numbers...Is this safe?
What nefarious use could be gleaned from the combination of license plate number and home address? You think someone is going to break into your car, take your garage door opener, and then look up your home address on the internet?
That would actually be harder than the more obvious solution - open the glove compartment and pull out the insurance card contained therein, which will of course have your home address on it.
Or is your concern that someone will merely read your plate numbers and then for some reason decide to look up where you live? Why would anyone do that? If someone were so inclined, then there are far easier ways for them to randomly choose houses to rob (or whatever).
Granted, your license plate number is probably not published online right now, but I fail to see what problems it could cause. Do you have any examples?
Near the end, you can hear him carefully questioning the officer to make sure that he was in fact being arrested only for the refusal to show ID:
Rachner: "If I were to pull out my ID right now, would you let me go with no further questions?" Cop: "I would have, but you're already under arrest."
Rachner was clearly making sure it was on the record that he was being arrested for refusal to show ID, and for no other reason, so they wouldn't able to go back and say "oh but we were arresting him for something else too, so it wasn't an illegal arrest". That supports what you inferred: he was making a conscious choice to let them arrest him so he could fight it later in court.
(I just IM'd my wife to have her cut power to the PS3 until this is sorted out for sure. I also e-mailed Sony customer support for a specific comment on the issue, despite the low chance of success.)
I just IM'd my wife to have her cut off power to the PS3 until I get a reply to my inquiry to Sony's customer support. (I asked them to officially confirm that they have no intention of remotely updating the firmware of PS3 consoles without user consent.) I guess I'll see what Sony says.
If that's correct, then Sony can't ("legally") remotely update the firmware in arbitrary PS3s, because they have no way of knowing whether the target PS3's owner is bound by an EULA.
(They might not care, but that's beside the point right now.)
If you have ever pressed "Accept" while updating your system software, then you have agreed to play by Sony's rules, which is just fine for me and the other 95% of the people using the PS3 to play games and watch movies.
I bought it used. I have never agreed to any EULA. I do not connect to PSN. I did not update my firmware when the 3.21 update came out (which removed OtherOS). Can Sony still claim I'm bound by their EULA? If so, on what basis? (Perhaps they would claim EULAs transfer with secondhand sales?)
And where would these rules be laid out? Sony's PS3 EULA contains no clauses containing the words "sale", "sell", "secondhand", or "used". The only mention of "ownership" is to say that users have no ownership over the system software (which is what allows Sony to update the software on a whim), but nothing about secondhand sales. (I don't really care about the warranty; that's a separate issue entirely.)
Right, so that leaves the question: does my current firmware (3.15) allow them to ninja-update my PS3 (technically speaking), regardless of whether I've agreed to an EULA or whether I've ever connected to PSN?
If so, they might just *assume* I agreed to an EULA at some point, and force an update on my console regardless. If that happens, then it doesn't really matter whether I call them and complain, or start a class action, or whatever - they've already removed functionality from my console against my wishes, and there really wouldn't be anything I could do about it.
Maybe I should start having my router log my PS3's connections, and see if firmware 3.15 (that's pre-April 1) phones home. Has anyone done this?
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If they can prove he paid for it, he's fucked.
Haven't they been publicly trumpeting the fact that they paid $5k for it? I can't seem to find a link though.
I agree with you (in fact if you look at some of my other posts you'll see I've said exactly that - he should have turned it in to the police).
I wasn't attempting to excuse his choice (though I can see how it could come across that way), I was merely attempting to show that his choice was based on selfishness rather than anything vaguely resembling altruism.
Instead of the bartender, a different 3rd party in the form of Gizmodo seemed like a better option.
It's not like "selling it to Gizmodo" was the only option left after your 1st and 2nd options there.
There's another legal option: turn it in to the police (as required by California law).
Furthermore, you can't claim he "outsourced" his duties to a third party - to even have a vaguely plausible chance at that defense working, he would have had to pay the third party; instead, he got paid himself, and not just pocket change.
I think it's pretty clear-cut.
Sorry, I meant "unreasonable" search and seizure. If a judge grants a search warrant, then I'm willing to assume it was reasonable until proven otherwise. Probably should have double-checked the wording of the Fourth Amendment before I hit Submit.
In any case, the Fourth Amendment does not require that anyone be notified, only that a warrant be issued under probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. The Gizmodo guy had purchased stolen goods (under California law), which provides probable cause.
Sorry, where does the US Constitution say "finders keepers" isn't theft?
Oh, right, it doesn't. Which part of the Constitution in particular do you think trumps that California law?
Furthermore, the Constitution protects us from unlawful search and seizure, and does not require that a warrant be presented to the owner or resident of the premises in question. In other words, if the cops have a warrant, they can search the place, whether or not the owner or resident is present. Yes, they eventually have to hand the person a notice that their premises was searched, but it does not have to be done before the fact.
If you say it does, please point me to the bit of the Constitution which says so, or some other law which says so.
Have you ever actually read the Constitution?
Are you seriously claiming that if the Constitution doesn't explicitly mention something, no state can make a law about it? Sorry, but the Constitution explicitly reserves for the individual states the right to make laws about whatever the Constitution doesn't mention. I'll quote the Tenth Amendment for you:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Since the Constitution makes no reference to laws regarding theft, it is left to the States individually to determine their own laws on the matter.
I hope that helps you understand the Constitution you obviously adore (but also obviously haven't read).
In California you're supposed to turn it in to the police, not take it home and sell it to Gizmodo for $5k.
Come on, you seriously don't think there's anything shady about that?
"I *tried* to call Apple but their first-tier phone people didn't know what I should do, so I figured Apple didn't care what I did with the phone. Hey, did you see my new $SHINY_TOY?"
If you believe the $5k was for the "story", then I have a story about a bridge to sell you. (The guy's "story" was just "I found the phone, took it home, half-heartedly tried to contact Apple, didn't turn it in to the police, then sold it to Gizmodo for $SACK_OF_CASH.")
Not according to California law, where it's illegal to keep something you find if it's worth more than $100 or so - you have to either return it to its owner, or turn it in to the police.
So by that law, yes, the guy keeping the iPhone he found made him a thief regardless of whether he tried to return it to Apple, because he should have turned it in to the police. Selling it to Gizmodo didn't improve the situation any (selling stolen goods is generally frowned upon by courts).
Rather than entrusting the phone to a 3rd party such as the bartender at the bar where the phone was found, the finder believed a 3rd party like Gizmodo was more likely to be trustworthy and more likely to be able to ascertain the true owner. It's not an unreasonable assumption to have made.
His choices were more like "turn it in to the police and get a pat on the head (if that), or give it to Gizmodo and get a fat check".
Gee, I wonder why he chose Gizmodo.
At any no time, as money was changing hands, did anyone believe that they owned the phone in question.
I don't think you understand how "selling stolen property" laws work. You don't get out of it just by saying "neither of us believed we were transferring ownership of the property in question". Or do you think the "I'm not guilty of selling stolen property - my buyer and I both knew the painting belongs to the museum!" excuse should fly?
By your logic, it's not possible to be guilty of buying or selling stolen property unless you're actually innocent. In other words, you've got it exactly backward.
If you know the device is not yours, and you give it to a third party in exchange for money - I don't believe for a second he would have given it to Gizmodo for free - then you've sold stolen property. It doesn't matter whether either party believes you're transferring ownership or not. The guy who found the phone shouldn't have given up after he couldn't get a hold of anyone at Apple who would know whether it was missing; he should have given it to the police.
I don't know about you, but my high school didn't teach an economics class. Anything high school may have taught me about economics was incidental to whatever other subject I was supposed to be learning. I didn't have an actual economics class until college (and that one was actually valuable).
I think perhaps it would be an improvement if high school taught economics.
Some people seem to have better luck with them, but mine lock up once or twice a week and need to be power-cycled. People told me to get one of the older wrt's, which had more memory, so I did. That's what I have now, and it's not really any better.
I think the older WRT54Gs (v1 and v2, I have a v2) just start getting unstable after a few years (which means, they're probably dropping like flies now that they're so old). Mine was working rock-solid until about two months ago; now it requires a hard reboot every day or two (and it usually forces my hand by crapping out when I'm in the middle of something).
I have a WRT300N sitting on a shelf unused that's effectively new (my dad bought it, opened it, then never used it). I've been meaning to swap it out for my 54G, since most of the various open source firmwares support it... maybe I'll do that right now. (Cue a 45-minute pause while I start working on that before realizing I didn't hit "submit".)
Perhaps, but they have now explicitly stated that they cannot force me to update, so if they do it anyway, I can flip out at them even more.
If anyone's interested, Sony's response to my inquiry was as follows:
You choose whether or not you wish to update the system. We cannot force you to update the system. You just will not be able to use the PlayStation(R)Network without updating. Eventually, you will need to download Blu-Ray key updates to be able to continue to use the Blu-Ray discs as the information will expire and you no longer will be able to use the Blu-Ray player. These new keys are in firmware updates.
So if you believe Sony Customer Support, they have explicitly stated that they cannot ninja-update the system.
attempt to gain unauthorized entry, and, if successful.... leech your internet?
Or, connect to your Windows machine and steal your financial documents, or your $INCRIMINATING_EVIDENCE, or your $SECRET_PROJECT, or whatever.
I don't really care whether people know my physical address, or my router's SSID, but I don't leave it open because I don't want people on my network.
And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
Have you ever registered a domain name? What address did you use?
Anyone could find where you live just by looking at your car plate numbers...Is this safe?
What nefarious use could be gleaned from the combination of license plate number and home address? You think someone is going to break into your car, take your garage door opener, and then look up your home address on the internet?
That would actually be harder than the more obvious solution - open the glove compartment and pull out the insurance card contained therein, which will of course have your home address on it.
Or is your concern that someone will merely read your plate numbers and then for some reason decide to look up where you live? Why would anyone do that? If someone were so inclined, then there are far easier ways for them to randomly choose houses to rob (or whatever).
Granted, your license plate number is probably not published online right now, but I fail to see what problems it could cause. Do you have any examples?
Oh, I agree too. Did I say something to indicate otherwise?
Near the end, you can hear him carefully questioning the officer to make sure that he was in fact being arrested only for the refusal to show ID:
Rachner: "If I were to pull out my ID right now, would you let me go with no further questions?"
Cop: "I would have, but you're already under arrest."
Rachner was clearly making sure it was on the record that he was being arrested for refusal to show ID, and for no other reason, so they wouldn't able to go back and say "oh but we were arresting him for something else too, so it wasn't an illegal arrest". That supports what you inferred: he was making a conscious choice to let them arrest him so he could fight it later in court.
That's true.
(I just IM'd my wife to have her cut power to the PS3 until this is sorted out for sure. I also e-mailed Sony customer support for a specific comment on the issue, despite the low chance of success.)
Yeah...
I just IM'd my wife to have her cut off power to the PS3 until I get a reply to my inquiry to Sony's customer support. (I asked them to officially confirm that they have no intention of remotely updating the firmware of PS3 consoles without user consent.) I guess I'll see what Sony says.
If that's correct, then Sony can't ("legally") remotely update the firmware in arbitrary PS3s, because they have no way of knowing whether the target PS3's owner is bound by an EULA.
(They might not care, but that's beside the point right now.)
This is a SCEA EULA,
No, it's a SCE, Inc. EULA.
If you have ever pressed "Accept" while updating your system software, then you have agreed to play by Sony's rules, which is just fine for me and the other 95% of the people using the PS3 to play games and watch movies.
I bought it used. I have never agreed to any EULA. I do not connect to PSN. I did not update my firmware when the 3.21 update came out (which removed OtherOS). Can Sony still claim I'm bound by their EULA? If so, on what basis? (Perhaps they would claim EULAs transfer with secondhand sales?)
And where would these rules be laid out? Sony's PS3 EULA contains no clauses containing the words "sale", "sell", "secondhand", or "used". The only mention of "ownership" is to say that users have no ownership over the system software (which is what allows Sony to update the software on a whim), but nothing about secondhand sales. (I don't really care about the warranty; that's a separate issue entirely.)
What do you mean by "all bets are off"?
Are you just guessing, or do you have evidence? (I'm genuinely interested in the evidence, if you have any.)
Right, so that leaves the question: does my current firmware (3.15) allow them to ninja-update my PS3 (technically speaking), regardless of whether I've agreed to an EULA or whether I've ever connected to PSN?
If so, they might just *assume* I agreed to an EULA at some point, and force an update on my console regardless. If that happens, then it doesn't really matter whether I call them and complain, or start a class action, or whatever - they've already removed functionality from my console against my wishes, and there really wouldn't be anything I could do about it.
Maybe I should start having my router log my PS3's connections, and see if firmware 3.15 (that's pre-April 1) phones home. Has anyone done this?