Think of it like buying the sheet music to a song. You can do whatever you want with the physical copy. However, you're not allowed to copy it without permission, and if you perform it publicly, then you have to pay someone a royalty. This is not normally printed all over the copy, so it's up to you to make sure you have all your legal bases covered before you get up on stage and start singing.
Since the purpose of printed sheet music is primarily to let someone perform the work, the same logic applies to the patent argument where the camera's primary purpose is to take photos. However, in both cases, the distinction between the assumed non-commercial use versus commercial use (eg. private versus public performance) would probably be viewed as valid by the court.
In other words, the extortion racket would probably be allowed to continue.
In a case where a garage door vendor sued a customer for using a different opener than the one delivered by the door vendor, the vendor claimed patents (memory may fail me here, what other kind of IP could it be?) on the specific codes to activate the mechanism. The judge found that one had to assume the customer had bought the permission to use the patent when he bought the door.
That is fair enough. But, what happens when the patent holder isn't the same entity as the one that sold you the product?
What if the patent wasn't available to be read (ie. unknown, and still sitting in the 2 year processing cycle at the patent office)?
Now, both they guy that sold you the device and you are infringing the patent. The patent holder has legal recourse (which is the purpose behind the whole patent system) to stop all parties from infringing on their patented process.
Note: this only applies to process patents that describe a method that just happens to be implemented by a device. Likewise, it probably doesn't apply to a patent for direct physical attributes of the device itself. ie. what the device does versus what the device is.
Not quite, because the end user does not engage in the process that was used to make the tire - unless they are making things out of rubber.
A better car analogy:
The gas company has a patent on the process of mixing gasoline with air to achieve optimal combustion.
You buy a car that uses this optimal air/fuel mixing process to burn the fuel. The car company has paid the gas company for rights to create a device that implements its patent. However, the gas company doesn't include a clause that further indemnifies the car's users for engaging in the use of the patented process (ie. mixing the air and fuel using their patented process).
You stare at your nice shiny new car in the parking lot, climb in, and get just a little euphoric as you take in the smell of the brand new leather. You put the key into the ignition and flash up the engine, quietly infringing on the patented air/fuel mixing process as the car purrs out of dealership.
And now, just like in Soviet Russia, the gas company owns YOU!
1. Patent exists on process X (process X being the MPEG encoding process in the current example). Note 1: the patent will also probably contain a subsequent claim for "a device implementing process X" where process X is described in an earlier claim within the same patent. Two birds, one stone. Note 2: patents on processes are there to allow a method to be patented that describes a novel way to manufacture (or achieve) an improved result that is not necessarily part of (or contained in) the end product - eg. a method to mix chemicals that minimises some undesirable side effects would be useful to all paint companies; even though the final result doesn't 'include' the patent in its function, the process itself is covered so the other companies have to find another way to mix their paints.
2. Manufacturer makes a device that implements process X.
3. Since patents cover process X and not just the devices that implement process X, anyone using the device to engage in process X is infringing. (In many cases, the manufacturer may not even be aware of the patent on process X. But, that's no consolation to anyone further 'down the line' who infringes.)
4. Now, normally, when a patent is licensed, the licensee will seek rights to not only implement the patented process, but also an indemnity for users of the device.
5. Since certain MPEG standards are not just a granted monopoly on IP, but also a defacto standard on a critical file format, the MPEG-LA can throw in (IMO) 'unconscionable' terms into their agreement. What choice does the manufacturer have? They can either choose to infringe, or license with sufficient terms to at least cover themselves.
6. The device you buy probably has a legal disclaimer waiving the manufacturer's liability for any known and unknown patents that you might have to violate when using their device for certain commonplace activities.
Now here is where it gets nasty:
7. You do something with the device that is known to exercise process X, and make enough money that you stick your head above the radar and get noticed.
8. Patent holder(s) step in with jack boots, and you either pay their fees or get sued for infringing on the patent of process X.
9. You can try to sue the device's manufacturer for not telling you in advance, but that could be an expensive uphill legal battle where you might not have a valid (or good enough) legal argument.
Streaming video should "just work" like inline images do - ie. as part of standard HTML. The browser shouldn't have to download a full interpreted application every time you want to view some video content. And every single web developer shouldn't have to get clever with Flash just to display video content.
HTML5 is definitely not a means to push Quicktime. It basically obsoletes the requirement to have Quicktime installed just to view streaming video in your browser.
Yeah, Quicktime can be used to encode H264 video content, but so can many other applications.
In the absence of judge and jury, the Robber Baron has forbidden the brigand entry to his fief. The brigand remains alive to rape and plunder another village.
I'm happy for Apple to stick a spanner in the works of all the Flash crapverts, crapware and crapviewers that are the bane of the web.
Ever since Flash was released, people have been using it to create web pages that would have otherwise been much more usable if they'd just used regular HTML. IMO, the sooner Flash loses its popularity as a page description language, the better.
Even the sites that use it view videos are unusable half the time. Why not just display the video as an embedded stream? HTML5 will make this more efficient, and at the same time get rid of some of the other reasons that Flash is so popular with web developers.
Absolutely. If a family is earning that much extra to be able to afford all that extra cruft, then they are definitely in a position to do things 'properly'.
The only problem is that most of those families probably feel very 'comfortable' where they are and probably don't feel like they're doing anything 'wrong'. They might also be overweight and addicted to the instant gratification of modern conveniences.
Unfortunately, if every second family is behaving like that, then many kids are being raised in a way that both you and I understand to be sub-par.
For families that care, there is a way out, but those other families don't seem to know any better IMO. If something can't be done with decent/accessible education programs (for both parents and kids), then we risk the government stepping in at some point to force a less desirable solution as everyone screams, "But, think of the children!"
Drop one job, learn to budget with the remaining income (which probably means dropping Cable and not buying some gadgets, and certainly means buying fresh food and reserving eating out to a rare occasion). Spend the time you save with your kids.
The problem is that the average family probably doesn't need two full incomes, and unless you've got a reasonably well paying job, a single income probably isn't enough either. So you'd still need to have the second parent work at least a couple of days a week to avoid being evicted from your already tiny home.
Unfortunately jobs that pay well and still let you work 2 days a week are hard to come by. This means that the average family ends up with two full incomes and not much free time. They do, however have a bunch of spare cash (but not enough to go crazy and feed a family of 4 at $10/meal/person extra). So they end up cheaping out on the meals and spending the extra cash on crap like movie themed toys/games, junk food and other unnecessary things that are easy and don't require further time and effort.
This also means that the services supplied in their area start to self select to cater for this type of behaviour. The good restaurants go out of business with only a few left in hard to find places, the supermarkets stop carrying quality produce/meats while increasing their inventories of highly processed foods, and the fast food chains start to pop up everywhere in prominently positioned locations.
It's a downward spiral that will be hard to break.
Clearly the solution is to make it illegal for mothers to work.
You say this almost jokingly. But, you have absolutely identified a significant contributing factor to the obesity epidemic (and many other societal problems IMO).
Since it became common for women to work, it has meant that the average income per capita has increased. That increase slowly pushed up the cost of living to the point that families could no longer survive on a single average income. Thus forcing most mothers to generate income rather than spending time raising the kids, shopping for healthy produce, cooking the family meals, etc.
This creates time poor families that depend more and more on external resources to 'raise' the kids and feed the family. So it's no wonder that there appears to be a degeneration of society, an obesity epidemic, and a general race to the bottom for the working class.
The change over time in the functionality of the family unit has been much faster than society has been able to comfortably adapt. Responsible couples are forced to delay having children while they 'save up' for enough financial security to able to raise kids in their parents' tradition. And couples that don't have the finances to let the mother to stay home are more or less forced out of the option of raising their kids in the way they'd hoped for. The kids of time poor parents tend to get exposed to a barrage of adult concepts and marketing at much younger ages and miss out on the necessarily constant guidance of how to reject those inappropriate messages. The parents are also affected by this, as the additional time and effort required to raise the kids after working the daily grind makes it much harder to make good eating choices. The problem is exacerbated as the kids see and emulate their parental role models. All of this makes it difficult to resist a culture that wants nothing but to suck on the teat of the corporate monster for better or for worse.
(BTW I'm not advocating actually forbidding mothers from working, but it's a telling observation on the effect of women in general entering the workforce. I don't mean to sound all 'doom and gloom', but there is definitely an element of truth to what I've written.)
There is no such thing as total freedom, and any freedom you do have is maintained in a delicate balance of law and regulation.
Just about every aspect of your life is already regulated to some extent. This is about extending that regulation in a direction that you don't like.
If you think that regulating what can be sold to you can only happen in a totalitarian regime, then you must also agree that you are already living in one as that is how the USA works.
So the Federal rights that citizens have from the constitution is 'right to not be denied the vote based on certain criteria' and 'right to run for Federal office'. That's it. All other rights apply to 'People', or they simply state what the government can't do, presumably to anyone.
These are more about privileges extended to citizens, rather than inalienable rights that can't be taken away from a person. Since citizenship can be revoked (although it doesn't happen often to natural born citizens), it follows that those privileges are also forfeited.
The concept of citizenship is really about taking extra steps to become involved in the politics and responsibilities of the country. In doing this, the country affords the citizen additional privileges above and beyond a visitor or non-citizen resident. These days, many people seem rather apathetic to the responsibility side of the citizenship bargain, and spend their efforts whining that non-citizens (ie. immigrants) are mostly treated equally as evidenced by the GGP post.
In my opinion, a citizen does not just have the 'right' to vote, but instead has the 'responsibility' to vote (which would controversially also imply a 'requirement'). Why bother maintaining a person's citizenship if they don't want to participate in the country's operation? I see numerous posts where people talk about voting being a waste of time, or describing a dozen ways to 'get out of jury duty'.
It's simple really, if you don't want to participate, then you get demoted to the status of 'permanent resident'. Unfortunately, these days the word 'citizen' seems to be synonymous with 'permanent resident that doesn't have to do anything to avoid being kicked out of the country'. IMO, citizenship should mean so much more than that.
But they'd still have to start by downloading at least enough of the shared file to be able actually view it so they can determine if the torrent is really infringing and not something else. After that, I suppose a few verified infringing block hashes would probably suffice as some level of evidence on a per user basis.
So as the GGP said, the enforcement police still have a significant amount more work to do than just bulk harvesting IP addresses from the trackers.
I was exaggerating the concept to illustrate a point further along the slippery slope of where things could end up going.
Basically, I was saying that to require proof of citizenship from an illegal or a legal immigrant, also implies that a regular citizen must supply proof of citizenship too. Otherwise how would the police officer be able to tell the difference.
The problem is that we've made criminals a protected class in America for so long that they have more rights than legal citezens. IMHO, the rights of the Constituion should only apply to citizens. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works anymore.
That's not the way it ever worked.
Criminals are not a protected 'class', and the constitution has never applied ONLY to citizens.
In fact, beyond the obvious loss of rights that happens to someone when they're incarcerated, the government doesn't suddenly have a legal reprieve to ignore the constitution. Think for example the 8th Amendment regarding "cruel and unusual punishment". How would that make any sense if all of a sudden the constitution ceased to apply once you've been convicted. Could you then be punished "cruelly and unusually"?
At the time that the US Constitution was written, there was no universal requirement of citizenship. In fact the word citizen wasn't even mentioned in the constitution until the 14th Amendment was added nearly 100 years later.
The US Constitution is probably one of the most noble documents ever written. And the denial of rights, or the selective application of its laws, is anathema to the entire purpose of its text.
What if you're a bona fide citizen? Does everyone need to keep a copy of their birth certificate / citizenship papers with them just in case they get pulled up and pistol whipped by the local gestapo?
If the guy that 'found' and sold the phone is found guilty, then by extension Gizmodo will probably be found guilty of receiving stolen goods (and by further extension, liable for any Trade Secrets revealed as a consequence of dealing in the stolen goods).
If that happens, Apple can step in and sue Gizmodo for revealing those stolen Trade Secrets. Until then, Apple may as well just buy some popcorn and watch from afar.
Not necessarily, they just hang up as soon as you ask for money.
If you're offering them something for free, they'll probably give you another 30 seconds to convince them that they're not about to receive stolen goods.
I did read your link. The SJ case didn't seem to be a criminal investigation, and it also seemed to be a case where the SS was trolling for information without any real evidence of a crime.
Additionally, the verdict in that case didn't seem to be related to any journalist rights over and above the fact the SS incompetently seized a bunch of necessary business tools from a company with insufficient evidence that a crime had been committed. IMO, the verdict would have been the same if the company was George's Car Repairs, or John's Ice Creamery.
That is why the judge isn't likely to turn to the SJ case as a precedent. Although it might sway him/her to substantiate a higher standard of proof that the warrant was necessary and the search/seizure appropriately targeted.
We are not talking about an investigation of Gizmodo for publishing information. Nor is it purely to find 'an informant'. They are most likely investigating a felony grand theft, and probably also the purchase of stolen goods (which was admitted in the content of the published blog).
A lawyer could argue the pedantry, but even you as a layman (I assume you're not a lawyer) have clearly identified the meaning of that clause. Obvious typographical errors usually don't hold much water as an argument when the judge considers admissibility or when the jury deliberates.
The affidavit used to obtain the search warrant is going to be very important. If Apple initiated it, and they omitted the fact that the target was a journalist, they're in big trouble. That's a material omission.
Only the government can execute a search warrant. And Apple AFAICT is not the government, so no they could not have 'initiated' it. Just as any discoveries made during the search can not be handed over to Apple.
The most Apple could have done is report the stolen property.
Probably not many. Unless they think that the press are also free to break whatever laws they want.
If you don't understand that the police are investigating a criminal case of stolen property, then you should have a closer read of California state laws regarding theft.
Whether or not Apple are evil/good/neutral shouldn't have any bearing on the fact that someone is being investigated by the police for criminal misconduct.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it like buying the sheet music to a song. You can do whatever you want with the physical copy. However, you're not allowed to copy it without permission, and if you perform it publicly, then you have to pay someone a royalty. This is not normally printed all over the copy, so it's up to you to make sure you have all your legal bases covered before you get up on stage and start singing.
Since the purpose of printed sheet music is primarily to let someone perform the work, the same logic applies to the patent argument where the camera's primary purpose is to take photos. However, in both cases, the distinction between the assumed non-commercial use versus commercial use (eg. private versus public performance) would probably be viewed as valid by the court.
In other words, the extortion racket would probably be allowed to continue.
In a case where a garage door vendor sued a customer for using a different opener than the one delivered by the door vendor, the vendor claimed patents (memory may fail me here, what other kind of IP could it be?) on the specific codes to activate the mechanism. The judge found that one had to assume the customer had bought the permission to use the patent when he bought the door.
That is fair enough. But, what happens when the patent holder isn't the same entity as the one that sold you the product?
What if the patent wasn't available to be read (ie. unknown, and still sitting in the 2 year processing cycle at the patent office)?
Now, both they guy that sold you the device and you are infringing the patent. The patent holder has legal recourse (which is the purpose behind the whole patent system) to stop all parties from infringing on their patented process.
Note: this only applies to process patents that describe a method that just happens to be implemented by a device. Likewise, it probably doesn't apply to a patent for direct physical attributes of the device itself. ie. what the device does versus what the device is.
Not quite, because the end user does not engage in the process that was used to make the tire - unless they are making things out of rubber.
A better car analogy:
The gas company has a patent on the process of mixing gasoline with air to achieve optimal combustion.
You buy a car that uses this optimal air/fuel mixing process to burn the fuel. The car company has paid the gas company for rights to create a device that implements its patent. However, the gas company doesn't include a clause that further indemnifies the car's users for engaging in the use of the patented process (ie. mixing the air and fuel using their patented process).
You stare at your nice shiny new car in the parking lot, climb in, and get just a little euphoric as you take in the smell of the brand new leather. You put the key into the ignition and flash up the engine, quietly infringing on the patented air/fuel mixing process as the car purrs out of dealership.
And now, just like in Soviet Russia, the gas company owns YOU!
This is how it works:
1. Patent exists on process X (process X being the MPEG encoding process in the current example). Note 1: the patent will also probably contain a subsequent claim for "a device implementing process X" where process X is described in an earlier claim within the same patent. Two birds, one stone. Note 2: patents on processes are there to allow a method to be patented that describes a novel way to manufacture (or achieve) an improved result that is not necessarily part of (or contained in) the end product - eg. a method to mix chemicals that minimises some undesirable side effects would be useful to all paint companies; even though the final result doesn't 'include' the patent in its function, the process itself is covered so the other companies have to find another way to mix their paints.
2. Manufacturer makes a device that implements process X.
3. Since patents cover process X and not just the devices that implement process X, anyone using the device to engage in process X is infringing. (In many cases, the manufacturer may not even be aware of the patent on process X. But, that's no consolation to anyone further 'down the line' who infringes.)
4. Now, normally, when a patent is licensed, the licensee will seek rights to not only implement the patented process, but also an indemnity for users of the device.
5. Since certain MPEG standards are not just a granted monopoly on IP, but also a defacto standard on a critical file format, the MPEG-LA can throw in (IMO) 'unconscionable' terms into their agreement. What choice does the manufacturer have? They can either choose to infringe, or license with sufficient terms to at least cover themselves.
6. The device you buy probably has a legal disclaimer waiving the manufacturer's liability for any known and unknown patents that you might have to violate when using their device for certain commonplace activities.
Now here is where it gets nasty:
7. You do something with the device that is known to exercise process X, and make enough money that you stick your head above the radar and get noticed.
8. Patent holder(s) step in with jack boots, and you either pay their fees or get sued for infringing on the patent of process X.
9. You can try to sue the device's manufacturer for not telling you in advance, but that could be an expensive uphill legal battle where you might not have a valid (or good enough) legal argument.
10. Profit!
11. Step 10 was not for you!
Streaming video should "just work" like inline images do - ie. as part of standard HTML. The browser shouldn't have to download a full interpreted application every time you want to view some video content. And every single web developer shouldn't have to get clever with Flash just to display video content.
HTML5 is definitely not a means to push Quicktime. It basically obsoletes the requirement to have Quicktime installed just to view streaming video in your browser.
Yeah, Quicktime can be used to encode H264 video content, but so can many other applications.
In the absence of judge and jury, the Robber Baron has forbidden the brigand entry to his fief. The brigand remains alive to rape and plunder another village.
But, then we end up with the status quo.
I'm happy for Apple to stick a spanner in the works of all the Flash crapverts, crapware and crapviewers that are the bane of the web.
Ever since Flash was released, people have been using it to create web pages that would have otherwise been much more usable if they'd just used regular HTML. IMO, the sooner Flash loses its popularity as a page description language, the better.
Even the sites that use it view videos are unusable half the time. Why not just display the video as an embedded stream? HTML5 will make this more efficient, and at the same time get rid of some of the other reasons that Flash is so popular with web developers.
Absolutely. If a family is earning that much extra to be able to afford all that extra cruft, then they are definitely in a position to do things 'properly'.
The only problem is that most of those families probably feel very 'comfortable' where they are and probably don't feel like they're doing anything 'wrong'. They might also be overweight and addicted to the instant gratification of modern conveniences.
Unfortunately, if every second family is behaving like that, then many kids are being raised in a way that both you and I understand to be sub-par.
For families that care, there is a way out, but those other families don't seem to know any better IMO. If something can't be done with decent/accessible education programs (for both parents and kids), then we risk the government stepping in at some point to force a less desirable solution as everyone screams, "But, think of the children!"
Drop one job, learn to budget with the remaining income (which probably means dropping Cable and not buying some gadgets, and certainly means buying fresh food and reserving eating out to a rare occasion). Spend the time you save with your kids.
The problem is that the average family probably doesn't need two full incomes, and unless you've got a reasonably well paying job, a single income probably isn't enough either. So you'd still need to have the second parent work at least a couple of days a week to avoid being evicted from your already tiny home.
Unfortunately jobs that pay well and still let you work 2 days a week are hard to come by. This means that the average family ends up with two full incomes and not much free time. They do, however have a bunch of spare cash (but not enough to go crazy and feed a family of 4 at $10/meal/person extra). So they end up cheaping out on the meals and spending the extra cash on crap like movie themed toys/games, junk food and other unnecessary things that are easy and don't require further time and effort.
This also means that the services supplied in their area start to self select to cater for this type of behaviour. The good restaurants go out of business with only a few left in hard to find places, the supermarkets stop carrying quality produce/meats while increasing their inventories of highly processed foods, and the fast food chains start to pop up everywhere in prominently positioned locations.
It's a downward spiral that will be hard to break.
Clearly the solution is to make it illegal for mothers to work.
You say this almost jokingly. But, you have absolutely identified a significant contributing factor to the obesity epidemic (and many other societal problems IMO).
Since it became common for women to work, it has meant that the average income per capita has increased. That increase slowly pushed up the cost of living to the point that families could no longer survive on a single average income. Thus forcing most mothers to generate income rather than spending time raising the kids, shopping for healthy produce, cooking the family meals, etc.
This creates time poor families that depend more and more on external resources to 'raise' the kids and feed the family. So it's no wonder that there appears to be a degeneration of society, an obesity epidemic, and a general race to the bottom for the working class.
The change over time in the functionality of the family unit has been much faster than society has been able to comfortably adapt. Responsible couples are forced to delay having children while they 'save up' for enough financial security to able to raise kids in their parents' tradition. And couples that don't have the finances to let the mother to stay home are more or less forced out of the option of raising their kids in the way they'd hoped for. The kids of time poor parents tend to get exposed to a barrage of adult concepts and marketing at much younger ages and miss out on the necessarily constant guidance of how to reject those inappropriate messages. The parents are also affected by this, as the additional time and effort required to raise the kids after working the daily grind makes it much harder to make good eating choices. The problem is exacerbated as the kids see and emulate their parental role models. All of this makes it difficult to resist a culture that wants nothing but to suck on the teat of the corporate monster for better or for worse.
(BTW I'm not advocating actually forbidding mothers from working, but it's a telling observation on the effect of women in general entering the workforce. I don't mean to sound all 'doom and gloom', but there is definitely an element of truth to what I've written.)
Mod parent up. This is a perfect description of the sad state of affairs that the 'working class' people have to live with.
There is no such thing as total freedom, and any freedom you do have is maintained in a delicate balance of law and regulation.
Just about every aspect of your life is already regulated to some extent. This is about extending that regulation in a direction that you don't like.
If you think that regulating what can be sold to you can only happen in a totalitarian regime, then you must also agree that you are already living in one as that is how the USA works.
So the Federal rights that citizens have from the constitution is 'right to not be denied the vote based on certain criteria' and 'right to run for Federal office'. That's it. All other rights apply to 'People', or they simply state what the government can't do, presumably to anyone.
These are more about privileges extended to citizens, rather than inalienable rights that can't be taken away from a person. Since citizenship can be revoked (although it doesn't happen often to natural born citizens), it follows that those privileges are also forfeited.
The concept of citizenship is really about taking extra steps to become involved in the politics and responsibilities of the country. In doing this, the country affords the citizen additional privileges above and beyond a visitor or non-citizen resident. These days, many people seem rather apathetic to the responsibility side of the citizenship bargain, and spend their efforts whining that non-citizens (ie. immigrants) are mostly treated equally as evidenced by the GGP post.
In my opinion, a citizen does not just have the 'right' to vote, but instead has the 'responsibility' to vote (which would controversially also imply a 'requirement'). Why bother maintaining a person's citizenship if they don't want to participate in the country's operation? I see numerous posts where people talk about voting being a waste of time, or describing a dozen ways to 'get out of jury duty'.
It's simple really, if you don't want to participate, then you get demoted to the status of 'permanent resident'. Unfortunately, these days the word 'citizen' seems to be synonymous with 'permanent resident that doesn't have to do anything to avoid being kicked out of the country'. IMO, citizenship should mean so much more than that.
But they'd still have to start by downloading at least enough of the shared file to be able actually view it so they can determine if the torrent is really infringing and not something else. After that, I suppose a few verified infringing block hashes would probably suffice as some level of evidence on a per user basis.
So as the GGP said, the enforcement police still have a significant amount more work to do than just bulk harvesting IP addresses from the trackers.
I was exaggerating the concept to illustrate a point further along the slippery slope of where things could end up going.
Basically, I was saying that to require proof of citizenship from an illegal or a legal immigrant, also implies that a regular citizen must supply proof of citizenship too. Otherwise how would the police officer be able to tell the difference.
The problem is that we've made criminals a protected class in America for so long that they have more rights than legal citezens. IMHO, the rights of the Constituion should only apply to citizens. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works anymore.
That's not the way it ever worked.
Criminals are not a protected 'class', and the constitution has never applied ONLY to citizens.
In fact, beyond the obvious loss of rights that happens to someone when they're incarcerated, the government doesn't suddenly have a legal reprieve to ignore the constitution. Think for example the 8th Amendment regarding "cruel and unusual punishment". How would that make any sense if all of a sudden the constitution ceased to apply once you've been convicted. Could you then be punished "cruelly and unusually"?
At the time that the US Constitution was written, there was no universal requirement of citizenship. In fact the word citizen wasn't even mentioned in the constitution until the 14th Amendment was added nearly 100 years later.
The US Constitution is probably one of the most noble documents ever written. And the denial of rights, or the selective application of its laws, is anathema to the entire purpose of its text.
What if you're a bona fide citizen? Does everyone need to keep a copy of their birth certificate / citizenship papers with them just in case they get pulled up and pistol whipped by the local gestapo?
From the prosecutor's point of view, the best thing about this is that most of what happened was conveniently documented for them by Gizmodo.
Apple isn't going after Gizmodo ... yet.
If the guy that 'found' and sold the phone is found guilty, then by extension Gizmodo will probably be found guilty of receiving stolen goods (and by further extension, liable for any Trade Secrets revealed as a consequence of dealing in the stolen goods).
If that happens, Apple can step in and sue Gizmodo for revealing those stolen Trade Secrets. Until then, Apple may as well just buy some popcorn and watch from afar.
Not necessarily, they just hang up as soon as you ask for money.
If you're offering them something for free, they'll probably give you another 30 seconds to convince them that they're not about to receive stolen goods.
I did read your link. The SJ case didn't seem to be a criminal investigation, and it also seemed to be a case where the SS was trolling for information without any real evidence of a crime.
Additionally, the verdict in that case didn't seem to be related to any journalist rights over and above the fact the SS incompetently seized a bunch of necessary business tools from a company with insufficient evidence that a crime had been committed. IMO, the verdict would have been the same if the company was George's Car Repairs, or John's Ice Creamery.
That is why the judge isn't likely to turn to the SJ case as a precedent. Although it might sway him/her to substantiate a higher standard of proof that the warrant was necessary and the search/seizure appropriately targeted.
We are not talking about an investigation of Gizmodo for publishing information. Nor is it purely to find 'an informant'. They are most likely investigating a felony grand theft, and probably also the purchase of stolen goods (which was admitted in the content of the published blog).
A lawyer could argue the pedantry, but even you as a layman (I assume you're not a lawyer) have clearly identified the meaning of that clause. Obvious typographical errors usually don't hold much water as an argument when the judge considers admissibility or when the jury deliberates.
The affidavit used to obtain the search warrant is going to be very important. If Apple initiated it, and they omitted the fact that the target was a journalist, they're in big trouble. That's a material omission.
Only the government can execute a search warrant. And Apple AFAICT is not the government, so no they could not have 'initiated' it. Just as any discoveries made during the search can not be handed over to Apple.
The most Apple could have done is report the stolen property.
I hope you were being sarcastic, otherwise I have to say:
Woosh!
Probably not many. Unless they think that the press are also free to break whatever laws they want.
If you don't understand that the police are investigating a criminal case of stolen property, then you should have a closer read of California state laws regarding theft.
Whether or not Apple are evil/good/neutral shouldn't have any bearing on the fact that someone is being investigated by the police for criminal misconduct.