The problem isn't the general disclosure of the fact that something is coming at some arbitrary time in the future. As you say, everyone already assumes that to be true.
The 'Osborne Effect' is really about people deciding to wait for a 'soon to be released' product for a product with desirable features that are 'known to be included'.
It is definitely true that many people will wait a reasonable amount of time (ie. not too long) to purchase a newer/better product that costs the same amount as the existing product. This is even more true for higher end products that also partly act as fashionable status symbols.
When the 3GS models were announced, the existing models were immediately dropped in price to entice customers to buy them anyway.
Anyone that didn't immediately need a new phone for whatever reason is in a position to hold out a month or two for a feature that they feel is important to them. If they had no idea whether or not their desired feature would be included, they might just go out and buy the current model.
Since the 4G iPhone leak is only partially informative it may not have any immediately effect on the market. However, as rumours of the imminent release of the new phone start to surface, the knowledge of what features have definitely been added will indeed cause more people to wait than would have waited otherwise.
Asserting that the police don't have a 100% success rate in returning lost-and-found goods is not a valid reason to ignore the law. California Law only prevents prosecution for theft if you follow the codified procedure for handling lost-and-found goods.
Unfortunately, that procedure doesn't contain a provision that lets you sell (or even give away) the goods to a media publication (respectable or not) as a valid method for returning those goods.
That the guy was compensated (by a third party) is very relevant, as it establishes that he knew the phone to be valuable and sold it anyway.
The fact that the phone got back to Apple is only partially relevant to the case at hand. However, Apple will have to wait forever for its Trade Secrets to be 'un-disclosed'. And since those secrets were revealed by nature of stolen property, they are deemed are also deemed 'stolen'.
Are you trying to imply that information can only exist in a vacuum?
Information exists in the form of whatever media is being used to communicate that information. In the example under discussion, that medium is the physical manifestation of the prototype phone.
Nope, in most States, $100 or below is generally deemed ok. A C-note found on the floor is also deemed as not identifiable to an owner (unless you saw who dropped it), so you have some legal protections in place if that's all you find.
If you find a wallet/bag with more than $100 in it (or anything of value including identification, credit cards, etc), then you are legally obliged to turn it in to the police or to the bar (who then have a legal requirement attached to them to forward it to the police if it has not been claimed within a certain period of time).
People are crying 'thief', because under California State Law, the guy is a thief. It really is as simple as that.
Likewise, if you find something of value in someone else's trash, you still have to go through your State's legal lost-and-found procedure before you can claim the property as yours.
The legal definition of 'abandoned' is not as obvious as someone just 'tossing' something out. They may have done so unintentionally, or it may have happened without the actual owner's knowledge.
There are multiple levels of thievery. All of which are perpetrated by thieves. Some of which also include a number of additional offences which much stiffer penalties.
However, the existence of these far less palatable variants still does not diminish the crime in its most basic form.
Here's another fact: They claim to have an Apple ticket number for the call. Now how does that fit into the "Thief! Get the pitchforks! Thief!" religious narrative?
It fits in once they disposed of the property for the tidy sum of $5000. California law specifically states the legal process for handling 'found' goods valued at more than $100 - none of which include selling the goods after waiting 48 hours from an alleged notification to a switchboard operator.
Trade secrets are also protected by Trade Secrecy Acts (in most States). That widens the scope for protection to secrets that are revealed without consent, through espionage, through violation of an NDA, via theft, etc.
It is just as 'dangerous' for a company to hire a competitor's employee and be accused of stealing trade secrets as it is for the company that originally employed the person; even if the secret wasn't actually revealed by the employee (ie. independently invented/created/etc) it looks very suspicious and could create a huge legal problem for the 'poacher'.
This is also why 'clean room' implementations are done without using people that have any direct inside knowledge of or association to the product that is being re-implemented.
Several comments here presume Apple has filed a police report. I haven't seen that stated in any of the news reports.
It's my understanding that the police don't need a complain to investigate this as a possible crime. The public nature of the event (and maybe a gentle phone call from some power broker) might be enough to capture their attention.
That is of course true. I made the assumption that Apple filed a police report, but you are right, the police don't actually need for that to happen to start an investigation.
He sold it for $5000 to a third party with no control over what they did with the device. Once the phone had been removed from the premises at which it was 'found', the best people to get it back to the rightful owner would have been the police.
And the Melbourne couple also returned the money when asked (by police with guns).
The person doing the returning should have been the guy that found it. Not the people that knowingly 'trafficked in stolen goods' after the rightful owner asks them to return it.
With a car analogy: That would be like buying a nice car from a guy that said he found it abandoned in a parking garage, driving it around for a couple of days, blogging about it, and then only returning it once the owner asks you to. In this example, you are going down as fast as the guy that sold it to you.
Returning something even 20 milliseconds after you've extracted value (or sought to extract value) from it is too late - unless the owner requests that the charges be dropped (and even then, there's no guarantee).
1. Dude#1 takes someone's high value phone (a prototype next gen iPhone).
2. Dude#2 purchases this known to be stolen phone from Dude#1 for $5000. (Felony)
3. Dude#2 admits publicly how 'the transaction went down'. How they'd bought the stolen goods, how they'd knowingly revealed stolen Trade Secrets, and how after Apple found out about it and requested the phone back they complied (thinking that would make everything ok).
4. Apple files a police report.
5. Police investigate sale of stolen property to a third party, and public disclosure of Trade Secrets. (Felonies for high value goods/secrets.)
6. In the process of their investigation, the police determine that they need to seize a computer from the suspect(s).
7. Dude#2 stains underpants as their lawyers feign sympathy and issue them a quote to fund the defence in court.
8. Dude#1 stains underpants when he realises that no amount of 'this is off the record' will be able to save his soon-to-be-raw annular ring.
Not so much. It's not Apple doing the seizing. It is the police, and they are probably looking for very specific evidence regarding the acknowledged receipt of stolen goods.
Journalists/publishers don't get a magic reprieve from the law. That's why you don't see the following:
Officer: "We are coming in to your premises to search for evidence regarding grand theft auto. This warrant indicates that we have due cause relating to a number of witnessed transactions of stolen cars and parts."
Suspect: "Dude, no can let you in, I'm a publisher/journo."
Officer: "I'm so sorry sir, we didn't realise. We'll go and never come back. Oh, and if you'd be so kind, when you've finished with the stolen Ferrari in your driveway could you drop it into the station. Cheers!"
To avoid waking up one day in PYITA prison, you may want to recheck your regional laws.
"Finders keepers" doesn't even count as valid in the second grade.
Apple wouldn't've had any issue if the phone wasn't _taken_ in the first place. In fact, it wouldn't've had an issue if the phone was returned (either to Apple or the police).
[On an unrelated note, aren't double contractions cool!]
How can this happen when it was 100% totally and utterly obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that Apple staged the whole 'lost prototype' in the first place! In fact I'm sure I received one of those chain emails that said someone somewhere had proof.
So is this also just a marketing ploy by Apple?
I'll wait for a few more forum posts (well only ones that I agree with) before I make up my mind.
(BTW, I'm going for +1, Funny, not so much -1, Troll)
As much as I'd love for that to be the case, unfortunately that's not what would happen without some external (ie. non-geek) push.
The problem is that anyone with worthwhile content that cared enough to want more than 0.05% of the internet to be able to view it, would make sure that they had some sort of IPv4 presence. In doing so they'd become part of the problem and not the solution.
Assuming all the OS, router and network providers start supporting IPv6 by default (even if everyone is still assigned IPv4 compatible addresses), then it would simply be a matter of time before people decide that being able to view (or viewable by) only 50% of the internet (which might contain 99% of their target interests) is acceptable and start using an IPv6 address that is not directly mappable to the IPv4 address space.
At some point beyond that, the requirement of having an IPv4 compatible address would become unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of users and servers. At that time Netcraft would announce that IPv4 was officially dead. Hearing that, the geeks would all rejoice!
Ok, let's say the IPv4 space ran out today and your ISP said you now have to run your server out of an IPv6 address.
You're now forced to move your server to another ISP that still has addresses available (probably ones that will start NATing all their non-server based clients so they can use their IPv4 allocations for server use).
If ISPs start moving non-server clients over to IPv6, then things will transition slowly, and at some point (ie. in 5 years) it will become feasible to run a server solely in the IPv6 address space as it will be accessible by the majority of users. Things progress this way until only a few dedicated IPv4 servers/clients are now safely behind translation routers.
However, instead of using IPv6, the sad thing is those ISPs will probably use IPv4 NAT to do the translation. The net effect is we push the crunch out a couple more years, but the following future is likely to develop as:
Fast forward a couple of years and now you find that all the ISPs charge a significant amount extra to run your server from an IPv4 address. You just pay more as it's just business as usual and you have no other choice. The ISPs with huge allocations are all laughing as they can leverage their allocated spaces at ever increasing dollar amounts. It's wonderful! The geeks aren't happy, because now it costs a lot more money to run their non-profit servers. Big business doesn't care, because it helps them by increasing the barrier to entry for smaller companies trying to compete with them on the internet front.
Fast forward five more years and things are now getting out of hand. Everyone is running behind NATed 10.x.x.x addresses (except large public servers), every second URL contains a port designator, port 80 web servers are now a luxury, ISPs are giving users the option of cheaper port redirects back to their own servers, and people are claiming that we've solved the problem for another 10 years.
Still the geeks are worried, but no one else cares. They now have less 'cruft' on the internet to worry about, and as long as they can still get to their Bittorrent/Porn/Facebook/YouTube they are happy as Larry.
Umm, the person who found the phone did contact the owner. The owner then ignored him.
So the car analogy would be: "Well, I was at this bar and found these car keys, I knew exactly who they belonged to and tried to give them to him. He laughed and said there's no way you have my cars keys. Then he slammed the door in my face, so I sold the car."
Your amended analogy is bogus. But, just for fun, let's assume it was accurate.
If the next thing you did was take the keys to the police and report them as lost property then you're fine (except for your broken nose - for which you could press charges).
However, if you sell the car, then expect to spend some time in the clink for grand theft auto. Very simple concept.
The wording on the original article indicates that Gizmodo knew the phone was a prototype and that it was most likely Apple's property. The problem is that they disassembled the device (which they knew to be someone else's 'secret' property as per their description) and risked releasing Trade Secrets.
That might have been OK if the phone had been obtained legally. However, the fact that the phone was traded while knowingly being someone else's property isn't going to bode well for them. If something is misappropriated in whatever manner, the Trade Secrets that it contains are also deemed to be misappropriated.
And I can pretty much guarantee that no scrupulous lawyer would put his arse on the line by saying that 'it would be legally acceptable' to do what they did. Of course, maybe their lawyer was distracted by the future income stream that will come from defending their 'dubious' position.
Well, if he isn't, it confirms what many have suspected all along: that the whole thing is a marketing ploy.
It 'confirms' no such thing.
This isn't a marketing 'win' for Apple. If they were to orchestrate something like this, there are far better ways that leave far less egg on people's faces with far more plausible deniability.
If they don't fire the guy, it means they don't see his actions as illegal, a breach of contract, or overtly negligent. It also says that they still value him in his role as a baseband firmware engineer.
Yeah, the guy might get lectured. There might even be a financial penalty (depending on the terms of his employment contract or NDA). But, taking away his job doesn't appear to solve anything for anyone. And definitely won't suddenly absolve Apple of any guilt for a perceived marketing ploy.
Actually, it sounds like the phone may have been stolen.
If I leave my briefcase under the table at a restaurant and someone swipes it while I'm not looking, that is clearly theft. If I leave the restaurant and come back 10 minutes later to get my bag and it's gone, then it is still considered to be stolen. Not 'lost'. I don't need to be mugged at gun-point for it to be considered theft.
Likewise, if someone finds a diamond ring that is identifiable as the property of a particular person, but they try to sell it to someone, it is also considered theft.
If I sell you a stolen car, it doesn't suddenly become yours. Even worse, if you buy it knowing that it was stolen property, then you become an accessory to the crime.
Any attempt to knowingly deal in stolen property is an offence. The only excuse Gizmodo might have is if they were told that the phone was obtained legally.
This could get pretty expensive legally for Gizmodo. They have pretty much admitted to knowing that this prototype was the property of Apple. They also knew that this was not publicly released (and possibly stolen) property and that it may contain Trade Secrets (which by extension were possibly stolen). Any action that didn't involve trying to turn it into the police or return it to Apple is legally dubious.
I'm not advocating that Apple will go on the war path, but IMO, if they do it's more likely to be Gizmodo in the firing line rather than the employee that lost the phone.
Make no mistake, that employee will get seriously lectured. And the entire Apple staff will probably get reminded how important it is to follow the guidelines agreed to when they signed their NDAs. But, so far I see no reason to actually fire him.
The guy was an embedded firmware developer. It is highly likely he would have had all sorts of debug hooks in there including root access to the operating system. He probably 'bricks' it twice a week just doing normal development/debug/testing.
Apple would have found out as soon as he requisitioned a replacement (and/or reported to them that he'd lost a prototype).
Yeah - you aren't invisible, but wouldn't that still make the tracking missile miss you?
Actually it probably wouldn't. The optical illusion will shift the target further backwards - not to the left or right. That means any missile travelling close to parallel with the ground will still hit. It'll just get a 'surprise' when it impacts you a few metres earlier than expected.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem isn't the general disclosure of the fact that something is coming at some arbitrary time in the future. As you say, everyone already assumes that to be true.
The 'Osborne Effect' is really about people deciding to wait for a 'soon to be released' product for a product with desirable features that are 'known to be included'.
It is definitely true that many people will wait a reasonable amount of time (ie. not too long) to purchase a newer/better product that costs the same amount as the existing product. This is even more true for higher end products that also partly act as fashionable status symbols.
When the 3GS models were announced, the existing models were immediately dropped in price to entice customers to buy them anyway.
Anyone that didn't immediately need a new phone for whatever reason is in a position to hold out a month or two for a feature that they feel is important to them. If they had no idea whether or not their desired feature would be included, they might just go out and buy the current model.
Since the 4G iPhone leak is only partially informative it may not have any immediately effect on the market. However, as rumours of the imminent release of the new phone start to surface, the knowledge of what features have definitely been added will indeed cause more people to wait than would have waited otherwise.
Asserting that the police don't have a 100% success rate in returning lost-and-found goods is not a valid reason to ignore the law. California Law only prevents prosecution for theft if you follow the codified procedure for handling lost-and-found goods.
Unfortunately, that procedure doesn't contain a provision that lets you sell (or even give away) the goods to a media publication (respectable or not) as a valid method for returning those goods.
That the guy was compensated (by a third party) is very relevant, as it establishes that he knew the phone to be valuable and sold it anyway.
The fact that the phone got back to Apple is only partially relevant to the case at hand. However, Apple will have to wait forever for its Trade Secrets to be 'un-disclosed'. And since those secrets were revealed by nature of stolen property, they are deemed are also deemed 'stolen'.
Are you trying to imply that information can only exist in a vacuum?
Information exists in the form of whatever media is being used to communicate that information. In the example under discussion, that medium is the physical manifestation of the prototype phone.
Nope, in most States, $100 or below is generally deemed ok. A C-note found on the floor is also deemed as not identifiable to an owner (unless you saw who dropped it), so you have some legal protections in place if that's all you find.
If you find a wallet/bag with more than $100 in it (or anything of value including identification, credit cards, etc), then you are legally obliged to turn it in to the police or to the bar (who then have a legal requirement attached to them to forward it to the police if it has not been claimed within a certain period of time).
People are crying 'thief', because under California State Law, the guy is a thief. It really is as simple as that.
Actually, you probably can.
Likewise, if you find something of value in someone else's trash, you still have to go through your State's legal lost-and-found procedure before you can claim the property as yours.
The legal definition of 'abandoned' is not as obvious as someone just 'tossing' something out. They may have done so unintentionally, or it may have happened without the actual owner's knowledge.
There are multiple levels of thievery. All of which are perpetrated by thieves. Some of which also include a number of additional offences which much stiffer penalties.
However, the existence of these far less palatable variants still does not diminish the crime in its most basic form.
Here's another fact: They claim to have an Apple ticket number for the call. Now how does that fit into the "Thief! Get the pitchforks! Thief!" religious narrative?
It fits in once they disposed of the property for the tidy sum of $5000. California law specifically states the legal process for handling 'found' goods valued at more than $100 - none of which include selling the goods after waiting 48 hours from an alleged notification to a switchboard operator.
Trade secrets are also protected by Trade Secrecy Acts (in most States). That widens the scope for protection to secrets that are revealed without consent, through espionage, through violation of an NDA, via theft, etc.
It is just as 'dangerous' for a company to hire a competitor's employee and be accused of stealing trade secrets as it is for the company that originally employed the person; even if the secret wasn't actually revealed by the employee (ie. independently invented/created/etc) it looks very suspicious and could create a huge legal problem for the 'poacher'.
This is also why 'clean room' implementations are done without using people that have any direct inside knowledge of or association to the product that is being re-implemented.
4. Apple files a police report.
Several comments here presume Apple has filed a police report. I haven't seen that stated in any of the news reports.
It's my understanding that the police don't need a complain to investigate this as a possible crime. The public nature of the event (and maybe a gentle phone call from some power broker) might be enough to capture their attention.
That is of course true. I made the assumption that Apple filed a police report, but you are right, the police don't actually need for that to happen to start an investigation.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
He sold it for $5000 to a third party with no control over what they did with the device. Once the phone had been removed from the premises at which it was 'found', the best people to get it back to the rightful owner would have been the police.
And the Melbourne couple also returned the money when asked (by police with guns).
The person doing the returning should have been the guy that found it. Not the people that knowingly 'trafficked in stolen goods' after the rightful owner asks them to return it.
With a car analogy: That would be like buying a nice car from a guy that said he found it abandoned in a parking garage, driving it around for a couple of days, blogging about it, and then only returning it once the owner asks you to. In this example, you are going down as fast as the guy that sold it to you.
Returning something even 20 milliseconds after you've extracted value (or sought to extract value) from it is too late - unless the owner requests that the charges be dropped (and even then, there's no guarantee).
Let me summarize:
1. Dude#1 takes someone's high value phone (a prototype next gen iPhone).
2. Dude#2 purchases this known to be stolen phone from Dude#1 for $5000. (Felony)
3. Dude#2 admits publicly how 'the transaction went down'. How they'd bought the stolen goods, how they'd knowingly revealed stolen Trade Secrets, and how after Apple found out about it and requested the phone back they complied (thinking that would make everything ok).
4. Apple files a police report.
5. Police investigate sale of stolen property to a third party, and public disclosure of Trade Secrets. (Felonies for high value goods/secrets.)
6. In the process of their investigation, the police determine that they need to seize a computer from the suspect(s).
7. Dude#2 stains underpants as their lawyers feign sympathy and issue them a quote to fund the defence in court.
8. Dude#1 stains underpants when he realises that no amount of 'this is off the record' will be able to save his soon-to-be-raw annular ring.
Not so much. It's not Apple doing the seizing. It is the police, and they are probably looking for very specific evidence regarding the acknowledged receipt of stolen goods.
Journalists/publishers don't get a magic reprieve from the law. That's why you don't see the following:
Officer: "We are coming in to your premises to search for evidence regarding grand theft auto. This warrant indicates that we have due cause relating to a number of witnessed transactions of stolen cars and parts."
Suspect: "Dude, no can let you in, I'm a publisher/journo."
Officer: "I'm so sorry sir, we didn't realise. We'll go and never come back. Oh, and if you'd be so kind, when you've finished with the stolen Ferrari in your driveway could you drop it into the station. Cheers!"
To avoid waking up one day in PYITA prison, you may want to recheck your regional laws.
"Finders keepers" doesn't even count as valid in the second grade.
Apple wouldn't've had any issue if the phone wasn't _taken_ in the first place. In fact, it wouldn't've had an issue if the phone was returned (either to Apple or the police).
[On an unrelated note, aren't double contractions cool!]
How can this happen when it was 100% totally and utterly obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that Apple staged the whole 'lost prototype' in the first place! In fact I'm sure I received one of those chain emails that said someone somewhere had proof.
So is this also just a marketing ploy by Apple?
I'll wait for a few more forum posts (well only ones that I agree with) before I make up my mind.
(BTW, I'm going for +1, Funny, not so much -1, Troll)
As much as I'd love for that to be the case, unfortunately that's not what would happen without some external (ie. non-geek) push.
The problem is that anyone with worthwhile content that cared enough to want more than 0.05% of the internet to be able to view it, would make sure that they had some sort of IPv4 presence. In doing so they'd become part of the problem and not the solution.
Assuming all the OS, router and network providers start supporting IPv6 by default (even if everyone is still assigned IPv4 compatible addresses), then it would simply be a matter of time before people decide that being able to view (or viewable by) only 50% of the internet (which might contain 99% of their target interests) is acceptable and start using an IPv6 address that is not directly mappable to the IPv4 address space.
At some point beyond that, the requirement of having an IPv4 compatible address would become unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of users and servers. At that time Netcraft would announce that IPv4 was officially dead. Hearing that, the geeks would all rejoice!
Ok, let's say the IPv4 space ran out today and your ISP said you now have to run your server out of an IPv6 address.
You're now forced to move your server to another ISP that still has addresses available (probably ones that will start NATing all their non-server based clients so they can use their IPv4 allocations for server use).
If ISPs start moving non-server clients over to IPv6, then things will transition slowly, and at some point (ie. in 5 years) it will become feasible to run a server solely in the IPv6 address space as it will be accessible by the majority of users. Things progress this way until only a few dedicated IPv4 servers/clients are now safely behind translation routers.
However, instead of using IPv6, the sad thing is those ISPs will probably use IPv4 NAT to do the translation. The net effect is we push the crunch out a couple more years, but the following future is likely to develop as:
Fast forward a couple of years and now you find that all the ISPs charge a significant amount extra to run your server from an IPv4 address. You just pay more as it's just business as usual and you have no other choice. The ISPs with huge allocations are all laughing as they can leverage their allocated spaces at ever increasing dollar amounts. It's wonderful! The geeks aren't happy, because now it costs a lot more money to run their non-profit servers. Big business doesn't care, because it helps them by increasing the barrier to entry for smaller companies trying to compete with them on the internet front.
Fast forward five more years and things are now getting out of hand. Everyone is running behind NATed 10.x.x.x addresses (except large public servers), every second URL contains a port designator, port 80 web servers are now a luxury, ISPs are giving users the option of cheaper port redirects back to their own servers, and people are claiming that we've solved the problem for another 10 years.
Still the geeks are worried, but no one else cares. They now have less 'cruft' on the internet to worry about, and as long as they can still get to their Bittorrent/Porn/Facebook/YouTube they are happy as Larry.
Umm, the person who found the phone did contact the owner. The owner then ignored him.
So the car analogy would be: "Well, I was at this bar and found these car keys, I knew exactly who they belonged to and tried to give them to him. He laughed and said there's no way you have my cars keys. Then he slammed the door in my face, so I sold the car."
Your amended analogy is bogus. But, just for fun, let's assume it was accurate.
If the next thing you did was take the keys to the police and report them as lost property then you're fine (except for your broken nose - for which you could press charges).
However, if you sell the car, then expect to spend some time in the clink for grand theft auto. Very simple concept.
The wording on the original article indicates that Gizmodo knew the phone was a prototype and that it was most likely Apple's property. The problem is that they disassembled the device (which they knew to be someone else's 'secret' property as per their description) and risked releasing Trade Secrets.
That might have been OK if the phone had been obtained legally. However, the fact that the phone was traded while knowingly being someone else's property isn't going to bode well for them. If something is misappropriated in whatever manner, the Trade Secrets that it contains are also deemed to be misappropriated.
And I can pretty much guarantee that no scrupulous lawyer would put his arse on the line by saying that 'it would be legally acceptable' to do what they did. Of course, maybe their lawyer was distracted by the future income stream that will come from defending their 'dubious' position.
Whereas on Slashdot you get modded +5, Insightful.
How do you know they didn't?
It's likely that he's going to be terminated
Well, if he isn't, it confirms what many have suspected all along: that the whole thing is a marketing ploy.
It 'confirms' no such thing.
This isn't a marketing 'win' for Apple. If they were to orchestrate something like this, there are far better ways that leave far less egg on people's faces with far more plausible deniability.
If they don't fire the guy, it means they don't see his actions as illegal, a breach of contract, or overtly negligent. It also says that they still value him in his role as a baseband firmware engineer.
Yeah, the guy might get lectured. There might even be a financial penalty (depending on the terms of his employment contract or NDA). But, taking away his job doesn't appear to solve anything for anyone. And definitely won't suddenly absolve Apple of any guilt for a perceived marketing ploy.
Actually, it sounds like the phone may have been stolen.
If I leave my briefcase under the table at a restaurant and someone swipes it while I'm not looking, that is clearly theft. If I leave the restaurant and come back 10 minutes later to get my bag and it's gone, then it is still considered to be stolen. Not 'lost'. I don't need to be mugged at gun-point for it to be considered theft.
Likewise, if someone finds a diamond ring that is identifiable as the property of a particular person, but they try to sell it to someone, it is also considered theft.
If I sell you a stolen car, it doesn't suddenly become yours. Even worse, if you buy it knowing that it was stolen property, then you become an accessory to the crime.
Any attempt to knowingly deal in stolen property is an offence. The only excuse Gizmodo might have is if they were told that the phone was obtained legally.
This could get pretty expensive legally for Gizmodo. They have pretty much admitted to knowing that this prototype was the property of Apple. They also knew that this was not publicly released (and possibly stolen) property and that it may contain Trade Secrets (which by extension were possibly stolen). Any action that didn't involve trying to turn it into the police or return it to Apple is legally dubious.
I'm not advocating that Apple will go on the war path, but IMO, if they do it's more likely to be Gizmodo in the firing line rather than the employee that lost the phone.
Make no mistake, that employee will get seriously lectured. And the entire Apple staff will probably get reminded how important it is to follow the guidelines agreed to when they signed their NDAs. But, so far I see no reason to actually fire him.
Lapse of security my arse.
The guy was an embedded firmware developer. It is highly likely he would have had all sorts of debug hooks in there including root access to the operating system. He probably 'bricks' it twice a week just doing normal development/debug/testing.
Apple would have found out as soon as he requisitioned a replacement (and/or reported to them that he'd lost a prototype).
Yeah - you aren't invisible, but wouldn't that still make the tracking missile miss you?
Actually it probably wouldn't. The optical illusion will shift the target further backwards - not to the left or right. That means any missile travelling close to parallel with the ground will still hit. It'll just get a 'surprise' when it impacts you a few metres earlier than expected.