DanJW

Gizmodo seized by police

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Gizmodo have pretty much consistently been dicks for the past 3 years. Some highlights include: throwing the Halo 3 presskit out of a window then ruining the plot before release and using a TV B-gone at CES 2008 disrupting not only the standard stalls but also formal presentations. They are essentially the Destructoid of Tech blogs.

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:violin:

I can understand why a gadget blog might do it, but the stupidity of what they did to get page views is staggering. John Gruber is a good source on a lot of stuff around this story, in particular this piece on Gizmodo claiming "we didn't know it was stolen" and the minimal effort made to return it.

Gizmodo also put up a short post saying that leaving it in a bar was a drunken mistake anyone could have made and it would be a shame if the engineer responsible got so undeservedly sacked for it. Which was almost gracious, after, you know, buying a stolen phone, leaking the chaps identity, dissecting the phone, and publishing its innards to rake in page views.

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Haha I never heard about the TV-B-Gone thing. What dicks.

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I thought in a strange way revealing the name of the guy who lost the prototype was a good thing for him, as it makes it harder for Apple to fire him without getting a load of bad PR.

If we didn't know who he was Apple could just quietly sack him and no one would know.

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I wouldn't class it as stolen. It was more found. Be that as it may, apparently Californian law forbids the sale of found goods as well as stolen ones, which I think is why the warrant was issued.

However, there has been some eyebrows raised about the speed of the police's reaction - normally it would take weeks. Apple has some clout in the legal sphere...so....hmmm.

Lawyers acting for Chen are also disputing the right of confiscation, as the warrant is only to be served in daylight, and it was night time when they kicked his door in.

Yes, stupid to buy it, yes stupid to publish it, yes, deserved to get done for it, but Apple have perhaps overstretched themselves to teach future tech bloggers a lesson by pulling some strings, and the police were maybe a little too eager.

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Gizmodo are revelling in the fact that Jon Stewart agrees with them.

http://tv.gawker.com/5526868/jon-stewart-slams-apple-over-its-handling-of-gizmodo-case

Well bully for them, but I must say, picking a phone up in a bar after the poor guy forgot it and paying someone who picked it up knowing it was a prototype iPhone and wanted to make money off it are two different things.

I agree completely that the police behaviour in this situation is weird. I also have no love (left) for Apple. However, Gizmodo could have covered that story, still broken all the cool exclusives, and just been less dickish about it.

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How many dudes in any given bar would a) start dicking around on a random phone just because it's there, B) fidget with it to the point of discerning its importance, and most importantly c) contact all the major tech blogs to sell it to the highest bidder.

I can see myself doing B, maybe even A, but never C.

Then again, I haven't been following this story too closely. Has any attention been paid to the dude who actually sold it to gizmodo?

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I thought when you find someone's lost phone the point was to start making all of those international calls you always wanted to make.

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However, there has been some eyebrows raised about the speed of the police's reaction - normally it would take weeks. Apple has some clout in the legal sphere...so....hmmm.

Isn't this usually the case for high profile incidents? I doubt Apple had to pull strings, when something is all over the (national) news the police tend to act faster. It makes the cops look good and all. :)

Mo

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I'm done with all Gawker websites. Joystiq and Engadget are much better anyway.

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It was just silly. They clearly should have just paid for access to the phone, rather than the phone itself... Or maybe I don't understand the law in this situation?

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I'm done with all Gawker websites. Joystiq and Engadget are much better anyway.
Wonkette was the only worthwhile one, and that one broke off from the mothership a few years ago.

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I might have felt bad for Jason Chen in this case if Giz hadn't posted that story profiling the engineer who lost the phone. Hey, way to ruin a guy's career for a few more clicks and then pretend you're practicing some sort of hard hitting journalism.

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Hear hear Re: Gawker's sites being rubbish. I vaguely remember reading Kotaku prior to most other gaming blogs, but the overall quality and integrity just seems to get worse every year. I wasn't really a Gizmodo reader prior to this whole mess, but I'll be sure to treat it the way I've been treating kotaku and Destructoid lately; which is to say, looking at the key words in a link someone has sent me and then putting them into Joystiq, Ars Technica, or what have you.

Incidentally, I work very near where the handset was found, so there were a lot of jokes about how we should cruise the bars after work looking for hawt scoops in the wake of this!

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