6 ms·

Can you remind me again how you qualify a phone (lost, drunkenly) as 'stolen'. You seem to be using that word rather loosely, when the person who found that pho

Can you remind me again how you qualify a phone (lost, drunkenly) as 'stolen'. You seem to be using that word rather loosely, when the person who found that phone in fact found lost property, not stolen property. Nobody stole from Apple here, rather Apple made a grave mistake which it seems in hindsight they then used the police to assist in helping them recover from. How can you say that Apple's clear and apparent ability to influence the actions of the police isn't at least a little bit frightening? A little bit? It doesn't matter whether Gruber or Gawker posted those pictures, the fact of the matter is that the journalist who did post them faced what seems to be police persecution at Apple's direction. Consider, just for a moment, that it had been a Windows Mobile 7 phone. Do you think the police would be breaking into his home?

vtail 16y ago
Your intuition regarding California Law is wrong. "One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft." CAL. PEN. CODE § 485
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - vtail 16y ago
    > I believe in doing the right thing as much as the next person but where do we draw the line with expecting too much ethical behavior from people? I personally believe that law is applicable in this case. If you find someone's phone in the bar, returning it to the bartender is a natural and simple choice, at least in my world. Selling the phone to the highest bidder was clearly wrong. Even if taking the phone was impulsive decision, holding an "auction" was a well calculated move.
    - DrSprout 16y ago
      Gizmodo did not buy the phone. They paid for the chance to look it over before turning it over to Apple, which they did once Apple told them it was Apple property.
      - Anechoic 16y ago
        "Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it." http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-i...
- johSho7w 16y ago
  > without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him See, the problem is that according to the law you quoted simply picking up and taking the lost phone home is itself not equivalent to theft. You must prove that no "reasonable and just efforts" were made. That paragraph doesn't even say all reasonable and just efforts or even that the most reasonable and just efforts (such as returning it to the beer garden) must be made. Only that some reasonable and just effort must be made. It doesn't even define success as a test for determining if an effort was reasonable and just. Calling and contacting Apple when you realize you have a prototype that has been deactivated remotely so you cannot identify the user is reasonable. The law does not support the blanket assertion that all lost property is stolen. It's just more nuanced than you want to believe. Sorry your absolutism doesn't jive with reality. You seem to think that language is there to protect owners of lost property. In reality it's there to protect finders of lost property i.e. business owners so that they can dispose of abandoned junk.
tumult 16y ago
Perhaps this will sound cliché, but it is attitudes like yours that contribute to the decline of nations and cultures. Some guy made a simple mistake, and now all bets are off with regards to his property. You seem to be assuming it's okay for a possession to be considered forfeit because it was left somewhere. It makes me sick that American culture is in a place where some people consider it acceptable behavior to take other people's things because they forgot them.
- betageek 16y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying that taking something someone leaves behind in a bar is not morally dubious. My issue is that by calling this 'stealing' your re-defining the concept of stealing and then couching the argument in terms of theft, which makes it really easy to be absolutist about who's right and wrong. We don't all live in California, so our legal systems classify what happened differently. I would consider the major mistake in this to be Apple's in allowing something they value so much to be in this situation (how many pre-release iPad's were left in bars?) Some people have taken advantage of this but the only impact seems to be some photos on a gadget blog.
  - halostatue 16y ago
    IMO, it was a lost phone right up to the point that the finder decided to sell it, at which point, it became theft. If he decided to keep the phone as a trophy, but not sell it, he would have been on the wrong side of the law, but a) we never would have known about it, and b) it's unlikely someone would have cared enough to track down the finder. I think that most jurisdictions would consider finding something and not making a good-faith attempt to return it to be indistinguishable from outright theft. Sale of such an item would be hard to justify under any circumstances. (IIRC, airlines sell lost luggage in auctions, but there is a suitably long time permitted for the flyer to claim their lost luggage.)
  - tumult 16y ago
    I don't think anyone is saying that taking something someone leaves behind in a bar is not morally dubious. That is exactly what he said. Even though it is odd to quote from a post two levels above, I will now do so, since I do not think you read it: "Can you remind me again how you qualify a phone (lost, drunkenly) as 'stolen'. You seem to be using that word rather loosely, when the person who found that phone in fact found lost property, not stolen property. Nobody stole from Apple here" My issue is that by calling this 'stealing' your re-defining the concept of stealing and then couching the argument in terms of theft, which makes it really easy to be absolutist about who's right and wrong. Let us pretend California law does not state that finding lost property and keeping it to yourself is theft. Now, here is a scenario: Two people, A and B, are at a bar. B leaves his phone at his seat when he gets up and leaves. A takes the phone, leaves, and sells it to someone else for money. During this time, B has made repeated attempts to recover his phone, and A has made no attempts to return it, either through culturally accepted norms (giving it to the bartender) or through direct means (using the information in the phone to find the person or giving it to the police). We will now base further discussion on this scenario, which is functionally compatible both with your requirement of not qualifying discussion based on the syntactical legality of any person's actions and the actual situation as it is reported to have happened. It is important to note that this has so far not affected the debate in any way with regards to responsibility, morality, or culture. We don't all live in California, so our legal systems classify what happened differently. Any relevance of law that qualifies theft has now been removed from an examination of the situation, so we may presume it to have happened, for example, in Florida, or Canada, or Britain. I pose a question: Has the morality of person A's actions shifted when this scenario is instantiated in another location? For example, in Seattle, person B leaves his phone in a bar. Person A takes the phone, leaves, makes no attempt to return it to the owner, and sells it for money. If moving from California to Seattle has made this morally sound, then you have in fact proved my point that America's cultural integrity is eroded when compared to much of the rest of the modern world. I would consider the major mistake in this to be Apple's in allowing something they value so much to be in this situation (how many pre-release iPad's were left in bars?) Some people have taken advantage of this but the only impact seems to be some photos on a gadget blog. Irrelevant to the discussion, unless there is some implied meaning. Never once did I mention Apple, prototypes, gadget blogs, or the loss of trade secrets. Just one man's personal property.

vtail 16y ago

Your intuition regarding California Law is wrong. "One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft." CAL. PEN. CODE § 485

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- vtail 16y ago
  > I believe in doing the right thing as much as the next person but where do we draw the line with expecting too much ethical behavior from people? I personally believe that law is applicable in this case. If you find someone's phone in the bar, returning it to the bartender is a natural and simple choice, at least in my world. Selling the phone to the highest bidder was clearly wrong. Even if taking the phone was impulsive decision, holding an "auction" was a well calculated move.
  - DrSprout 16y ago
    Gizmodo did not buy the phone. They paid for the chance to look it over before turning it over to Apple, which they did once Apple told them it was Apple property.
    - Anechoic 16y ago
      "Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it." http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-i...
johSho7w 16y ago
> without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him See, the problem is that according to the law you quoted simply picking up and taking the lost phone home is itself not equivalent to theft. You must prove that no "reasonable and just efforts" were made. That paragraph doesn't even say all reasonable and just efforts or even that the most reasonable and just efforts (such as returning it to the beer garden) must be made. Only that some reasonable and just effort must be made. It doesn't even define success as a test for determining if an effort was reasonable and just. Calling and contacting Apple when you realize you have a prototype that has been deactivated remotely so you cannot identify the user is reasonable. The law does not support the blanket assertion that all lost property is stolen. It's just more nuanced than you want to believe. Sorry your absolutism doesn't jive with reality. You seem to think that language is there to protect owners of lost property. In reality it's there to protect finders of lost property i.e. business owners so that they can dispose of abandoned junk.

tumult 16y ago

Perhaps this will sound cliché, but it is attitudes like yours that contribute to the decline of nations and cultures. Some guy made a simple mistake, and now all bets are off with regards to his property. You seem to be assuming it's okay for a possession to be considered forfeit because it was left somewhere. It makes me sick that American culture is in a place where some people consider it acceptable behavior to take other people's things because they forgot them.

betageek 16y ago
I don't think anyone is saying that taking something someone leaves behind in a bar is not morally dubious. My issue is that by calling this 'stealing' your re-defining the concept of stealing and then couching the argument in terms of theft, which makes it really easy to be absolutist about who's right and wrong. We don't all live in California, so our legal systems classify what happened differently. I would consider the major mistake in this to be Apple's in allowing something they value so much to be in this situation (how many pre-release iPad's were left in bars?) Some people have taken advantage of this but the only impact seems to be some photos on a gadget blog.
- halostatue 16y ago
  IMO, it was a lost phone right up to the point that the finder decided to sell it, at which point, it became theft. If he decided to keep the phone as a trophy, but not sell it, he would have been on the wrong side of the law, but a) we never would have known about it, and b) it's unlikely someone would have cared enough to track down the finder. I think that most jurisdictions would consider finding something and not making a good-faith attempt to return it to be indistinguishable from outright theft. Sale of such an item would be hard to justify under any circumstances. (IIRC, airlines sell lost luggage in auctions, but there is a suitably long time permitted for the flyer to claim their lost luggage.)
- tumult 16y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying that taking something someone leaves behind in a bar is not morally dubious. That is exactly what he said. Even though it is odd to quote from a post two levels above, I will now do so, since I do not think you read it: "Can you remind me again how you qualify a phone (lost, drunkenly) as 'stolen'. You seem to be using that word rather loosely, when the person who found that phone in fact found lost property, not stolen property. Nobody stole from Apple here" My issue is that by calling this 'stealing' your re-defining the concept of stealing and then couching the argument in terms of theft, which makes it really easy to be absolutist about who's right and wrong. Let us pretend California law does not state that finding lost property and keeping it to yourself is theft. Now, here is a scenario: Two people, A and B, are at a bar. B leaves his phone at his seat when he gets up and leaves. A takes the phone, leaves, and sells it to someone else for money. During this time, B has made repeated attempts to recover his phone, and A has made no attempts to return it, either through culturally accepted norms (giving it to the bartender) or through direct means (using the information in the phone to find the person or giving it to the police). We will now base further discussion on this scenario, which is functionally compatible both with your requirement of not qualifying discussion based on the syntactical legality of any person's actions and the actual situation as it is reported to have happened. It is important to note that this has so far not affected the debate in any way with regards to responsibility, morality, or culture. We don't all live in California, so our legal systems classify what happened differently. Any relevance of law that qualifies theft has now been removed from an examination of the situation, so we may presume it to have happened, for example, in Florida, or Canada, or Britain. I pose a question: Has the morality of person A's actions shifted when this scenario is instantiated in another location? For example, in Seattle, person B leaves his phone in a bar. Person A takes the phone, leaves, makes no attempt to return it to the owner, and sells it for money. If moving from California to Seattle has made this morally sound, then you have in fact proved my point that America's cultural integrity is eroded when compared to much of the rest of the modern world. I would consider the major mistake in this to be Apple's in allowing something they value so much to be in this situation (how many pre-release iPad's were left in bars?) Some people have taken advantage of this but the only impact seems to be some photos on a gadget blog. Irrelevant to the discussion, unless there is some implied meaning. Never once did I mention Apple, prototypes, gadget blogs, or the loss of trade secrets. Just one man's personal property.