

How Arrington Would Have Handled The Stolen iPhone Story - cj
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/26/how-i-would-have-handled-the-stolen-iphone-story/

======
ErrantX
It's very easy to say things like this after the fact; "I would _never_ have
done that".

However, despite my vague dislike of Arrington I believe he wouldn't have
actually paid for it.

I disapprove of his conceit in posting this though...

~~~
kilps
He does say that they have declined to purchase information in the past, which
lends credibility to his claim.

------
mrduncan
In case some weren't aware, Arrington is a Stanford Law School graduate and
was previously was a lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/person/michael-arrington>

~~~
kgrin
Well, sure, but he practiced as a corp/finance lawyer, not a criminal or IP
attorney (which seem to be the relevant facets here). And in the OP he says,
specifically, "I’m not going to go into the legal issues around this because
I’m just not qualified."

~~~
habitue
That's true, but his opinion is probably worth more than some random guy at
least in this respect

------
BRadmin
_(note that I use the word “stolen” only to keep the description brief, not in
any legal way)_

If Arrington wanted to leave the description "brief" he wouldn't have needed a
parenthetical explanation.

------
jrockway
I agree that paying for the phone is the one sticky point here. If no money
changed hands, this would be a much more solid case to enforce bloggers' and
journalists' rights. The money taints things... but I still think this could
go either way.

(I would argue that the person that found the phone was an employee that
discovered the phone in his normal course of work. Then the money is for
"being at work" rather than "selling us stolen goods". It's like escort
services -- you pay for the escort service; the sex afterwards is free. Or
something.)

------
throwthisaway
How about we read "How Arrington Would Have Handled The Stolen Twitter
Document Story"?

Hypocrisy is lovely.

~~~
yourspectacles
I'm not sure why you didn't - it's right there in the linked article. Perhaps
the throwaway disguise is a clue?

------
bbuffone
If I had found the iphone... I would have walked around SFO asking people if
they lost an iPhone prototype. Starting on Market Street and working my way
down to San Jose.

Being that the iPhone is very popular, lots of people would have wanted to see
it so... I would have charged them $5 no wait... $20 each to hang out with the
iphone for 1 minute, and $50 each for a Polariod of them and the Prototype. I
would have continued this pattern until I:

1.) Talked with everyone in the SFO area 2.) Could not carry anymore money 3.)
Ran in to Steve Jobs and returned the lost prototype to it's rightful owner.

Eventually I would have found the owner and could sleep easy at night knowing
I did everything I could to return it, In the end I would have made way more
money than $5000 and returned the iphone.

~~~
dannyr
Or you could just have gone to Apple's HQ.

~~~
bbuffone
Nah... I like my "Fanboys"
([http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=Fanboys](http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=Fanboys))
style adventure better. Eventually my pattern would have taken me their.

------
eirikref
Personally I would have bought it, contacted Steve Jobs directly and right
away (not called up Apple's support line, who of course cannot help with this
issue), given him the phone without any questions or favors asked, and then
just taken my chances that he would remember my publication in favorable light
somewhere further down the line.

------
Torn
Surely the issue here is that the iPhone was _lost property_ , and knowing
full-well who the owners were (and who to give it back to) both parties - the
guy in the bar and the Gizmondo editor - struck a deal for someone's lost
phone.

Here in the UK, at least, it's an offense to knowingly sell-on lost property.
Arrington seems to gloss over this and is only looking at it for scoop value.
Details of an iPhone 4G prototype isn't information that could be argued
_needs_ to be exposed to the public. That's not journalism.

------
nailer
> Apple’s complaint will be that information about the phone leaked early,
> giving competitors a head start on copying the features. That’s a reasonable
> complaint

Really? I'm fairly sure there was nothing particularly interesting in the leak
other than the leak itself. Res improvements and a front facing cameras? Yawn.

After the leak, 42% of Mashable readers preferred an HTC Incredible over the
unreleased iPhone.

------
dbreunig
I bet it would involve lots of yelling.

------
benologist
They would have done the same thing as gizmodo ... milked it for as many ad
impressions and articles as possible.

------
jayliew
Does _every_ TechCrunch post appear on HN now? n.b. no offense, OP

~~~
jolan
Nope, just every iPhone 4 story.

------
iamdave
Michael Arrington suffers from the worst possible case of selective memory
imaginable. It wasn't that long ago that TC was involved in their own scandal
when they gave a kid a Macbook pro in exchange for an article that at least
three quarters of the tech community debunked as fud.

Then this happens, and he actually grandstands and says "I would never have
done that", and tries to tell us he'd actually be an ethical reporter?

And the Oscar goes to...

~~~
rpledge
To be fair the kid asked for the laptop without Arringtons knowledge. They
fired the offending employee and removed all his material from Techcrunch.
They were very transparent about the whole incident

~~~
iamdave
Thank you for the clarification on this. I stand by my point that Arrington
isn't exactly the most scrupulous tech blogger out there either, and this
article just reeks of self-importance and conceit.

~~~
jrockway
_this article just reeks of self-importance and conceit_

Whoa, TechCrunch is a _blog_?

~~~
bdr
You're putting us all down. Blogging is no more inherently self-important than
speaking at all.

~~~
jrockway
I find blogs to be more self-aggrandizing than traditional opinion columns.
But indeed, I agree that it is unfair to pin general human traits on blogs.

Oh, and if I sound like I'm on a high horse... I would do the same thing that
Arringtion does, if only somebody cared what I thought about anything ;)

