
Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, but Don’t Ask  - pg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/technology/07kindle.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
======
edmccaffrey
Ownership laws in cases of stolen goods are ridiculously complicated.

In some cases in some juristictions, a bona fide purchaser can become the
legal owner of stolen property (if they did not know it was stolen). The
original owner can seek repayment from anyone involved in selling the item--
even if they did not know it was stolen, or sold it after buying it--but
sometimes they cannot take the item from the person who currently holds it.

For example, if the victim has their kindle stolen by a thief, and the thief
sells it to an electronics store that buys items, and the store sells it to a
customer, then (depending on jurisdictions, ect..) the customer is the legal
owner of the item. The victim can go after the thief for the market value of
the item. Or they can go after the store if they can prove that it sold their
item, even if the store didn't know that it was stolen. _In this case, the
victim no longer has legal claim to the kindle, and has no legal authority to
authorize Amazon to do anything to it._

With these complexities, and especially with items moving across
jurisdictions, _no manufacturer can ever be sure that the original owner is
still the legal owner, and able to authorize bricking a device._ The only
option they have is to do nothing unless ordered by a court.

Apple's phone home is different because it is performing an action that was
initiated by the owner while they were the legal owner. It would be a
different story if they actively took action against a device after it left
the possession of the victim.

~~~
MichaelApproved
How about just a black list? As the current legally connected owner of the
phone you should be allowed to put your phone on a do not connect list BEFORE
a new user connects it.

With such a list in place the new owner, be it legal or illegal, can do
nothing with the phone. If some jurisdiction allows the new owner to keep it
then so be it but it'll just be a brick.

In cases you state the victim won't be able to recover the phone but that's
not the idea. The idea is to devalue a phone so it'll be worth far less thus
making it less likely to be stolen.

~~~
edmccaffrey
Do you mean that the original owner puts it on the list when they are still in
physical possession of it? If that's so, then will they still be able to
connect to it?

If the person is blacklisting it only after they notice that it is missing,
then it is too late. Under the aforementioned cirucmstances, it transfers
ownership once it the bona fide customer buys it from someone, not once the
bona fide customer tries to connect it. They could purchase it on eBay before
the owner goes from thinking it is misplaced in their house to thinking it is
stolen, and it becomes theirs as soon they pay, and then the victim blacklists
a device that they no longer own while its still in transit. Even if the owner
notices that it is gone before it is bought, they have no way of knowing if it
has been sold yet, and neither does the manufacturer.

The legal issues are just too nebulous for these types of things to work.

The best that they can really do is keep track of what credit cards are used
to activate phones or buy books on a Kindle, to trace it to the new legal
owner, with a subpoena, who may be able to provide a lead to the thief or a
reseller that the victim can go after for cash.

------
gk
Not bricking stolen toys is a form of price discrimination. The fact that
stolen toys are not bricked and therefore have a resale value creates an
incentive to, well, steal toys. Manufacturers profit because people whose toys
are stolen almost always replace them, so lots of theft means lots of
additional sales. Service providers profit because cheap used devices mean
more people can afford ownership, so lots of theft means lots of demand for
connectivity, or electronic books, or whatever.

~~~
gjm11
Very clever. But I'm not convinced: anything that increases the theft rate and
thereby requires people to buy more also increases the effective cost of the
product. I don't have any numbers on this, so you should be skeptical about
what follows, but: introspection strongly suggests to me that when the price
of a thing increases by a given factor, my probability of buying it goes down
by a _larger_ factor. (At least when we're talking phones, toys, music
players, cameras, computers, etc.) Now, suppose you try to increase sales by
encouraging theft: if a fraction f of devices are stolen and their owners buy
replacements, then (1) the effective cost goes up by a factor of about 1+f and
(2) the number of sales per "original" sale is about 1+f. If my introspection
happens to describe how typical people behave, then the net result is that the
vendor sells _fewer_ devices. (And has less happy customers.)

(Actually it's 1/(1-f), not 1+f, if your second iWidget is just as likely to
be stolen as your first. Something in between if you are more careful to avoid
theft once you've been bitten once.)

~~~
rsheridan6
Most people think it won't happen to them, so they're not going to accurately
price their gadgets.

------
mdemare
I think that gadget makers are underestimating the intensity of the emotions
involved when a gadget is stolen. We have a strong sense of justice that's
disproportionate to the actual value of the gadget.

I know that I feel better about my iPhone because of the stories where iPhone
thieves have been tracked down and arrested - and I don't even have MobileMe!

------
jacquesm
There is something really basic wrong with the premise of this article.

If a person buys a stolen Iphone, Kindle or other device for a price that is
reasonable they have no reason to presume it stolen. The sale might have
happened in between the time the device was stolen and first reported to
Amazon, apple, at&t or whichever party has 'control'.

If you then disable the device you are hitting the wrong party, according to
the law that person is now the rightful owner. The thief has long passed the
'hot' item to somebody else.

If you have any proof at all that it is the thief that is using the device and
the company won't shut it down that is a different matter. But the safe money
on the companies' behalf bets that the new 'owner' hasn't got a clue the
device has been stolen.

The best thing to do when your laptop, e-reader, digital camera or expensive
phone is stolen is to keep an eye out on ebay and sites like that for similar
gear offered in your region.

My business partner Joyce found her laptop back like that.

~~~
gojomo
_...according to the law that person is now the rightful owner._

Not in most (all?) US jurisdictions. A person who unknowingly buys/receives
stolen property generally isn't considered guilty of a crime, but also has no
right to keep the stolen property.

~~~
jacquesm
So, how do you know if anything you buy was not stolen at some point in the
past ?

How does it work if the insurance has paid out after the theft ?

See elsewhere in this thread, the situation is not as clear as you make it out
to be.

Also, the world is a lot larger than just the US.

~~~
gojomo
_So, how do you know if anything you buy was not stolen at some point in the
past?_

For big-ticket items (cars and houses), official systems of title help. For
other items, there's not certainty, as with the world in general you achieve
relative confidences with the best info you have. (And, buying from reputable
sources means you may have a claim against them for recovery of your payment
even if the stolen property is returned to its rightful owner.)

 _How does it work if the insurance has paid out after the theft?_

Insurance is a separate contract between the victim and a third party, the
insurance company might be the legal owner, or want its claims payment
returned.

 _See elsewhere in this thread, the situation is not as clear as you make it
out to be._

I would certainly agree that it's complicated across jurisdictions and
circumstances, but your statement -- _"according to the law that person is now
the rightful owner"_ \-- remains generally _false as you wrote it_ and _bad
advice_ in the USA.

 _Also, the world is a lot larger than just the US._

That is why I specifically said _'most'_ _'US'_ jurisdictions. What qualifiers
-- jurisdictions and circumstances -- should have been included in your
statement to make it true?

------
joe_the_user
Uh,

You mean the manufacturer won't take steps without a call from the police?

Oh really, you mean they follow the law? and they won't let someone shut off
someone else's machine just 'cause they've got some information on it???

I suppose the writer of this article also upset that it's illegal to set
lethal booby traps for the purpose of 'protecting your property' too.

Come now, it's not hard to file a police report, even after the fact. The
police should be the ones who have to call to get this kind of action and if
they aren't calling, they are the ones at fault.

The alternative is a huge open door for social engineering...

~~~
qeorge
In at least one case a police report was filed. Filing a police report is the
requirement for insurance claims, and works here as well.

Users are pretty cool about devices calling home. Isn't this a reasonable
degree of customer service to expect in return?

~~~
edmccaffrey
> Isn't this a reasonable degree of customer service to expect in return?

No, it's not. It is possible that the victim in no longer the owner of the
item, as odd as it may sound: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810104>

------
ig1
The CTIA spokesman is completely wrong. Mobile phones are subsidized in the UK
in pretty much the same way as in the US.

Just because the phone is subsidized it doesn't mean it doesn't have value. A
$800 iPhone is still an $800 dollar iPhone even if you get it for less than
that in exchange for a higher monthly phone bull.

------
sethg
I think it's a _good thing_ that someone else can't call Amazon, pretending to
be me, and convince their CSRs to brick my electronic devices.

------
anupj
On a different note, do you find it annoying when nytimes.com forces you to
login to read an article?

