Apple's Revenge: We all get it in the end

As many of you are no doubt aware, an interesting story hit the news late last week about a blogger, Jason Chen of Gizmodo, who paid $5000 for a ‘found’ prototype of the 4G iPhone that was left in a bar by one of the researchers. His home was raided by police in san Mateo county and he could be facing felony charges.

This brings up a series of arguments and thought processes when it comes to bloggers. California does have laws in place that shield journalists from revealing their sources, but are bloggers journalists? What does and does not qualify as journalism?

As someone who was once bouncing around the idea of a career in journalism, this strikes a deep cord in me. Free speech is in fact protected under the First amendment, but how far does that really extend? There’s Free speech, then there’s threatening the life of the President (you WILL do Federal time for this, even if you don’t mean it. After Kennedy, the Treasury Department does not mess around). There’s free of speech, then there’s trade secrets, state secrets, and medical information. Even if you have access to this information, sharing it, regardless of free speech laws, incurs penalty by law.

So where is the line drawn? This is something people have been kicking around the past few years and the blogosphere has expanded into view-shifting territory. There’s a blog for quite literally ever palette, and that leads to many of the same questions that the internet has faced about free speech, privacy, and in the end, accountability.

My opinion, what Jason Chen did is stupid. Just plain stupid, to say nothing of questionable. I mean, whatever happened to finding something dropped in a bar and giving it to the bartender in a ‘lost and found’ type gesture? I appreciate iPhones aren’t cheap since I KNOW what I just paid for mine, but doing anything else is theft, by law. Taking an object, regardless of intent, and reconfiguring it for your own purposes is theft in the eyes of the law, as it should be. Can Chen then be held accountable for willfully buying stolen property? It’s entirely possible.

This is going to be an interesting story to follow, not only for the sake of bloggers, but journalists in general. Lines will be drawn by this criminal suit, even if a civil suit is not filed.