The Age of Litigation (Or: I Exercise My Noble Freedom to be an Asshole)

So instead of considering the fine art of procrastination today, I want to comment on the recent iphone fiasco and Gizmodo in particular. (I'll try to get to the other topic in early May.)

You see, some guy found a prototype of the next gen iphone and sold it to a journalist-blogger website, which started revealing a lot of juicy secrets. Apple didn't like them reporting all about it, so they had the police get involved.

Now we've got a debate over whether or not bloggers are protected under journalist laws, as well as what exactly the laws entitle journalists to do.

In my opinion, it is obvious that this is a case of private property which is still in a prototype stage and that releasing information on it is almost certainly harmful to the company. By purchasing it and then analyzing and reporting on it, Gizmodo did something definitely unethical and probably unlawful.

I agree with the people who claim that journalistic legal protection does not extend to committing illegal acts for the sake of creating a source; they exist so that journalists cannot be forced to reveal sources. There's a significant difference here.

Furthermore, I'm not a particular fan of Gizmodo in the first place. A while back they pulled a "prank" that in my opinion shows that their modus operandi is basically selfish and antisocial.

What they did wasn't a prank, in my opinion. It could have been, if they didn't take it so far, and if they had revealed what they were up to shortly after pulling it. But the worst part in my opinion is their lame justification and complete lack of regret.

They paint their actions by associating them with the noble idea of "civil disobedience", claim that the prank "pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting", and say that any journalists who criticize their actions are obviously just corporate lapdogs who have sold out.

Seriously? This is the worst sort of self-righteous closed-mindedness, and it pisses me off. So I'm really not that surprised to know that Gizmodo is claiming a moral high ground and suggesting that the purchase of known stolen property and then revealing trade secrets is somehow related to freedom of information.

Suppose some kid I don't know steals my neighbor's diary, then sells it to me for five bucks because he knows I'm always desperate for any old topic to blog about, and I start revealing Old Man Thompson's secret obsession with Hello Kitty... is this seriously about freedom of information?

The problem with modern day society is that we keep taking ideals of freedom far past their logical extension. The justification of selfish and antisocial behavior, wrapped up in the guise of something noble, is so pervasive that we have to debate about whether or not its wrong to steal something secret and then make it public. This type of thing used to be common sense.

The fact that its not is exactly what's wrong with our modern day society.

**Update 4/30**
Here's some info about the guy who originally found & sold the iphone. Sounds like he's full of regret now that he might get in trouble!