Good point. Well, miscarriages of justices are nothing new! I stated the principle, not the absolute practice.
I'd be more scared of Apple, assuming this is just about money and not jail time. Also, of course, the relevant employees are all vulnerable to criminal charges. I would especially hate to see company turn a profit while the "little people" go to jail or go broke.
I agree. This is an ordinary criminal investigation re stolen goods, maybe throw in some conspiracy etc. The "journalist" and others were involved in the actual purchase (!) of the phone. Just imagine the possibilities if the journalist could engage in criminal activity while pursuing a story. We'd probably be seeing a lot of stories on prostitution and illegal drug use, for starters.
And to the OP, it's prima facie, and the concept is not relevant here anyway. The shield law would be raised as a *defense* to a prima facie valid claim, i.e., a charging document stating the case. IAAL.
Finders keepers isn't the rule generally. Even small children are taught that. Treasure in shipwrecks leads to big arguments over ownership centuries later. You don't lose you property rights just because you misplace or are deprived of something (in the old days the big problem was property that departed on its own, i.e., livestock
The only reason the iPhone was worth $5k to them was that even possessing it was wrongful. Buying something from a thief, even unknowingly, also gives you no prperty right, and it's just silly for them to say it was "lost." They knew what they were doing by paying that much alone, and I'm sure more evidence will pop up when the suspects squeal on each other.
Arguably Apple's profit could be damaged here. I have no idea how they could prove that (and Apple can sue for civil damages, using the conviction as a slam-dunk proof of the facts), and I assume it will go to settlement anyway given the legal fees it would cost to defend it. It could get ugly.
Gizmodo did a very dumb thing. (Not to mention the party who found and sold the phone, knowing it wasn't his, either.) Remember though that it's the gov't not Apple that decides whether to bring criminal charges. Apple could ask them to drop it, but it sounds like they're OK with the brute force approach, or else the prosecutor wants to do what the prosecutor wants to do.
No: If there's a conviction, the government is going to want the ill-gotten gains and then some -- like several times the total. You don't send a company to jail; you fine the heck out of it. A criminal is not supposed to keep the profits, and the conviction is supposed to deter others.
I wonder what Apple wants in all this? They can bring a civil claim as well, and a conviction would make that a quick fit b/c the facts would already be established against the defendant.
The EFF offers a copy of the developer's agreement here.
If the relevant clause appears to be this:
3.3.14 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or
defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or
other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by
iPhone or iPod touch users.
I don't see how Fiore is "obscene, pornographic, or defamatory" though I guess there is some off-color content. But the "objectionable" line seems hopelessly vague, and I have no idea what limit "reasonable" places on Apple. I think they can block virtually whomever they want but question whether this clause is particularly meaningful as a contract. Because Apple can "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time," the developer has little or no protection; a court might (?) have a problem with the reckless exercise of this -- contractual obligations aren't always spelled out in full on paper.
Certainly Apple has a monopoly over iPhone/iPad apps, one they will hold as long as they can. Some argue that vertical integration like this is bad for companies, and Apple is the unusual exception in pulling it off. The only solution may be for consumers to vote with their feet -- Android.
I have heard even human rights groups have qualms about going after retailers running (or more often doing business with contractors who run) sweatshops because the alternative may be to lose the job altogether and end up worse off. In China crappy wages can actually be good wages, though the conditions are unconscionable by our standards, the laborers choose the jobs intelligently over the alternatives.
If we hold the company (e.g., Nike) accountable, the company may, instead of correcting the problem, which again is probably with a contractor not a directly owned factory, switch to a supplier possibly in another country where labor standards are adequate. Again, the victims lose their jobs.
I'm not trying to rationalize the cheap shoes from sweatshops, just describe unintentional consequences I don't like, either. The host country -- all of them -- stepping up regulation of all companies would work, but it's not going to happen anytime soon in, say, China.
So what to do. No, nothing is not the answer, but the answer can be tough even for a well-meaning company, if there are any of those left. Certainly some of them do better jobs than others.
Apple recently revealed finding children and excessive (60+/7 days) hours in unidentified Asian contract factories. And so it
(Apple had similar problems in 2008 and 2006, too.)
Which, and I actually don't want sound to be too cold, sits a lot better with me than the other people they take with them. Usually the other guy, the green light guy, gets the worst of it when the "runner" spears them. Often the other guy is on a bicycle or on foot. Running red lights is a leading cuse of lethal accidents here because, I suppose, of the angle and speed involved, and the frequency of the offense. It really sucks.
Interesting story. The ruling seems to turn partly on an odd (?) FL rule that a ticket must be issued by an officer who witnesses the infraction. Now, arguably the pictures are a form of "witnessing" if they were reviewed by an officer? Do you think it would be OK to isue a ticket for infractions observed over closed-circuit TV? Does it matter if it is recorded and reviewed later? Are still pictures fundamenetally different? Etc.
In looking up the story I noticed the FL legislature is considering banning red light cameras completely.
I think you're right re the photos, I've seen them here in VA, outside DC.
I got tagged by a speeding camera, and I have to credit them with using pavement markings and a time stamp to calculate speed, rather than an unreliable radar gun. The thing is, by the time you get the ticket it is unlikely you'll remember much about the incident let alone preserved any evidence -- so in effect there is no defense. They (MD) took pains not to make in a criminal defense affecting my insurance, and the fine was just $40 so I wasn't going to drive out there to contest it. I barely remembered why I was on that road at all.
With this yellow-light thing, what is needed is class action to get the government's attention. With piecemeal defense by people like the guy in the article, they have great financial incentive not to fix the problem.
Only in Chicago have I ever seen signs at intersections admonishing "OBEY YOUR SIGNAL ONLY" I suppose Chicago drivers might just go with the signal that most appeals to them.
(Yes, before someone pipes up, I understand the sign is a warning not to get confused choosing a light in Chicago's wonderful 8-way intersections, but I cracked up the first time I saw that, and I knew I'd arrived in a different place.)
Thanks for the laugh. I haven't lived there in a dozen years.
You may have read my comment too quickly, because I noted that most of entitlement spending is funded by specific taxes ("programs like Social Security are directly funded (for now) by specific taxes"). Look to the link for the chart "receipts." I suspect people would complain, for example, if you cancelled social security but kept on collecting social security taxes (42% of receipts). Big spending, sure, but big taxes, too. Also Social Security or Medicare are not what people are thinking about when they're ranting about people cheating the government.
As I indicated, defense spending is also larger that it appears in the graph because of hidden costs in other area of the budget. (I don't agree with these guys, so I didn't cite them, but some useful points are made here: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm ) I think we should factor in what we would gain if some of the people currently working in defense were in more constructive pursuits, for example building bridges in the US instead of blowing them up somewhere else. I'm not a utopian, we need a military, but the cost is staggering. Welfare is trivial by comparison and cheap political BS in terms of balancing the budget -- the few pundits who know anything also know they're lying. Although there are moral reasons to be cautious in giving out aid, you'll never balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
The actual #'s are instructive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
The "killing people" sector of the U.S. budget dwarfs the "suck on the teat" portion, many times over in real dollars, and the more so when you consider the current military expenses for open-ended wars that aren't being paid for with current funds, the hidden costs in "non-military" parts of the budget related to veterans etc., and that programs like Social Security are directly funded (for now) by specific taxes. The military expense is relatively (and absolutely) HUGE, like $ billions versus millions.
I won't defend the freeloaders for a second. But if you want moral outrage, there is a lot more money being ripped off from or misspent by the military. Eliminating every penny of welfare programs well spent or not would not make any real difference to fixing the deficit or reducing taxes. It's just some blood the pundits sprinkle in the water to keep their own financial interests going. Now, if we dealt with just the folks ripping off the military, or eliminating some really stupid expenses like maintaining a nuclear arsenal STILL capable of destroying the world over and over and over -- that's real money. We spend more than the next dozen countries combined on defense.
A diplomat friend mentioned yesterday that we still spend millions maintaining tactical nukes in Europe. Why? Basically, the Army just doesn't want to give them up. The price of a few warheads could fund some serious science.
Of course it was military competition that ignited our interest on rockets in the first place, not reaching the Moon.
It's an interesting story -- the guy who shot the detainee in the head actually was a South Vietnamese police captain acting on his own initiative. It was of course one of the most controversial images of the war, so it's hard to say that there was any consensus here that it was appropriate.
SAIGON, South Vietnam -- South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer with a shot to the head, one of the most chilling images of the Vietnam War. Photographer Eddie Adams, who won a Pulitzer Prize for this photograph, said the execution was justified, because the Viet Cong officer had killed eight South Vietnamese. The furor created by this 1968 image destroyed Loan's life. He fled South Vietnam in 1975, the year the communists overran the country, and moved to Virginia, where he opened a restaurant. He died in 1998 at age 67. Loan 'was a hero,' Adams said when he died. 'America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.'
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!" -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
