Something valuable - and obviously private - falls into your lap. What would you do?
I mentioned in my last post the two cameras on the iPhone prototype shown and discussed to great length in Gizmodo and now everywhere else. Now to the issue of the lost device itself. It was apparently left at a bar, perhaps after too many beers, by an Apple employee doing a little field testing. This kind of activity (the testing, not really the beer, although…) is essential in new-product development, with careful notation of any anomalies or problems. Anyway, the engineer lost the handset. People lose cell phones and lots of other stuff in massive numbers every day. The question here is to the responsibility of anyone finding said lost item – just what exactly might that be?
And thus to the very important but seldom-discussed field of responsibility and ethics. I think the right thing to do here, on Gizmodo’s part or that of the original finder, would have been to return the device to Apple once they realized what it was, and to go no further. This was clearly lost (or perhaps even stolen) property and they had no right to publish as they did. There was a story today that they actually paid for access to the device, which just might be construed to be receiving stolen property – a crime, as I understand it. And, of course, whoever sold it to them would also be a criminal.
As an analyst, I occasionally receive softcopy materials that are clearly confidential to a third party. The policy here is to not open such documents, and, if inadvertently opened, to delete said files once it is realized that the information is proprietary to a third party and to regardless absolutely make no use of it whatsoever. Now, said information might be useful, juicy, and even a source of competitive, market, or financial advantage to us or our clients. No matter. It’s not ours. We have no right to it. Ethics therefore demand that it be disposed of immediately, and it is. BTW, no one has ever sent anything physical that falls into this category, but, if such happened, we would immediately make every effort to return said item to its rightful owner and comment no further to anyone.
Gizmodo’s code of ethics is clearly different, and, I believe, wrong, but that’s a personal position. They are, after all, a blog motivated by money – more hits, more bucks. And, buy, they’re undoubtedly making a ton of money off this occurrence. It’s business. As a capitalist (but no longer a rabid advocate for the free market – I mean, how could I be, after Enron, Worldcom, the Wall-Street mess, etc. etc.?), I can understand their behavior. This is, in the parlance of journalism, a scoop, and a big one at that. Scoops sell papers or their new-age equivalent. But the scoop in this case is a function of misappropriated property. Gizmodo’s behavior, then, is just plain wrong. And it might be, as I noted above, criminal as well. To be fair, I’ve read reports that they’ve returned the handset to Apple – but that does not in any way excuse their behavior beforehand.
Apple normally does an excellent job of controlling information regarding its upcoming products, so I give little credence to reports that this might all be part of an elaborate marketing scheme. Such a strategy might make sense (very little, but some) for an initial product launch, but then only hours or at most days ahead of the actual announcement. This approach would be stupid for a popular product like the iPhone, as much of the surprise is gone now. But “excellent” above doesn’t mean perfect, and in this case must take into account that it’s incredibly difficult to control much these days; after all, many of us knew a lot about the iPad months ahead of its announcement thanks to numerous press reports and a little good (and ethical) analyst work. For me, the only surprise was the price.
Regardless, ethical behavior involves not only keeping one’s own secrets, but also those of others. In short, what we have here is a clear, unambiguous ethical failing driven by financial gain, an old, sad, and even tragic story that really should have no place in a civilized society. Two final comments: Gizmodo did their usual fine analysis work here, but, of course, shouldn’t have, and this event will have no impact whatsoever on Apple or the iPhone. Both will continue to do very, very well.
