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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Information wants to be free. If you don't want someone to know about something, don't take it out to a bar. And especially don't leave it sitting around in the bar where anyone can take it. If you show something to a bunch of people, it's not a secret anymore.

Apple fucked this up, and they have only themselves to blame.

Gizmodo did what their readers wanted. They worked hard (to the tune of $10,000) and got an exclusive story that no other media outlet got. If nuclear launch codes were left in a bar, the media would be congratulated for breaking the story. But if it's a telephone, then everyone should be quiet and say nothing about it? Why? Why does the government deserve more scrutiny than a publicly-traded megacorp? Because Steve Jobs likes saying "one more thing"?

I'm not convinced.

(Uh oh, dowmodded because I hate Apple. What a shock.)

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Modded you back up my friend. This is just about the the most laughable link I have ever seen on HN. It highlights the total and utter meaninglessness of the Apple "fanboi", writing whining blog posts about the revelation that a phone is going from smooth corners to sharper ones before the god-Jobs can present it to the salivating masses.

don't leave it sitting around in the bar where anyone can take it

Are you saying that you really believe that phone was left at the bar by Apple?

I don't care much about any loss of buzz for Apple, but the conditions in which that story was extorted are definitely not healthy and worth discussing.

"If nuclear launch codes were left in a bar, the media would be congratulated for breaking the story."

Well, not if they scanned the launch codes and posted them online for everyone to see. That's not the only fallacy either--the government losing nuclear launch codes in a bar is a story because it proves the government can't protect nuclear launch codes, Apple losing a prototype iPhone in a bar is only a story because it gives us some idea of what the next iPhone might look like.

Incidentally, paying thousands of dollars for something you damn well know isn't legally owned by the person who's selling it to you is wrong. If it's a book of nuclear launch codes and there's a legitimate story to be told it's outweighed by a greater good, but where's the greater good here?

So the media can only cover subjects that lead to a "greater good"? Why not hold Apple to the same standard -- they can only keep their phone model secret if it does so for the "greater good".

Oh wait, maybe businesses -- even the media -- are motivated by something other than the greater good.

That's not even remotely what I said. What I said is that trafficking in stolen goods is wrong unless it's justified by a greater good.

But what I think is the greater good is different to what you think it is. So what if Gizmodo thought they were doing the greater good?

Then we have two options--either someone is wrong, or we get to sit around playing moral relativist all day.

It wasn't a rhetorical question, either--what is the greater good that justifies being an accomplice to theft in this case?

I'd really like to know why I'm being repeatedly downvoted here, just so I know what to improve on in the future. Thanks!

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