By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Gizmodo / Apple knockdown-dragout playing itself out in the blogs and legal system. After a drunken Apple employee left an experimental iPhone on a barstool and a nearby patron picked it up, presumably to return it to its rightful owner, something was set in motion that looks like it will not end well. Thanks to the San Mateo County police department, the situation has gone from a simple legal/verbal slap-fight to being a legal crisis much bigger than both parties. On Friday, the San Mateo Police department entered the residence of a journalist with a warrant and, while trying to gather information on a crime, seized his computer and ransacked his home – all while cuffing the journalist to keep him under control. So what does this have to do with Hollywood and sites like this one?
EVERYTHING.
You see, under the law, journalists are afforded protections that allow them to disguise sources and prevent materials that have fallen into their possession pursuant to a story from being seized. These are the types of sandbags that protect whistleblower and muckraker alike from powerful, influential companies like Apple, political entities or judicial and police corruption. It is also the same group of laws that protect people like me from studios angry about leaked materials.
To further understand what is going on here, it is important to stop thinking about this as a case of a stolen phone. Think of it instead as a sex tape. Go back and reread a number of these articles, substituting the words “NEXT GEN IPHONE” with “CELEBRITY SEX TAPE.” After all, if this were a case of Justin Timberlake drunkenly leaving his iPhone in a bar, only to have a patron discover it – trying in vain to return it – only to discover a sex tape on it of him and ex-girlfriend Jessica Biel, would anybody blink if TMZ dropped $5,000 to buy the phone…if only to write about and describe the scene without distributing it? Especially if they gave the phone back the minute Timberlake’s people sent a letter asking them to do so?
No. They wouldn’t. The only time that portion would be a story at all is if the San Mateo Police walked into said TMZ journalist’s home and took his computer to track down and prosecute the guy who sold them the phone. Because that’s kind of scary and draconian.
And to a guy like me, it is positively terrifying.
The entire thing has caused even influential Internet moguls like Gawker Media’s founder and president Nick Denton to openly wonder: “Does this mean bloggers aren’t journalists? I guess we’ll find out.” Let’s make this perfectly clear: I don’t care how snarky the New York Times gets about Gawker/Gizmodo; they can use the word “blogger” over and over again until they are blue in the face, avoiding the word “journalist” like the plague, but the truth is that more people have read and will read Gizmodo this month than will buy a copy of the New York Times – two to three times as many people, actually. This isn’t some kid writing from his basement trying to be Harry Knowles. It is a paid writer, for a highly trafficked site that specializes in this type of news.
Where do I come into the picture? As a film writer, I am often sent or passed screeners, scripts and photos that have “PROPERTY OF ___ STUDIOS: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION” written on them. These are materials we bloggers find in our mailbox or doorstep, or get offered by strangers familiar with our work. Say, for example, I get wind that one of this summer’s biggest hit movies is available on a screener. Writing about it would make me the first. If that screener would fall into my possession – regardless of whether it was stolen internally or left accidently at a Starbucks – Apple/San Mateo are de facto arguing that it is legal for the authorities to enter my house, detain me and seize my computer simply to, in this particular case, determine whether or not a law has actually been broken. That’s what makes this so scary – no one’s quite sure if they’ll even press charges because the law we’re dealing with is so murky and arbitrary.
But the law surrounding San Mateo’s actions is crystal clear. Their only defense against both legal and civil punitive repercussions is to argue that Gizmodo does not constitute journalism, and thus the officers were justifiable in violating the shield laws, because Gizmodo wasn’t covered by them. And that leads to the entire online writing world being thrown into flux. Are powerful corporations and print publications the only entities afforded such protections? Can I really be detained, searched and have my equipment seized for possessing property that I willingly return when asked by the owner (as in the case of Gizmodo’s iPhone)? Don’t let the issue of money changing hands confuse you here. The law in question doesn’t have anything to do with money; it has to do with questioning whether or not the finder made adequate attempts to return it before getting rid of it.
This story isn’t just about a lost phone anymore. It’s about how you get your news and who is able to provide it to you.
