NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] "Should Apple Sue Gawker Over iPhone Leak Story?"
"Should Apple Sue Gawker Over iPhone Leak Story?" http://bit.ly/cZUVvX (Huffington / DailyFinance) An interesting technical aspect of the link above is the variations on the story headline. I purposely left in the Huffington "index story" instead of linking directly to the meat to help demonstrate this. Huffington headlines as "Should Apple Sue Gawker Over iPhone Leak Story?" and the page TITLE matches this (remember, page titles can hold considerable weight in search engine rankings). When you click over to the actual DailyFinance article, they headline as "Why Apple *Should* Sue Gawker Over 'Lost' iPhone Story" [my emphasis] -- a recommendation that the story itself never makes. Meanwhile, the TITLE this time is "Why Apple *Could* Sue Gawker Over 'Lost' iPhone Story [again, my emphasis]. Maybe it's not a big deal, but this all seems like sloppy editorial work to me (keeping in mind that reporters in many situations rarely get to choose their own headlines). Oh, to answer the questions: 1) Yes, Apple could sue. That's a given. Could they win? Maybe. 2) Should Apple sue? No. There's little to gain at this point other than the perception of playing bully over an employee error, irrespective of the legal fine points. If Gawker had bribed an Apple employee to turn over his or her iPhone "prototype" that would be a different situation. That's not what happened, though. Unsolicited Recommendation: If Jobs is as smart as he's supposed to be, he'll hold back his famous temper and refrain from crucifying the poor kid who lost the phone. While devices need field testing of course, and dogfooding can be a highly useful step in development, once the decision was made to allow the carrying of such a device by an employee the understanding that it could be lost would seem implicit. Give the kid a break. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator