From the LA Times:

The San Mateo district attorney’s office has opted not to charge Gizmodo and writer Jason Chen for buying an iPhone prototype from a man who found it in a bar last year, months before the device was made public.

What the fuck?

Chen and Gizmodo’s decision to pay $5,000 for the lost iPhone was “not motivated by financial greed,” said Morley Pitt, San Mateo County’s assistant district attorney. “His claim was that he was undertaking a journalistic investigation.”

What the fuck?

Yeah, sure Gizmodo was all about the journalism when buying stolen property. It was in the public interest to buy stolen property and report on it, because the world would have been DOOMED without that particular story. It had NOTHING to do with financial motivations, such as the fuck-ton of page hits Gizmodo got from reporting on the stolen device, and yet, brilliantly, still missing a ton of the new things Apple had added to the device, rather suggesting the ‘investigation’ part of ‘journalistic investigation’ was a bit rubbish.

Still, hey, all US journos: be happy! Precedent has now been set, and it’s absolutely fine to buy stolen property and perhaps even try to blackmail the owner, as long as you write an article about it! PHEW! *headdesk*