Remember the first iPhone 4 controversey, before all this Antennagate stuff? Yes, the wonderful Gizmodo leak that subsequently resulted in police seizing property from Editor-in-Chief Jason Chen’s home in order to ascertain if the pre-release device they had paid for was obtained legally. What followed was a lot of resistance from Gizmodo and its parent company, Gawker, over journalist’s rights to protect sources, which ultimately resulted in the court dismissing the initial search warrant on Friday. Despite being off scot-free, Gizmodo has agreed to provide materials deemed relevant to the case by a court appointee, so they can find out if that early iPhone 4 was actually just forgotten in a bar or if it was stolen.
It’s pretty classy of Gizmodo to play ball in the courtroom, even though some considered their correspondence with Apple to be a little on the lackadaisical side. Brian Lam did say that they’d like to work more closely with Apple, so co-operating on the legal front may be their peace offering, although at this point something tells me it will be a good long while before Apple wants to do Gizmodo any favours.
[via WSJ]