John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Will the Gizmodo-iPhone 4 Caper Be the Lisa of Legal Vendettas?

The San Mateo County district attorney’s decision not to bring charges against Gizmodo or its parent company Gawker Media in the iPhone 4 prototype caper has left Apple in awkward position. As you may recall, Steve Jobs made it quite clear in an onstage interview at our eighth D: All Things Digital conference in 2010 that he wanted to punish the publication.

“When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people who said, ‘You’ve got to just let it slide,'” Jobs said. “‘You shouldn’t go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and they tried to extort you.’ And I thought deeply about this, and I concluded the worst thing that could happen, as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world, is if we change our core values and let it slide. I can’t do that. I’d rather quit.”

Well, Jobs is still CEO, even though the DA has now let Gizmodo off the hook.

So — as Jobs said he wanted to — will Apple go after the online media site with a civil suit? Or is the company too busy with other legal matters to bother?

Below, video of Jobs talking at D8 about the Gizmodo situation, in full:

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.

— Gabe Newell, co-founder of videogame company Valve, which publishes Portal and Half-Life