Why is Apple sicking the police on Gizmodo? I thought we lived in a capitalist society... oh wait, we DO...

By now you've heard of Apple's "4G" iPhone being lost and sold to gadget blog Gizmodo.  In the beginning, I was thinking "Good for the lucky guy who found that phone and good for Gizmodo for doing what it takes to get the story!"

This is a capitalist society, right? If we're going to banks and businesses worry more about their bottom line than keeping the system afloat--it's perfectly reasonable to let Gizmodo and some lucky dude get all Cash-ist over this iPhone story, right? Sure, there's a law on the books, but this is about MONEY.  Money clearly trumps the law in an insane amount of ways these days.

So, naturally, I thought it was pretty lame for Apple to turn around and use the police to go after these guys that are just doing their part as supporters of this corruptionist system we live in today.  How unfair of Apple to BUY the police like that.

Then it hit me.

Apple's huge now.  They can afford to effectively "buy" the police or do what ever they want, really.  Newsweek's Daniel Lyons claims "it’s a PR disaster" for Apple.  But I think it's anything but.  Did various monopoly-related court cases against Microsoft ruin their business? Of course not.  This single example of Apple being dickish won't harm Apple, either.

Too bad, since it provides more evidence that we no longer live in a democracy.  We're not going to stop buying Apple products because they are the best.  Thus, we have no way to stop them from behaving badly. We can't change the laws because our politicians defend the corporations rights over ours (We The People don't have lobbyists).

So, not only can Apple easily survive something like this, but they can effectively order the police to enforce the law when the police, frankly, have better things to do than be dickish on behalf of some megacorporation.

I mean, seriously, what does enforcing the law in this case do?  Discourage other people from selling smartphone prototypes they find in California bars??

And so, I give Apple an EFFYOU from EFFYOU.org. :)

Still, damn scary to think how the cops will jump through hoops to protect the property of some giant corp. I had three car stereos stolen and the police did nothing.

But Apple loses one phone and the cops SWOOP IN!

Posted via web from thepete's posterous