In case you live under a rock, a short recap of “the lost iPhone” saga.

6 months ago Gawker Media admitted that it paid $5,000 to get their hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo. Seller of the device told the editors of Gizmodo and other technology blogs that he “found” it unattended in a bar.

I’m not trying to debate if buying a lost or stolen phone is legal or not. This is for the big guys. My opinion on the subject is that as long as Gizmodo did not pay to get the phone stolen in the first place, it sounds legitimate to publish the info (although I think it’s wrong). In comparison Techcrunch did post stolen Twitter documents aka Twittergate [documents stolen from Twitter’s servers- not lost, or found. Stolen…and the thief is actually behind bars in France for hacking.] and I was shocked. Maybe my expectations for TechCrunch ethics are higher than for Gizmodo.

There was a before April 2010 and an after. Gizmodo was the underdog gadget blog, TechCrunch the REAL valley mag (no reference to Valleywag – a Gawker zine) and Mashable the gossip tech people magazine.

What happened next? Gizmodo boomed with 4M unique (up to 5M in April, more than TechCrunch and Mashable altogether).

Gizmodo got more publicity for this stunt then any PR could dream of.

Mainstream media started leaking the info on national networks and traffic picked up almost instantly.

Oddly they didn’t ‘take’ any customers readers from their competitors; on the contrary they brought nearly 3 Million fresh souls into the game.

Was it worth it? Hell yeah. And for everyone! Do I approve? No, but I’ve proven wrong many times.

Now that 6 months have passed I see no downside for Gizmodo.

Apple screwed this one up pretty badly. Losing a prototype in a bar was epic. Denying and covering up the mess was like pouring oil on fire. Finally sending the Feds after Gizmodo made Jason Chen look like Robin Hood and Steve Jobs an arrogant little rich kid going after his lost toy. Last but not least, Gizmodo is banned to any Apple event. No biggie there.

Don’t they have teams full of damage control experts in Cupertino? PR moguls?

Apple is a marketing raw model for tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Where did it go wrong? Why such a drama?

A simple “Yes this is one prototype of a phone we might or might not decide to launch. It’s just that – a prototype. We would appreciate a prompt return of the device in our lab.” would have sufficed to kill the story.

Was the all thing staged to get more publicity?

Obviously a phone was lost and Apple’s execs were all over the case. But Jobs is smart enough to make the best of any given situation- so yes, it’s possible that they played it all along to get more coverage for the launch of the iPhone 4.

Arrington said he would have not paid for the phone. Not so sure he’d say that again today.

TechCrunch is by far my favorite source of information. I can’t read Gizmodo – too inquireresq- and Mashable is full of buttons and boxes which makes the content completely unattractive.

I’m glad Mike sold TechCrunch to AOL. Hope they make good use of his baby.

So, do you think it’s legit to pay for exclusivity?

Yesterday a debate started on Twitter after I shared an article taken from Yahoo! Finance and posted in extenso on my Posterous page.

For those – like Charles Arthur- who do not know the way Posterous works, here is a small tutorial.

You surf the web – find an interesting post and want to SHARE it.

Then once you press the Share on Posterous button you have :

Et voila – content is shared and all credits are given to the original source here:

Basically Posterous sharing ie Digg, Techmeme, Google Reader is identical as a ReTweet of valuable content.

Now back to yesterday’s incident.

I shared the following: http://florianseroussi.posterous.com/ten-big-companies-that-are-veering-toward-ban reproducing EXACTLY what was posted on Yahoo! Finance page. Exactly. Giving credit to Yahoo! and Business Insider as per the original post.

You will note that Yahoo! has a generic link to Business Insider but not to the original BI article.

Charles Arthur then asked why didn’t I link the original Business Insider post. Tried to explain how I used Posterous add-on to share content but Charles didn’t know anything about Posterous.

Mike Butcher – Techcrunch UK editor- jumped on the bandwagon without checking the facts thinking I simply reproduced a paid content without giving any credits. Once Mike understood his mistake he blamed me for not finding the original post and manually adding a link to the Yahoo! re-post.  It was simply a ridiculous claim but I searched the internet, found the link and added it to my shared content credit to appease boiling journo blood. As someone mentioned to me via DM – Mike Butcher was much more eloquent to defend the right to publish stolen documents on Techcrunch aka Twittergate. Journalist bullshit duty I guess.

Charles Arthur lost the plot, comparing cars, free content, source code and who knows what all together. Within hours- Charles tone went from arrogant to sarcastic to insulting.

Ilicco Elias tried to minimize the incident but Guardian editor was not ready to give up so easily.

My buddy Paul Walsh came to the rescue with a fair statement:

Charles still on a roll threatens to sue me and foresees a class action against Posterous starting soon (ahem)…

At last in a final act of bravery Arthur decided to block me and called me stupid after I mentioned The Guardian.co.uk had lost over £24M.

Mr Arthur – as the tech editor of The Guardian who do not have a clue what Posterous is – you should have a much more humble attitude.

Journalists – your current business model is SINKING. You are dying slowly with 20^th century principles. Wake up! Look around. You do not have the monopole of information and sharing. We – your readers- have the ability to share, produce and rate content the same way you do. The only value added you can provide is by doing a better job – not by shutting us down.

Note: I didn’t want to go on the legal approach of copyright et al on this post. I’m not an attorney and IP laws (international laws should I say) are too complicated for a blog post. Yahoo! quickly replied to my email and stated they are not involved as no logo or Yahoo! material has been shared.

Hopefully Charles Arthur will use last pence of The Guardian to start a worldwide class action against Google and Posterous to prove his point and whatever the outcome shall be – we will burn in golden letters on The Guardian’s headstone : The Death Of Arrogance.

UPDATE Sept 24 : After an email exchange with Charles Arthur I have modified the Posterous post to an excerpt only – adding another link to Business Insider [there are now 2 links, one on header and one on footer]. It would be interesting to know the conversation rate between hits on my Posterous to links onto BI but my guess is we will never know.