The Adventure of My Defunct Hard Drive: Apple Wants Your Money or Your Life [View all]

[HiPointDem]

In the everyday game between man and corporation, it is taken for granted that the house always prevails. Apple’s winning streak hit a snag last week however, when I won an exception to the company’s policy governing the replacement of warrantied hard drives.

My laptop stopped working late at night Friday... I took it the next morning to a local specialist. The man behind the counter said the data was almost certainly lost, but that the drive could be swapped for a new one for no charge. On Tuesday it was confirmed that the data was gone. My only option for the wrecked drive, the specialist told me over the phone, was to send it to a company called Data Savers. For between $750 and $2,500, a man in a moon suit would sit in a sealed room and use lasers to lift whatever information he could directly from the disk. Even then, recovery wasn’t guaranteed. I couldn’t afford it, I told her, but I may have a friend who can help me privately, so I would take the drive to him instead. Impossible, the specialist responded. “Apple requires that we return all replaced drives directly to the manufacturer,” she said. Once there, my precious disk would be destroyed. I could keep it only if I paid $300 — a full $100 more than it would cost simply to buy a new drive.

This was problematic for two reasons. First, if the original item — which I already paid for — was worthless to the company, why couldn’t I keep it? Second, defunct as it was, the drive contained information that was my property, not the manufacturer’s, and some of the data pertained to sources I’d spoken to in the course of reporting and whom I’d guaranteed confidentiality. How could I keep my promise if their information was in the hands of a corporation and still theoretically retrievable? I had to reclaim it.

The specialist agreed to hold the disk until the end of the day. I thanked her. Then I called Apple customer service.... he could do nothing. “That’s just the policy,” he said. Plus, he had no authority over the manufacturer. He advised me to make backup copies of my data next time. Frustrated by the impudence of this advice, I said what seemed to be the magic words:

“I’m a journalist. In addition to containing months of irreplaceable work, the drive your company is repossessing holds sensitive information that would reveal the names of a number of confidential sources,” I said. “Those people expect their identities to remain private. Additionally, it contains personal property of mine that I’d like to remain private. These circumstances raise a number of legal liability questions involving Apple, the manufacturer, the specialist, my publisher and me. I’m happy to hear the drive would be destroyed, but I make my living being skeptical of such claims, and I couldn’t in good conscience make an exception here.”

Good news arrived thirty minutes later.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/29/apple-wants-your-money-or-your-life/