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1996 Economic Espionage Act and DirectTV
Pharmboy writes "The Register reports a 19 year old will plead guilty to the
1996 Economic Espionage Act for giving away DirectTV secrets, even though they admit he did not pirate the service or profit from the theft." See our original story on this case.
Yes gentlemen
Thank you all for coming here today
The bidding for these DIRECTV SECRETS
Will begin at
ONE MILLION DOLLARS
MUAH HA HA HA
No, spice network is extra.
Who are y oo ?
And let's be clear -- this WAS an act of corporate espionage. He knowingly stole trade secrets from his work and posted them online. Put him in jail, and any hippies who think what he did was right, you can go join him.
So what he didn't profit or use the service, he still illegally obtained trade secrets and distributed them to those who would try and profit, or at least enabled those who are trying to steal service. Now he's caught and is being punished. The lesson learned here: Actions lead to Consequences.
Perhaps he should get some kind of special award from the industry. Like the RIAA Platinum IP Theft Award. "See- we're not paranoid! There really are criminals out there! We need all the protection we can get!"
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
He is no more innocent than someone who gets a bunch of people's cc#'s and makes them public. Just because he personally didn't financially benefit is totally beyond the point. Just because he did it against a "large faceless/heartless corp" and many "common folk just trying to exercise their god given right to watch ESPN" benefitted doesn't make it any more right.
It may or may not be true that information wants to be free, but it is definitely true that 19 year-old kids want to do stupid things.
Best Windows Freeware
It was in the form of a memo:
To: CEO of DirectTV
From: Quality Assurance Engineer
Re: Our service
CEO,
I regret to inform you that our product is inferior, and should not be purchased. I pray no one gets wind of this discovery.
~QA
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I'm all for this.
This case should not be confused with an independent person doing a "clean room" reverse engineering of the technology. This person was in a position of trust and violated that trust by stealing something that didn't belong to him.
It's irrelevant that he did not profit from this. The cost to DirecTV is the same whether he used the information himself or passed it on to someone else who did.
Why is this in YRO again? What rights online does this concern?
Impacts?
Giving away a hack to a TV box: Lost revenues for a satellite company.
Giving away high tech secrets: Future possibility of incoming with a payload carried by our own technology.
Which is really a worse outcome?
How can I blash Bush or Ashcroft for a bad law passed during Clinton's time as president?
.0001 percent of the population who are so smart that they don't have to worry about being fired. Sadly they've never had the chance to learn about compassion, or being human.
No no, back up. In Clinton's days these laws were a lot like marijuana statutes. They were very rarely enforced, and when they were it ammounted to a slap on the wrist.
Now that George W. Orwell and friends are in charge, these laws have been convoluted into a completely different picture. Now any kind of intellectual curiousity is treated like a "bad taillight" in which a cop can harrass you for being what you are. Intellectuals, the middle-class, and computer professionals are the last demographic republicans want to hear from.
The internet is a threat to any regime whose existence depends on the falsification of information. The funny thing is, so many Slashdotters here claim to be republican. They're either scared shitless over losing thier jobs, so they say "hiel hitler!" I don't need healthcare, I like working 70 hrs a week, I like living with my parents. Or they are the
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
So our junior genius is working with a client's tip-top-secret documents, 10,000-to-1 he's signed some heavy-duty non-disclosure agreement and knows his uncle's company could get fried if anything leaks, yet he decided to make a hobby out of sending copies of the documents to the whole world.
I'll agree that the law's a poor fit, and this young kid's whole life is toasted bad, but I feel sorry for him about like I feel sorry for the guy who tried pissin' on a 100,000 volt line knocked down in a storm.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
This was a law that was designed to prevent foreign companies from conducting espionage on American companies. Courts are supposed to (and generally do) take into account the intent of a law when they are overseeing a case. Stopping copyright infringement was not the intent of this law.
This was a case of *civil* law. Criminal law shouldn't be involved. He violated his employer's trust, which is a civil matter.
Do you know why they didn't pursue it in civil court? I would imagine that it is because they weren't damaged by his actions. (Because their system was good enough that people couldn't break it even with the information that he leaked.) They would therefore be unable to land a serious verdict, so they went the criminal way. And the US government went along with it, as it does.
I find it interesting that nearly every is coming out against this guy. While I whole heartedly agree that what he did was wrong, and that he should be punished, there seems to be a bit of a double standard.
Read any article on the RIAA cracking down on P2P services and you will get a much more mixed set of opinions.
Is this really that different from downloading music for which you have not paid? True, he 'stole' trade secrets, while MP3 are a product. However, either way, the issue is with the loss of income from the company.
Just something to consider...
(on a side note, I include myself in the 'double standard' group)
You see, that is the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Instead of whining about how many refrigerators a rich guy has, why don't you take some responsibility and try to better your situation? Everybody has plenty of opportunity for wealth- it just takes effort. Poor people are not poor because some rich person stepped all over them. In fact, thats the attitude that keeps them poor.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
I fully expected to read the article and find out that the kid had just cleverly reverse-engineered stuff as a hobby, making him a poor persecuted martyr. I really did.
But, that perception was WRONG. This kid had access to sensitive trade secrets. I see absolutely nothing defensible that he did. I would love if someone would explain to me how it should be perfectly OK to steal trade secrets and publish them. I suggest starting with the always persuasive "patents, copyrights, and secrets want to be FREE" argument.
So I'm waiting for the "misuse" argument. To me, the fact that they only went after a kid who really is a thief gives them credibility.
Honestly, I would love to hear from someone who actually read the article and feels otherwise.
This has nothing to do with violating freedom or any other right we supposedly have under the constitution.
he used his position within DirecTV to gain access to secret, confidential information, and leaked it to someone. What that someone did, or whether or not he benfitted is immaterial. He violated NDA from DirecTV, and violated that law.
Just like if someone posted a source code module from Windows 2003, the secret recipie of Mickey D's Secret Sauce, or anything else confidential.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.