Slashdot Mirror
Apple Claims Ownership of Shareware
(54)T-Dub writes "Cricket Media recently released 'Netflix Fanatic', an OSX based shareware app that lets you manage your rental queue without logging on to Netflix. An article on Think Secret reveals the reason behind it's mysterious disappearance. Apparently the developer's employer, Apple, has claimed ownership over the application's name and source code. The developer claims that under Section 2870 of the California Labor Code this is illegal. The law states that if a company has an employment agreement with provisions saying employees must assign the rights of their inventions to their employer, those sections do not apply if the employee developed it on his or her own time, without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information. Within Apple, there's unsubstantiated speculation that Apple wants to include the Netflix Fanatic code in a new version of Sherlock." Also, they're presumably not too worried with employee morale.
Besides, I don't think they said "Please?"
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Yet another slashdot story filled with rampant speculation and innuendo.
So, let's all rant and rave for 500 messages. Then, in 3 days, the real story will come out and be the complete opposite. And it won't ever be mentioned again on slashdot.
Knee-jerk-pot-smoking hippies! The whole bunch of you!
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
How did Apple find out that one of their employer's had created this?
Did he run around Apple HQ boasting about it? Seems a pretty dumb thing to do, these kinda of clauses (where employers maintain rights to your creations) seem pretty common.
Why didn't he release it under an alias?
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
...until there are a flood of posters who mistakenly assume that the headline refers to Apple trying to claim ownership of the shareware concept? Perhaps "Apple Claims Ownership of Netflix" would have been better.
Does anyone know of any simular such laws outside of california?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe Steve Jobs order a lot of DVD's online... He needs to streamline the ordering process.
I hate to say it, but that's how it works. Companies do this all the time and I'm sure apple will make it right.
Let's take the Stickies application written by Jens Alfke for example:
You can read the whole story about how Jens wrote the stickies program as an Apple employee and had it claimed as Apple's while they made sure it was dealt with at the same time here.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
...Am shocked that a corporation would dare do such a thing.
Now, what's the article about again?
This space for rent.
I felt like I was being a little paranoid when I demanded that my last contract - which stated that my "full productive capacity" belonged to my employer - be modified to make it clear that work I did on my time was my own.
Heh. I'll never silly about making such demands again.
Read your contracts, folks. Point out absurdities ("all your thoughts are belong to us") and refuse to sign until they're fixed. If they say "well, we don't mean that..." - get it in writing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This was discussed a while ago on MacSlash. The author directly wrote in apparently.
Here's the link: Employer Grabs Netflix Fanatic Software From Creator
And I'll say it again:
.... to the employer's business.
:(
Section 2870 does *NOT* protect you if you're a software developer. Check out sub section 1. It includes an exemption for the company if your invention relates at the time of conception
The company's case against you is pretty straighforward: "We're in the business of making and selling software. Your invention is software. Hand it over."
And they don't even have to pat you on the head for writing it.
I hope homeboy has more luck trying to exert his rights under the CLC than other people who've fallen for it have had.
You mean, Apple has pulled back software after it has been released to the Internet? That's rich! Did that work for the DeCSS code? Or the Adobe eBook decrypter?
The one foolproof way of ensuring a particular bit of information is forever available on the net is to declare it illegal...
Expect the source code to show up any minute now...
Because the boilerplate agreements that employees sign these days almost always have something in them to that effect. It's evil; it's also, in most cases, a condition of getting (or keeping) a job, and with the tech economy the way it is, most programmers will sign away the rights to their firstborn if it means getting paid enough.
... Does it suck? Hell yeah. Is there anything I can do about it? Not if I want a job and a degree.
I have to worry about this kind of thing all the time. I work in biotech, and am a grad student in comp. bio.; although the applications I develop for school are in a somewhat different field than those I develop for work, it's conceivable that my employer could lay claim to some of my academic work -- and, of course, that my school could lay claim to just about anything I do. By and large, I trust both my boss and my professors, but
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Sherlock never really impressed me- until I tried the latest version; they've included a fair bit of stuff, and at least at work and at home on cable, it's pretty zippy compared to getting the same info via the web. The dictionary search has been pretty handy.
What amazes me is the near vacuum of useful sherlock modules- there's a website here or there that has maybe a dozen or two, of which only a few are actually interesting. There's a fedex module, but no UPS module.
What is MUCH worse is the distribution model for sherlock modules- you don't actually get the module, you get a LINK to the module, and if that website goes down, the module essentially stops working after a while even if you've added it to Sherlock; it only caches them, doesn't download them(which is why it takes a while to access a module if you haven't used sherlock in a while). Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID! Not only is it unreliable and a waste of bandwidth, but it has great exploit potential- breaking into one account and an author's module could deliver all sorts of goodies right to an attacker's doorstep, and nobody would be the wiser. Not to mention, maybe Fedex decides they don't like Joe Blo's module and DMCA him- everyone looses their Fedex module.
Please help metamoderate.
From a legal point of view, that is. Section 2870 disallows claiming of rights over software written entirely in the employee's own time
Surely this is covered by the first of those provisions - and possibly the second, depending on what the guy's job at Apple is...++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Anyone else click this article thinking Apple was claiming a patent on shareware? Maybe I've been reading /. too long. Maybe I'm still not used to the editors deliberately allowing sensational headlines.
Nosce te Ipsum
Hell...I had one company offer me a job with the conditions that 1) anything I code, at any time, belongs to them, 2) any ideas I have, at any time, belongs to them, 3) in the event the I leave the company, I would not work in any field that competes with them for at least 2 years. The theory behind the "any time" clause was that I *might* be influenced by my work and create something using that influence, therefore it was in their best interest to claim everything. The non-competition clause is standard, but if I had taken the job then I wouldn't have been able to take any programming job for 2 years considering their software *could possibly* be used in many fields. The entire contract was written to make sure they owned you. Someone could fight a lot of it in court, but considering you wouldn't have a job it would be hard to pay for a lawyer. I pity the poor bastards that work at that place...the entire thing was family-owned and run, and they worked 12 hour days. And they expected you to keep up with them when needed, which was pretty much all the time. Some jobs just aren't worth taking, no matter how desparate you are.
Apple develop software for Windows too.
If this guy was designing racing cars as a profitable sideline, I think he'd probably have a case, but as he seems to be designing useful utilities for MacOSX, he's just putting in overtime as far as Apple is concerned. Apple should give him a bonus and then take the software as stipulated in their contract.
People who don't read the small print are the bane of modern life.
That was classic intercourse!
By reading this posting, you implicitly agree that all code you have written in the past, are writing now and in the future belongs to me. I would appreciate it if you just zipped up all your code and sent it along. Thanks.
Does anyone else find this funny since Apple basically got started because HP waivered their right to Woz's personal computer idea.
It's interesting how many people I see 'soft pedaling' this because it's Apple Computer doing it.
If this was Microsoft doing this, there would already by 700 comments and the Slashdot site would be bogged down and unresponsive because of the fury.
This is dangerous stuff, folks. If this is a precedent, then all the employers of people who have contributed to the Linux kernal, and to various GPL's and BSD licensed products can step forward and claim their chunk of code, too.
It's dismaying that so many 'Apple Loyalists' have joined in on the Slashdot 'Anything Microsoft Does is Eeeevile but any other company is okay' choir. We don't need a 'new master, same as the old master' ascending to power, but some here seem to think it would be okay.
A Good Intro to NetBS
OverlyBroadIntellectualPropertyAgreements discusses exactly this sort of problem.
The "Fine Arts Waiver" described on the page is definitely something I will not work without. With some companies it's just a matter of asking for it.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
People who don't read the small print are the bane of modern life.
People who WRITE small print are the bane of modern life. People who are victimized by it are just lemmings going over the cliff.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Apple 'brutally crushed' Apple clones going way back into the Apple II days. There were a number of Apple II clones, all run out of business by the Apple legal team.
Also note the Apple Look-n-feel lawsuit. If Apple had won that one, Microsoft wouldn't have been allowed to produce Windows, nor would the X Window System be allowed to exist without paying heavy royalties to Apple. Apple essentially claimed they owned the GUI and claimed it in it's entirety as their own. It's ironic that Microsoft's legal dollars paid for the right for us all to use common GUI elements that otherwise would be Apple Computer property.
There is a LONG history of Free Software folks being strongly against Apple during the look-n-feel suit that seems to have been airbrushed away in recent years.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Ironic that the initial formation of Apple was initially threatened because Woz was working for HP when he invented the Apple I! A supervisor at HP inspected the Apple I and deemed it insignificant enough as to not be a threat...
My employment contract says that everything I write either at work or at home technically belongs to my employer. I can understand that to some extent. While working at an employer you are learning. Can you guarantee that anything you write has not benefitted from knowledge gained while working for you current employer. So such clauses are covering this benefit.
I don't know about the application in question but if there's the possibility it could not have been written by someone other than an employee of Apple even though the author did not use Apple tools or time then Apple does have some rights over it.
It strikes me the guy should have checked his rights first. I discussed this when I joined my company and was told that provided I haven't written anything which is simliar to, or competes with, company products then I should still get approval for open source releases and the like but they would probably be let through on the nod.
Let's say instead of a shareware app (which sounds pretty useful to me) the guy wrote a destructive email worm that only works on Mac platorms. He writes this on his own time on his own equipment in another country, then releases it to tear up a bunch of marketing companies (who have a high saturation of Mac platforms).
He "owns" that code (and maybe some computers too).
Did he commit the crime? Or did Apple Corp. commit the crime? After all, they own his ass and everything he does or creates, they have the right to financially exploit his artwork, code, writings or anything else. That means he should not get in trouble and Apple Corp. should.
Sorry, but no company owns anything not directly related to the job without prior written contractual agreement (and additional financial compenstation). Anything less is slavery, and as my example above should prove it's also obsurd.
Apple is a big company, so I suppose they have their fair share of clueless lawyers and PHBs so moronic attempts to trample on people's individual rights can be expected.
That doesn't mean they are any less a bunch of assholes for the attempt though. The assholes.
As an employee at a swedish university, I appreciate the swedish laws on the subject:
I own the copyright on everything, even the stuff I do at work.
I even own the patent rights if I invent anything, even if I did it within a government funded university project.
(If you receive private funding, you probably have a contractual agreement waiving some or all of your patent rights, though)
How about that?
What functionality? They fixed a bug that people were exploiting and was never emant to be a feature.
What hesitation? They never said they weren't going to update it. I fact, there very first announcement on the matter was to confirm that they were after people had leapt to the wrong conclusion.
A computer that's 5 or 6 years old and likely has hardware that isn't really up to the job any more. I'm curious, does Windows XP run on a PII?
That's a rather misleading way of putting it as it suggests that Apple's problem is with OSS, when the truth is very different.
And if you read the law BEYOND the part that was quoted, you'll see that the mandatory exclusion of transfer of rights DOESN'T cover this situation.
This work would appear to "relate at the time [...] to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer". Apple does consumer multi-media software apps for their own platform. An app to "manage rented media queues" would seem to most reasonable people to be clearly "related" to that business.
The inventor can protest all he wants that it was done on his own time with his own tools and it doesn't matter. Unless he can convince a judge or jury otherwise, 2870. (a) 1 says that 2870. (a) doesn't apply. So his contract to assign his inventions to Apple is valid.
Apple's view is that they already PAID him for this program. If they let him give it away when they could be selling it (or sitting on it for their own business reasons), they're not just letting him take something that they paid him for. They're also jepoardizing their ownership of EVERYTHING ELSE they paid their employees to do. So why are they paying all these people all this money?
Sounds to me like the situation is this:
1) Guy builds a neat software app and, misunderstanding the situation or thinking that Apple is not interested, thinks it's allright to release and/or sell it on his own.
2) Apple says "Wait a minute! We paid you to give stuff like that to US!"
3) Guy says "Oops! You're right!" and pulls the app.
4) Media finds this out and mentions it.
5) Slashdot reader doesn't recognize that the exception in 2870 (a) 1 applies, so he thinks that it's an assault on open source and composes a post saying so.
6) Slashdot editor posts the new item essentially verbatim.
and the flap is on.
2870. is the engine of California's hi-tek booms. By letting inventors keep and develop inventions that are outside their employers' interests and non-competing, it promotes an explosion of inventiveness and startups. But it falls short of giving workers the right to develop potentially competing works that their employer didn't explicitly assign them to create or doesn't wish to pursue at the moment, and didn't give them PERMISSION to take back. Some would even argue that this is deliberate, a necesary provision to avoid killing the succeeding generations of geese just as they start laying the golden eggs.
So let's not misconstrue the law. If the developer decides to press his claim and can show in court that the exception applies, it's his. If he doesn't or can't, it's Apple's. And if you don't like it, get the law changed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...well, someone had better kill it before it collapses the fragile idea that is this universe into a singularity of nothingness.
--- Ban humanity.
So let's ask some simple questions.
If Apple can't demonstrate either of these things, it's hard to argue that they already paid him for the work, in which case the guy appears to have a legitimate grievance.
Legally speaking, the phrase "the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer" seems to place the burden of proof firmly on Apple: they have to show that they were doing, or definitely going to do, something along the same lines.
At this point, it's up to the legal system to interpret the relevant law given the specifics of the case. Of course, whether one man can hope to fight a legion of Apple lawyers within the current legal climate of the US is a different question, but the theory is sound.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, well, that's why we want fair competition between all of the computer OS and system manufacturers, and not just one company strong-arming the rest. When there are a number of players, then if one of them tries to strong-arm the rest, the rest squash them.
People didn't like IBM in the past because they were the dominant player and the rest of the industry couldn't stop them if IBM tried strong-arm tactics. In the mainframe biz this is still true, but now there are alternatives to mainframes (PC farms). People don't like Microsoft now because they are so powerful that they can strong-arm basically at will. Linux is changing that.
Most corporations do some good things and some bad things. Very few are basically evil. And a few are basically good.
Apple is like any other corporation. Not all corporations are evil faceless satans. I realize that to a great many people that what I have just said here is heretical...
Except that I spoke to the shareware author for this app back when this started weeks ago (before Slashdot picked this up, before the Netflix Fanatic website got recently altered to omit mention of the specific laws), and the author never said, "Oops! You're right!" He pulled the application pending negotiations with his employer's legal department. At the time, I had no idea this guy was working for Apple.
Paraphrasing from the private e-mail that Cricket (the shareware app's author) gave me, he said his employer was making their claims based on 2870 (a) 1, but that this was a sham, and they had no interest other than in putting the application on a shelf and never doing anything with it. Therefore, they're in the wrong. Since the author can't afford to fight this for several reasons, justice will not prevail.