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Apple Defendants Interviewed
evands writes "There's an interview with Desicanuk, one of three named defendants in the Apple lawsuit alleging illegal distribution of a Tiger developer build, and Nessence, one of two administrators of MacTKA, the Mac BitTorrent tracker site where the build was initially posted, up at DrunkenBlog. The interview tells the whole story as a press release can not, from how Apple determined the kids to sue, to lawyers knocking on doors on Christmas Eve, and beyond. 'Collateral Damage' is a fascinating read which humanizes the whole messy situation."
here: http://www.ramdac.org/article/id/256.html I remember 3 weeks ago when Nessence told me Apple called him on his cell, that this would get nasty. He sent me the legal documents Apple had sent before he came over last night to talk about it.
I don't want to get accused of shooting the messenger here, but it's worth noting that the author of "Drunken Blog" has, in the recent past, been caught posting lengthy tracts of stuff that just isn't true.
He wrote a lengthy rant about interface scalability in Mac OS X, bemoaning the fact that Tiger doesn't do Thing X that he thinks is really incredibly important, and explaining why everybody at Apple who disagrees with him is obviously an idiot.
Then along came the commenters who, probably by bending their NDAs, explained to him that Tiger does, in fact, do X, and that the author doesn't have the first idea what he's talking about.
Is this relevant to the subject at hand? Almost certainly not. But I'm a big believer in context, so I felt like maybe somebody would appreciate it if I shared what I knew of it.
Why are you posting when you don't know what you're talking about? You don't have to work for apple to get a seed key. Everybody can get these previews if they pay $500. So the whole "trade secret" thing is just BS, if you ask me.
yeah, but when you're a legal-naive med student, being told "if you co-operate we're pretty generous" is a good way to get people talking. I hope it gets chucked out, but I suspect it won't.
Anyway, there's another big lesson to be learned here - for the love of god, BT servers, disable logging. If you have logs enabled then you're only helping out anyone who might sue you.
-- james
a junior in college pre med who doesn't mind going to school full time from the ages of 4 to 30. That sounds about right including residency et al. That would make the guy about 20-21 years old.
I'm wondering -- does this have anything to do with the screenshots of Tiger that were released on Macrumors a few months back? Some of you may remember this; I think Slashdot even ran a story about it (although unfortunately I can't find it at the moment).
What happened was this: Someone sent what they claimed to be Tiger screenshots to Macrumors.com. However, the article said "courtesy of Gary Niger from GNAA" or some such, so everyone assumed they were fake. But then they turned out to be real. The GNAA has been bragging ever since.
I guess what I'm really wondering is, are the defendants in this case GNAA members who got caught obtaining and posting these screenshots? Or is this something else, completely unrelated?
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For $500 per year anyone who agrees to follow Apple's ADC NDA agreement has access to 5 "Software Seed Keys". Anyone can join can and obtain an ADC account for free and what are called "assets" can be passed to other ADC account holders in the same company. That way a company can have 5 developers directly downloading prerelease software with only 1 membership.
There are other, less secretive assets such as the right to buy a Mac system at a discount, albeit for development purposes and not for resale.
Apple also has much more tightly controlled seeds to key developers, these exist but the procedures and those who are involved are a tightly guarded secret. They used to be only distributed on physical media by private carrier.
The lawsuit involved the regular seeded software only, not the uber-secret stuff. To my knowledge that has rarely, if ever, made it into the wild.
The parent here is somewhat correct, but I feel like I should clarify:
The fifth amendment prohibition against compelled testimony only applies to criminal liability, and only applies to "persons."
If an elicited response in a civil case might tend to incriminate you in a criminal action, a witness can invoke the privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to answer that question. Remember, though, that if you waive the privilege, it is lost forever - so if you're not sure, SHUT YOUR MOUTH and find a way to consult with a lawyer. If you're at a loss for how to get an attorney, many state and local bar associations have lawyer referral services that are free to the public, usually with a free or cheap 30-minute interview or something.
In a civil case, just because a statement may tend to make you more liable for money damages in a civil action doesn't mean that you can make a blanket refusal to testify if called as a witness by the opposing party. To do so would not only nullify your defense and force the court to take your opponent's views at face value, but would also mean that individuals could escape liability in most cases by simply refusing to acknowledge it.
Also important is that civil liability has varying degrees of standards of proof, with ultimate responsibility generally relying on a preponderance of the evidence - both sides have an obligation to plead their cases, and the factfinder decides what "truth" is. Criminal liability, however, requires that the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The criminal defendant can remain silent and the burden for the prosecution remains unchanged.
However, even in a criminal case, you can't use the defendant's silence as both a sword and a shield; once the defendant has chosen to take the stand and testify, they can't choose to only answer questions that would tend to prove their innocence.
I know I went a little overboard, but I always see people confusing the fifth amendment privilege and thinking that they can apply it where they can't. Just wanted to clarify.
Well that one's just a lie.
English is easier said than done.
Not to mention the fact that when GCC 4 is released with Objective-C++ support (by the way, the Apple developers have been very helpful in modifying their GCC changes so that they can be incorporated into the main trunk) we are likely to see at least one GNUstep web browser based on webkit.
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This is completely irrelevant. In order to get the pre-release builds, we have to sign a legally-binding agreement that states, among other things, that we will not redistribute the seeds that we get. This has nothing to do with copyright, it has nothing to do with free publicity. This is about contract law, it is about people signing contracts, and entering into agreements that they have no intention of upholding.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
The Fifth Amendment 'can be asserted in any proceeding, civil or criminal, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory; and it protects against any disclosures which the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used.' Kastigar v. U.S., 406 U.S. 441, 44-45 ('72).
A reasonable belief that information concerning income or assets might be used to establish criminal failure to file a tax return can support a claim of Fifth Amendment privilege. See U.S. v. Rendahl, 746 F.2d 553, 55-56 (9th Cir.'84).
Apple shares the source for their open source derivatives, and even ported them to x86.
And as for this "bad publicity" thing of which you speak ...friend, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Except when that publicity is wrong, wrong, wrong. There's been a lot of misinformation spread about Tiger due to people using unfinished pre-release copies. And a *SHITTON* of speculation on release dates. Apple does not want people to expect Tiger to be ready before it's ready. They say 1H05, but all of the rumor sites say 1Q05 because leaked builds "look finished". If March passes and there's no Tiger, a lot of people are going to bitch and moan about how it's "late". Nevermind that Apple never said it'd be finished in March.
From TFA:
He got the seed through ADC - when he joined ADC, he was bound by its terms and conditions. Specifically:
I would say that the previous post was right on point.