Slashdot Mirror
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."
Maybe it's time to look at OS marketshare to see how the different strategies work out.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Releasing a Tiger into the wild is never a good idea, even if you're an experienced Safari user.
What an idiot. This interview will become evidence against him.
When charged with a criminal or civil offense:
1. remain silent;
2. talk to an attorney;
3. if case unresolved, goto 1
Of course in the United States you do not have the right to an attorney if charged with a civil offense.
You also do not have the right to be silent at trial, unless your statement may tend to incriminate you.
Note that in the above program, there is no "grandstand / justify / brag to a blogger" statement.
"Some companies view a buggy leak as an opportunity to generate free buzz about the final product. Some view it as an opportunity to use the legal system to bludgeon extreme enthusiasts that have allegedly crossed the line."
And maybe some have so little respect for others that they'll violate the rules at every turn. Would it really have killed the Mac community to wait?
The guy lied, violated his NDA and posted valuable copyrighted material which he did not own to a public site. Let him twist in the wind.
When I mentioned it to a few people in various IRC chat rooms, they had asked if they could get a copy too. I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn't a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.
And then he's surprised when it escapes out in the wild. Don't they teach kids the safe sex warnings anymore? You're not just sharing with all your friends, you're sharing with all their friends too.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
This is like people who share music. Isn't it amazing to be in a business where people want your product so much they risk going to jail to get it?
When asked why he leaked the build, he replies "I assumed it wouldn't be a big deal if I shared this with like minded mac fans"...rather a weak defence, because it's kind of like saying "I didn't think it would matter if I uploaded this film / mp3 before the release date as long as I only shared it with fans of said film/music"... ...although he doesn't mention it in the article, I'm sure at least a very small part of it was to do with his ego - "I have 10.4, I'm special" etc. etc. I'm not saying that was his primary reason, but it must have contributed.
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.
He's chosen the moral high road of owning up to his mistake, and for that I have to commend him. What I can't say is whether Apple will consider their actions in that light. Given that the lawyers are already involved...
Maybe he could just personally and publicly apologize to Steve Jobs, and both sides can drop the matter.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Whence came this sense of entitlement?
You can't release those to people outside the company. He should be the one targetted in this suit, not some poor college student. He should face disciplinary action (and hopefully fired!). Keeping this guy around will just mean it will happen again! He has no problems handing out seed-keys, as mentioned in the article.
Apple really should fire the dev.
Well, for all we know, maybe they already have. But really, this case is like breaking the bottle after the Genie has left 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.
First: Don't "assume it is OK to (insert stupid action here)" ASSUME? Didn't you READ anything Apple states about being an ADC member, or in the READ ME, etc???
Second: As soon as you catch wind that somebody, anybody is making legal noises concerning you, RUN DON'T WALK TO OBTAIN LEGAL COUNSEL!!!
Finally: Don't frikkin blather on endlessly to some blogger, proving how FSCKING STUPID you really are. What a collection of idiots.
BTW: The first words out of an attorney's mouth would be essentially "STFU."
Yet another scientific theory proven correct.
This isn't, as the story states "a fascinating read which humanizes the whole messy situation" unless stupidity and ignorance are the true measure of "Humanity."
so he goes through all the trouble of finding out about ADC to get the seed, but as soon as the torrent is disabled by a mod, he "assumes" that the file is messed up and deletes it? sounds more like he deleted it because he got fearful in getting an indirect confirmation that leaking it was wrong...
It always amazes me how Apple gets treated on /.
/. crowd, that would tear any other company apart if it engaged in anything similar.
Let me play devils advocate here for a minute.
We have a company here that's suing 21 year old mac fans for participating in the illegal sharing of a beta build of their OS.
We have a company here that's extracting information from someone they are about to sue under false pretence.
We have a company here that's suing a side aimed at their fans because the site spreads some rumors about new products.
We have a company that refuses to use an open standard, or even simply to license their technology to other companies, in order to leverage the huge market share they have in one area to boost sales in an other area.
We have a company that is heavily promoting software patents and is heavily involved in fileing trivial software patents.
We have a company here that is taking open source technology for their new browser, but then refuse to give the changes they make back in a way that might be useful to the original open source developers.
And yet it seems, Apple is still loved by the
I think calling it copyright infringement is still a weaseling out by many people because somehow that suddenly makes it all OK.
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?
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
"steal." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2005. http://www.merriam-webster.com (8 Jan. 2005).
1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
2 : to come or go secretly, unobtrusively, gradually, or unexpectedly
3 : to steal or attempt to steal a base
transitive senses
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means c : to take surreptitiously or without permission d : to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share : make oneself the focus of
2 a : to move, convey, or introduce secretly : SMUGGLE b : to accomplish in a concealed or unobserved manner
3 a : to seize, gain, or win by trickery, skill, or daring b of a base runner : to reach (a base) safely solely by running and usually catching the opposing team off guard
Stealing is when you deprive someone of property
Sorry. I'm afraid I don't see anything resembling your definition. What the article describes does seem to fit definition 1.
Ya, he has an ego.
So do you, so do I, so do all of us.
there are those who think that ego death is a desirable thing. I think that is what is meant by some when they say that they are born again.
If he is a kid and made a mistake should his punishment be severe and hard-nosed?
Forgiveness is an important trait. My ego made me say that.
Try to live without an ego. You will have a hard time living in this world without one. When your ego dies a new one is born.
Calling it "stealing" is weaseling language used by people who want to make something relatively harmless seem like a serious crime worthy of serious punishment.
I hate to blow your mind, but it isn't.
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.
Whose property has been taken?
Apple's.
Are you claiming that information is property?
It can be.
On what basis do you make that claim?
"property." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2005. http://www.merriam-webster.com (8 Jan. 2005).
1 a : a quality or trait belonging and especially peculiar to an individual or thing b : an effect that an object has on another object or on the senses c : VIRTUE 3 d : an attribute common to all members of a class
2 a : something owned or possessed; specifically : a piece of real estate b : the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing : OWNERSHIP c : something to which a person or business has a legal title d : one (as a performer) under contract whose work is especially valuable
3 : an article or object used in a play or motion picture except painted scenery and costumes
In a criminal case, the prosecution has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt each of the elements of the criminal offense, which may include intent (mens rea), and various components of criminal acts (actus reus). In the U.S., the criminal defendant has a fundamental right to a jury trial (but can choose to waive that right).
In a civil case, the plaintiff is the master of her claim. If the plaintiff demands a jury trial on all issues, it's not like the defendant can waive the jury demand that the plaintiff has made. If all of the facts are agreed by both parties, and the facts as agreed constitute civil liability, the plaintiff will likely move for summary judgment - which basically tells the judge "look - we don't have to go to the jury, because according to these facts, we've satisfied our burden of proving that he did what we said he did, and nothing that the defendant could show would make any difference."
There is no jury nullification or "nice guy" exception or "oops, I didn't MEAN to do it" way out in strict liability.
Adding to my earlier post, because he could be liable for criminal copyright violations or possibly other criminal sanctions, he probably does have a fifth amendment privilege with respect to what he's done. He needs to get a competent lawyer.
i'm a member of the site, and have been for a while. it's interesting that apple didn't try to shut down the site at all. they merely wanted to make sure that tiger betas didn't appear on the site.
we have all their software well seeded with people downloading, and they didn't give a damn. it was just the prerelease software.
it seems apple doesn't care too much about piracy and "lost sales"- they just don't want people judging them by prerelease software and getting the wrong impression.
SO that's why I never get that second date ... damn
From the news page of the site in question:
In light of what has recently taken place, we are going to be making some major changes. We are first going to be migrating to and creating a new forum for all the users. The tracker will keep running but we will make some changes. We will disable the ability to integrate torrent information in the forum. However, we will also enable RSS accessibility. There will be other major changes - possibly even moving to a new tracker system. The system we have now is very functional but I'm certain you all can see some deliquencies which not only reside in our tracker but in just about any other tracker on the Internet. We have been working on most of these changes already but have decided to implement them sooner than anticipated.
Huuuuh? That's like saying "because it is snowing today, I will not wash my socks, but I will turn up the volume on the stereo". Am I missing something here?
I also love the general tone of "we're being good guys and complying with the developer's wishes!" What a bunch of shit- these people distribute pirated software, hello!
Please help metamoderate.
Here's a link to an article at Forbes that questions the wisdowm of suing your own fans:d _0107apple.html
http://forbes.com/home/technology/2005/01/07/cx_l
Game, set and match to the user "glrotate." Thank you, "Sanity" for providing a live demonstration of his point.
So running out on, say, a haircut, is ok then? After all, you haven't taken any of the barber's property. Also, there's nothing wrong with not paying medical bills, right?
Apples use of the code and further development is effectively a fork and has diverged from the original sufficiently enough for it to be hard work to include it into the original.
The khtml developers could include apples code if they wanted, but they'd have to unpick it, mangle it, etc to make it happen and it turns out that's too much work for them to do.
So you're saying that apple should be obliged to write their code twice now, once for the original project (khtml) and once for their fork (webcore) and release both at the same time ??
I call bullshit. If I fork your code to start my own project, I'm not obliged in any way to maintain your code after the fork.
Maybe it would not have turned out differently the following way, but at least you cost them more time and resources doing so:
Before I found out I was being sued, they(lawyers) called me up to let me know they were doing an investigation. To be perfectly honest, the individuals who contacted me were polite and respectful. When I asked them if they were suing me, they let me know that if I cooperate, that Apple has a history of being a generous company.
I answered all the questions they asked regarding how I got the torrent, how long I had seeded it for etc. I was honest and as helpful as I possibly could be.
Wrong. Lawyers are not your friend. Their job is to help prosecute you.
We were given 'Door #1': "If you don't co-operate we'll sue you". We replied and upon replying received 'Door #2': "We understand it's P2P, but if you don't co-operate we'll sue you" or 'Door #3': "We are all adults here, cooperate and we assure you we won't sue all your users but we can't tell you what might happen to the uploaders".
How about the front door? You don't have to answer anybody's questions for any reason. In order for you to "co-operate" they need 2 other things:
1. An officer of the law holding a warrant
2. Your lawyer present.
This is a classic case of citizens giving up thier rights guaranteed under the Constitution. Even the Canadian has rights on foreign American soil. These guys just gave up all those rights, did the Apple lawyers and police officers jobs for them, and now they are getting sued!
He says he didn't think it illegal to redistribute it?
Um... hello? Look at the channels you had to go through to get the software! Apple doesn't have a link to it on their home page for everyone to download!
And he's a frequent reader of Mac rumor sites... come on, those sites are always talking about people being sued for leaking software.
If his story is true, he needs to get out of college because he's too stupid to be a doctor.
The links seem to indicate that Apple is in fact returning changes back to the KDE folks, just not in the format they want. Many of the posts also allude to there not being sufficient resources in the KHTML group to keep up with Apple's changes. Well, that's really not Apple's fault - it looks like Apple is in fact upholding their end of the bargain. If this isn't a correct interpretation, could someone please clarify?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's still not stealing.
Not that I'm endorsing what he's done, but he's wasting a golden opportunity to turn this into a question of the validity of click-through licencing.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
So market share comparisons are dubious at best.
you had me at #!
Well you are stealing some of the barbers time and effort he expended cutting your hair, but you are also giving the barber some of your property in the form of excess hair. It depends on whether the barber thinks value of your excess hair he now posesses is worth the time he spent cutting it off your head.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
It seems that they are upholding their end of the bargain in a way not in the spirit of Open Source ideologies. They are releasing their sources without useable patches or documentation merely because they are obliged to by terms of the GPL. They are fulfilling their legal obligations and nothing more.
/. has certainly bought it, but it seems to me Apple is in fact doing as little as they legally can to help the open source community. If they were able to make OS X with their own code, open source would never have crossed their minds.
The fact is, if Apple had the time, they would have much rather made their own code. They tried to make their own OS core a couple times but failed. And in the mean time MS was gaining ground in terms of OS quality. If Apple had to wait a couple years after the release of XP to release their next operating system, they'd have lost one of their major selling points, that Mac OS's are better and easier to use than Windows. So they bought NeXTSTEP which happened to use open source (but also proven and reliable) code. Since then they've had an obligation to the Open Source community.
Apple certainly seems to be milking this fact in the PR department, and
All he did was sign up for a free ADC account and he got tiger?
No. A paying member of the ADC programme sent him a copy (well, actually sent him a key that allowed him to download it) in violation of that members ADC agreement.
Are paid ADC members allowed to give out a key to other ADC members?
ADC members are not allowed to give out download keys to anyone other than others in the same organization (which probably means "same employer" - I suspect that being a member of the "Apple Warez Kollektive" wouldn't apply...).
Two people violated contracts with Apple - the paid developer who shared the download key with someone they weren't authorized to and the idiot who used that key to download a pre-release of Tiger and then uploaded it to the world for all to enjoy.
I suspect Apple wouldn't have cared, even if they'd noticed, if he hadn't uploaded it to the world. But releasing warez copies of pre-release software? You have to stomp on that, even if it's just done by someone being stupid, or everyone will start doing it.
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).
Neither is a particularly good quality to see in someone that wants to be a doctor.
Not only is he ignorant of how laws work in the US with respect to copyright and theft, his motivations to study medicine are also suspect:
Anyway, I'm a junior in college - and despite popular belief I'm not a programming major or computer science aficionado; I'm just a plain ol' pre-med student. My passion lies in medicine. I'm one of those hippy-save-the-world Canuks. I suppose that's due to committing myself to life as a perpetual student - but I have no problem with that. Non-stop school between the age of 4 and 30 isn't so bad, when you get to feel like you're making a difference in peoples lives.
He is planning on entering a career in medicine because of his good intentions to "save the world". I think his idea is that the only thing that matters is whether you have the right intentions. His intention to "save the world" by being a physician is about as admirable as his intention to satiate the want of his friends for X.4 Tiger.
If he is as idiotic as he describes himself with his "good intentions", I can't wait to see his MCAT scores from this April... if he's not in jail at that time.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
I think it is theft of services? Either what its not "stealing"/"theft" in the shoplifting sense and is called something diffrent.
The barber has to prove that he performed a service at a reasonable price at your request for you to be convicted, and sense its 5000 there would be next to no punishment. hell if you steal a CD from a store its 5000 and is petty theft, get less time for stealing 10 CDs then shareing them on the net.
either way still diffrent copyright infringement.
Anyone know what it is called?
If you read the succeeding posts, you'll find the Apple guys being very forthcoming with information on what changed, how, and why patches didn't make much sense.
You know what? Just because you have a *right* to remain silent doesn't mean you should always do so!
Perhaps there is sometimes far greater value in getting things "off your chest" and publicly clarifying a situation before the rumor-mongers go wild, twisting it into something completely different than it is?
When you're just a student with limited finances and limited personal property, you already *know* there's not too much financial damage a corporation can do to you. (Can't get blood from a turnip, as they say.) So where's the only *true* damage coming from in a case like this? Usually, your personal credibility and respect - if you remain silent and let people run around the Internet tossing out wild accusations about you.
In fact, letting the public know the true nature of this type of situation can prove to be your best "counter-measure" against the corporation. Any sympathy you earn may do you no good in the courtroom directly, but it very well MIGHT influence the future purchasing desicions others make. (EG. If you used to support Apple products because of a belief they were a more "moral" company than competitors like Microsoft, maybe now, you'll change your mind?)
Gizmodo is now linking to (possibly fake) leaked pictures of the headless iMac.
Apple shares the source for their open source derivatives, and even ported them to x86.
And that is exactly why you should remain silent until you have consulted with counsel and balanced all the factors such as "getting things off your chest," personal credibility, countering wild accusations and so forth with the far greater likilihood that you are simply making yourself a obvious and easier-hit target by the plaintiff.
Just not the OSX dirivitives, right? Just that weak Unix OS named Darwin that hardly anyone uses because BSD Unix and Linux have more features available for it? I tried Darwin, and it wouldn't even install on my state of the art X86 system, or even the older 700Mhz Celeron system I had. Red Hat, Fedora, Knoppix, etc worked better on those systems.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Knocking on doors at Christmas Eve? Couldn't they have waited until the holidays were over? Not like the kids were going anywhere.
They came to serve the papers on Dec. 25, Christmas Day. He wasn't there.
Now Apple is going after almost the same type of kids, only these kids use Macs and share the latest OSX over the Internet.
Except that to get the software they had to agree that they wouldn't share it.
Amazing that OSX is based on open sourced software which was meant to be shared, yet has a commercial license preventing it from being shared.
This is only amazing because you don't understand how the BSD license works.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Parts of OS X are based on open-sourced software, and either those parts are made available or, at least, the open-sourced components are made available for sharing.
Other parts aren't based on open-sourced software, and those parts aren't made available for sharing.
They are fulfilling their legal obligations and nothing more.
If you want people who use your code to "give back to the community" in the way you want, you should license your code in a way that requires them to do so. Add a clause that says "if you're a big company and you take our code, you have to help us out because we're smaller, even if our goals are very different".
Its entirely in the spirit of the GPL to do as little as you're legally required to do. Thats why it's the GPL and not public domain, or BSD.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Why isn't giving out a copy of it sharing? When I write a poem, giving out multiple pdfs of it is sharing. And I'd consider it to be sharing if other people gave each other copies of it too. It's sharing, plain and simple, the problem is selfish people who want to make money from the rarity of their stuff don't want you sharing it.
I am trolling
When downloading a pre-release from Apple Developer Connection, you sign a contract saying you won't re-distribute the item. This fellow did.
Because they don't really think it is wrong. There are real criminals. People who kill people would be a clear example. And the reason we're discussing his future is because we're discussing the story. Speculation is an integral part of that.
I am trolling
It's not ok to murder people, but that still doesn't justify calling murder stealing.
I am trolling
Yes, the problem is that the changes are "just" not in the format they want. But that is a big problem. It goes against the whole spirit of open source, and possibly the letter as well. ("Preferred form for making modifications" anyone?)
I am trolling
We have a company that refuses to use an open standard, or even simply to license their technology to other companies, in order to leverage the huge market share they have in one area to boost sales in an other area.
OSX, at it's core, is quite standards compliant (after all, it's a flavour of UNIX running some very common OSS), so I know you're not complaining about that.
Your comment is probably about iTunes/iPod/ITMS. Let me explain this carefully: APPLE IS A HARDWARE COMPANY. They are not in the business of designing free music players just to take a bath on the development cost. Every software product, every service that Apple offers, is designed to sell more Apple hardware.
And honestly, who starts a giant torrent tracker full of pirate software and doesn't expect legal hassles from it?
> I never read agreements that I signed when I install other software or when I sign up for things like Hotmail, etc. And I close my eyes when I blow through red lights and stop signs.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Napster.
A corporation can still obtain a judgment against you which would drive you into bankruptcy. That would ruin your credit and make it very difficult for you to obtain things like a house later in life. (And, no, student loans aren't wiped out in bankruptcy. You're still stuck with them.) If they obtain the judgment and you don't file for bankruptcy, they can keep suing you whenever they think you might have some money, i.e. after graduation, to collect on it. In addition, having a bankruptcy, or a large judgment against you, can screw up background checks if you later want certain kinds of government or corporate jobs. (Banks and financial service companies will run background checks for any kind of position of trust. If they find "XYZ Corp. sued and won $1.1M from applicant, applicant filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying", they won't hire you. For that matter, you now have to undergo a background check if you want to become a lawyer.)
In addition, the company can gather evidence to press charges against you for criminal copyright violation.
But, hey, if you're just a student, and you were stupid enough to get involved in something like this, you're stupid enough to think that you don't need professional legal assistance in getting out of it. Trying to do the mature and respectable thing is just "lawyer weasel words".
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Stealing is wrong. However, this topic has nothing to do with theft.
Apple does not make money on Ipods. They only make money on Itunes songs.
No, actually it is the other way around.
This guy already made it abundantly clear that he aspires to go into the *medical profession*. The fact that a bankruptcy might prevent him from passing background checks for government or financial jobs is probably not too high on his list of concerns.
Okay, how about background checks for the medical profession? A background check for getting an auto loan will be "what is your credit score". A background check for getting a job at a hospital will be something more like this:
"Before we put you in a position of trust, caring for the physical well-being of patients and handling their confidential medical records, we would like to know: Have you ever been sued for any reason? Have you ever been sued for divulging confidential information or misappropriating intellectual property?" And he's now in a position where he has to hope that nobody cares.
Yeah, it COULD happen - but talk about backlash! Heck, I personally own 3 newer Mac systems and I'd dump them all in a heartbeat if I saw Apple do that to this guy!
That's nice. However, Slashdot or technology trade press readers (especially those who believe that Apple shouldn't protect its intellectual property) represent a relatively small proportion of Apple customers.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Very interesting the leak is from 30-year-old pre-med student who doesn't understand confidentiality.
Wish his future patients well. It's not like there's any damage from letting loose a few bits of confidential patient history, right?
It makes awesome products (Dual G5, iPods, iLife, PowerBooks), some smart licensing movies (HP iPod, HP Tunes, Motorola iPhone), has a good open source policy (Darwin, KHTML, ZeroConf, Darwin Streaming Server) and STILL people bitch when Apple acts to defend itself!
/. crowd, that would tear any other company apart if it engaged in anything similar.
Let me refute your inaccurate points:
>We have a company here that's suing 21 year old mac fans for participating in the illegal sharing of a beta build of their OS.
No, we have a company here that's suing a 21 year old and others for violating a contractual agreement.
Would YOU not sue me if you paid me $2,000 to paint your car and then when you left the car overnight I sold it to someone else? There are two things that are of interest here:
Apple has an NDA, like many other companies. Intel has them, AMD has them, ATI has them. If you violate that license, you break your contractual agreement.
Apple, like any other technical company, can suffer harm from leaked technical information getting into the hands of competitors. In other words if a rival company ALSO downloads one of those builds they've got their hands on the 'crown jewels' so to speak.
>We have a company here that's extracting information from someone they are about to sue under false pretence.
We have a company here that's suing to ensure future leaks are minimized. Why do you think this is false pretenses? Their OS is almost as much their bread and butter as their desktops! You can't run any Mac without the OS.
If this were a case where someone stole 5 prototype future PowerBooks, Apple would SURELY prosecute the perpetrator for exactly the same reasons.
>We have a company here that's suing a side aimed at their fans because the site spreads some rumors about new products.
Leaks can hurt you. Osbourne computer found out the hard way when they announced a product too early in the life cycle of the current product and went bankrupt because people were waiting for the next version!
Other ways leaks can hurt you: A competitor can copy you, or clone a good enough solution to nullify any special advantages your product has.
>We have a company that refuses to use an open standard, or even simply to license their technology to other companies, in order to leverage the huge market share they have in one area to boost sales in an other area.
You mean like how HP has their HP iPod (which has a tiny HP logo on the back)?
How HP ALSO has Fairplay decoding built into their version of the HP Media Center PC (under the technology HP Tunes) so that songs purchased from the iTMS can be played back OUTSIDE of iTunes?
How Motorola will have a phone that plays Fairplay encoded AACs that can be purchased through the iTMS?
Are you advocating that Apple should be licensing indiscriminately? Because it sure seems to be that Apple IS licensing, but just not licensing to companies you care about, perhaps.
Like to Real software.
>We have a company that is heavily promoting software patents and is heavily involved in fileing trivial software patents.
I must have missed this. Point out some examples please?
>We have a company here that is taking open source technology for their new browser, but then refuse to give the changes they make back in a way that might be useful to the original open source developers.
Someone else already made a rebuttal, but I want to know what you think the "solution" is because I certainly don't see the "problem". Maybe you know something I don't?
>And yet it seems, Apple is still loved by the
As I said earlier, Apple makes great products, makes great software, and in turn allows you, in using those products and software, to enjoy yourself.
About the only other company I can think of that has similar characteristics are:
Coke
Hershey's
Nintendo
GPL Deconstructed
It's hard to be sympathetic for this guy. He signed an NDA, didn't read it, then did something incredibly stupid, and is getting sued for it. He even admits it -- but seems to think it's unfair that he should have to face the consequences of his actions. Why should we care, exactly?
This isn't Big Brother, this isn't Evil Corporate America, this is someone explicitly and knowingly entering into a contract and then flagrantly violating it. That he didn't read the NDA, or apply the tinyiest inkling of common sense, makes that his fault, and no one elses.
What does he think the appropriate resolution should be, exactly? Getting a cookie?
This would not just get thrown out in Australia but the lawyer that threatened legal action could be disbarred ("struck off the roll").
Here, it is against the law to threaten someone with being sued. The law is not a tool/weapon to be used by those in the know or with the money to pay them.
IANAL (but I know one who nearly got into trouble for this)
Darwin is not a weak UNIX OS. Darwin can do anything that OS X can do. It includes the Foundation and Core Foundation languages that OS X uses which provide a lot of functionality. The only thing Darwin is really missing is the GUI and the bundled applications. Install Darwin, then X11, then GNUStep, and you have a very nice Mac OS X clone. No, you're not going to get OS X's closed source window manager, but saying Darwin is a weak UNIX OS is just arrogant. As long as it doesn't involve a Aqua GUI, Darwin can do anything OS X can do. The reason Cocoa doesn't work is because its mostly a language for building a GUI. All of Cocoa's non-GUI classes are simply abstractions on Foundation and Core Foundation, which as I said, are included with Darwin. Your problems were probably due to Darwin's weak drivers on the x86 side. After all, Darwin is mainly a PowerPC OS. I'm really surprised someone hasn't ported some drivers, and added a X11 window manager and GNUStep to a Darwin distribution for x86. It would create a OS able to decently run most OS X software.
This would make no sense, because Apple has absolutely no need to leak it. A lot of ADC members recieve the Tiger builds, and the Mac.TKA community is pretty big. It would be leaked by someone no matter what Apple wants.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm not very sympathetic to a pre-med student without any ethics. It makes you wonder what kind of physician he'll become.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I see here a naive kid who just did something to satisfy his ego. Maybe just being eager to share the good stuff, because he loved the company. Well, turns out that he violated some NDA which he didn't read. And the company decides that it has to make a point. Moral of the story? Read the NDA, know what you can and cannot do. The company will not be lenient, because it's protecting its own interest. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't have to terrify the kids so much. They're just some poor kids anyway. A warning would do just fine, and they will probably remain loyal customers. Do they really need to resort to suing the guys? I think not.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary, and those that don't.
Why arent we teaching kids that stealing is wrong?
Or perhaps we should rephrase that...
Why are we teaching kids that sharing is good?
Personal information is different and you know it is. If you don't, try reading RMS's 3 types of information. But you're welcome to anything creative or useful I've made. Want the essays I wrote for GCSE English, or the little rot47 encoder/decoder I wrote, or my arrangement of Pacabel's cannon? Just ask.
I am trolling
...how Apple plays this one.
Was the kid a bit naive? Sure. I'm occasionally on invitation-only torrents in the Mac, and multi-platform, scenes, and the trackers are adamant about people NOT distributing the torrent files, themselves, on other trackers. Always lots of warnings regarding "Don't share torrents, outside." So, I give the kid the benefit of the doubt regarding his belief that the buggy beta would stay 'inside' somewhat. He made, as Nixon put it, 'an error in judgment', no question of that.
I also believe that the real asshole in this situation was the 'paid-up' ADC Member who had the 'seed' of Tiger, in the first place, and 'gave' it to the kid with the freebie ADC account. (Trust me, the 'free' ADC accounts never see 'seeds' of an OS. Period.) He's the one who should be taken to the cleaners, not the kids.
Apple Computer is also made up of 'smart' people, with history and experience. And they should know, (as well as most of us here) that 'good' people do 'bad' things, and smart people are capable of doing the stupidest things.
I did some freelance work in the Securities industry (as an investment analyst for a small group of fellows), and one of the truisms in Markets and market interventions is this: The mechanisms put in place after a crisis, stock crash, etc, are never sufficient to prevent the next shock, and what is more, the mechanisms, themselves, almost invariably guarantee that the next 'event' will be far worse than the one that precipitated the intervention, and its so-called 'protection'. We'll just see... the ball is in Apple's court... for the time being.
Apple's made their share of mistakes. With their great tech, and loyal base of users, and the over-emphasized 'design' thing, they've pulled some World Class Boners, themselves. They aren't 'kids', stupid, naive, or otherwise. And I'll bet that more than a few people will be watching to see what they really want to do to these kids' lives.
In the meantime, they should be aware that there are a lot more of 'us' out here, than there are them and their lawyers out in Cupertino. And if they decide to fuck around here, (when they should be focused on porting the Finder in Cocoa instead of fucking Carbon, etc.)... well, all I can say is: If anyone's interested in Final Cut Pro, Logic 7, Motion, DVD SP, or any OS from 6 to 9, to OSX to "name it and claim it", don't buy it until after this situation plays out.
Wtf? If I share it, it probably doesn't benefit them. It's unlikely to harm them, but I don't think it benefits them very much. I share everything I can legally and some things I can't.
I am trolling
All the people that are bashing. im sure all of you are perfect and have never shared a program or mp3. get over it. wait no don't because all of you are so elite and much better then everyone else. please. He didn't do it to ruin the mac commnity and he didn't do it to be some jerk. He's not as vein as the people on here that think they can be his judge.
As far as the LGPL goes, you are only required to make the source code available to whomever you distribute the software.
Not "anyone who wants it."
Except one would have to have the source code to recompile and hope there are no PPC tweaks that need to be rewritten to port on the X86 Darwin platform.
So Photoshop is out of the question, as the source code is not given away, and Adobe does not have an interest in compiling it for an X86 Darwin release.
So GNUStep runs OSX programs? I did not know that, did Apple release all of the undocumented API calls to that project to run OSX code on any Unix that uses GNUStep?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Amazing, in asking people not to share open sourced projects under the BSD license, apparently, Apple does not understand the BSD license either. ;)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Apple doesn't use undocumented calls. Cocoa is based on the OpenStep standard, and the Objective C compiler is the standard GCC one. GnuStep is an implementation of Cocoa using OpenStep on non-Mac OS X systems. It's like WineLib, except more compatible because its based on the exact same foundation. Last I checked GnuStep had all the necessary classes in place for me to port over my Cocoa game engine without recoding. The only parts that aren't open are Carbon (which is a OS X implementation of the OS 9 API, which you shouldn't be coding in anyway, but Office and Photoshop are written in it because it's easy to port from 9 with it), and Apple's private frameworks (Cocoa is not part of it, usually these are frameworks like keyboard backlight control and such, nothing very important for programming). And, you do realize, any private calls us programmers ourselves can't call, meaning we're not using them, meaning they aren't a problem for porting to GnuStep.
I checked the OSX license agreement, and it doesn't seem to be worded the same way a BSD license is worded. It does say certain parts of it are Open Sourced. So this is not an actual BSD license, but it tends to pretend that it covers the whole OS, even the Open Sourced parts, of which it claims are not transferable without the original media, etc. Some Open Sourced parts have a GPL license, apparently.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I checked the OSX license agreement, and it doesn't seem to be worded the same way a BSD license is worded.
Why would it be? Nobody has claimed that Mac OS X is BSD-licensed.
So this is not an actual BSD license, but it tends to pretend that it covers the whole OS, even the Open Sourced parts, of which it claims are not transferable without the original media, etc.
Yes, the BSD license allows this.
Some Open Sourced parts have a GPL license, apparently.
Yes, and source is available. I couldn't tell you where, exactly, as I've never had the need to recompile (say) GCC from scratch, but I assure you it's available.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Amazing, in asking people not to share open sourced projects under the BSD license, apparently, Apple does not understand the BSD license either.
Again, you're amazed simply because you assume that BSD is effectively the same as the GPL. It isn't. BSD allows anyone to take the code, modify it, and sell it, without giving anything back.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.