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Woz, Others Ask Apple To Go Easy On Tiger Leak
tabkey12 writes "Drunkenbatman posts this impressive article with a pointed quote from Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak and 24 others from all parts of the Apple Software world, criticising Apple's stance against a 23-year-old pre-med student, desicanuk, who distributed a pre-release Tiger build over a popular Mac Bittorrent site. There's also an interview with desicanuk on drunkenbatman's site. (Original Slashdot article here.)"
Two questions:
- How do we expect to be taken seriously with pseudonyms like this?
- How many
/.ers didn't even blink while reading the intro?
Of course look who's talking; Odo, a fictional shapeshifter... <sigh>As much as I admire Woz's idealism, I wouldn't take business advice from him!
This is intellectual property of Apple, and should be treated as such.
He pirated software, he should pay the penalty.
No sympathy here.
From everything that I've read his defense to Apple's charge of him posting the pre-release software is that he's a kid, please feel sorry for him.
I feel sympathy for him too, but how do you stop leaks if not punish the people that perpetrate the leaks?
I'm a big tall mofo.
TFA suggests that bittorrent is at the heart of tiger. Perhaps Apple should look closer to home ?
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I wonder, why do "The Regents" own the rights? Not "The Students" or "The State of California"? Anyone?
That's just it. It's a big public taboo over something which is equivalent to shop lifting. Sigh, People always fear what they don't understand!
The 83 year old dead file swapper, Gertrude, would have been laughing her false teeth out at you all if she was alive..
If this was software piracy there'd be a clear case for damages. If I spent a huge amount on developing a new product aimed at commercial resale and some dude released it onto the net, I'd sue him too.
But Apple do not really sell software at all. They sell hardware, and they sell fashion. What are the real damages from such an act? Not very significant. Apple users tend to pay for their software because otherwise it's not worth having.
The publicity alone - Apple software being so valuable that someone is prepared to go to jail in order to leak it - is worth a lot.
They should probably do a deal with the guy: hire him for a pittance where he can put his notoriety to use helping Apple.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I personally don't want a doctor with this sort of ethics to do anything to me in the future. I hope Apple sues him into oblivion.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Bottom line: he should have known better, but Apple shouldn't be giving themselves bad press by continuing. They probably won't now after outcries like this, preferring to show some teeth to discourage potential "innocent" uploaders leaking more stuff, then back off to act as a "Benevolent" corporate entity. Maybe Steve Jobs would do some p.r. by volunteering at the same place as mr. Gentleman Pirate?
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
This would be a great place to see them settle for an "undisclosed sum" (like a dollar), on condition that neither party discuss the matter further. Everyone wins; Apple doesn't publicly "back down", and the guy gets his life back.
Or they could grind his bones to make their bread, whatever. I don't know him.
I say Jobs should take this to court.
:)
It'll give me lots of jabs to toss at a guy I work with who is as firmly entrenched as a Mac dude as I am a PC dude.
Heck, I hear about it when Gates and Microsoft do stupid stuff , so why not give me some more ammunition as Jobs gets laughed out of court? It's got all the delicious points - A kid running a web site sued out of existance over disclosing something that ultimately proved to be a mountain out of a molehill.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
My thoughts exactly.....with the GPL, I never have to worry about this sort of thing.
The young man is clearly in the "wrong" here. Chalk it up to the foolishness of youth.
"For Apple to start sinking to this level is very troubling to me (with the recent lawsuit against the rumor-mills as well). Growing up with Apple products I have always had pride to be an Apple user.
Actions like this have made me wonder really who is running things, Steve Jobs or bloodthirsty lawyers. It's painful to watch a company grow up like this. From the final days of Woz up until now it has been a bumpy ride."
This sums up my feelings about Apple and the course they are taking pretty well. What has become of this great company that was different and likable?
Honestly, I think the whole deal is bullshit. Its just the big exec's lashing out at small fries because they can't get their hands on the big fish. Guess what? The real pirates out there aren't scared by you suing a college student that knows nothing about computers and had to have someone teach him how to seed a file. In fact they probably feel safer knowing that you are wasting your time suing this kid instead of them.
I think Tiger-pre-release should be made available to ALL ADC members (ADC signup is free). Then you'd still have everyone under the NDA, and no one who didnt want it or wasnt qualified to mess with it would get burned by a partially developed OS.
I mean, sure I see the point of making people pay for the final version. But for the betas, it seems like the more qualified testers they have the better. Besides, not all developers can afford full ADC memberships with all those software dl keys, they're freaking expensive !
Welcome to the real world...
The real problem is that you don't agree with apple's naming conventions.
Call a product Windows 98 and then change it's "upgrade" to Windows Me (please no ME jokes...) and everything is dandy.
Call a product OS X 10.3 and then its "upgrade" OS X 10.4 and people moan and bitch.
The truth of the matter is, $129 ($99 for students) for a new operating system is a steal. If you can't afford it, fine, no reason for you to upgrade. Microsoft will charge you around three times that.
1) Kid signs up for limited freebee ADC membership, knowing that it does not include access to Tiger beta, in order to have "real" developer (who should certainly know better) place a d/l seed in his area. -- mildly unethical.
2) Kid, excited with his "prize", sends it out to his web "buddies" so they can share in the radiant joy. Exceedingly stoopid.
3) A restricted beta of a product Apple intends to make hundreds of millions of $$$ from is released into the wild for free. Entirely predictable.
4) Apple gets justifiably upset, sues all in sight. About all that Apple can do at this point is make an example of them.
5) The Woz feels sorry that the Kid is getting punished for his unthinking brush with Reality, donates $1000 to his defense.
So what can we learn from this?
1) Apple needs to tighten up ability to transfer software assets between classes of ADC members.
2) Kids (or anyone) that act in an unthinking manner can expect to be educated. Think of it as Evolution in Action.
3) People will gawk at a grisly highway accident, whether on concrete or etherial roadways.
Move along folks.
...I agree. A M.D. that is both ignorant and sloppy. Luckily we've never seen that before...
> Of course they do but the point is that if this was a GPL'd
> piece of software there would have been problem with the guy
> distributing it in this way
And if it rained liquid iron from the sky we'd all be burned. We aren't in a fantasy world where Tiger is a piece of GPL software.
Tiger is licensed to people under licenses decided upon by Apple. People break that license and Apple gets upset. Many slashdotters seem to think Apple shouldn't, and should just turn a blind eye to it.
If they think that, then they should also not get upset when a company breaks the license terms of GPL software, ie by incorporating GPL code into a proprietary closed source app.
So why is it OK to break Apple's license and go all "awwww Apple should turn a blind eye" when if the GPL was being broken by the same guy, most of slashdot would call for his lynching, be posting his home phone number, address, contact details, criminal records or what have you, online.
OK, OK, so Apple definitely sell software. I must have been asleep when I wrote the opposite.
There's no debate. I like Apple as much as the rest of you (and my AAPL shares justify my faith in the company).
String the farker up by the nuts.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Who is DrunkenBatman?
...However, I should note, where was DrunkenRobin during all this? Just hanging around the DrunkenBatcave? We can only drunkenly speculate, I guess.
Some have speculated that DrunkenBatman is DrunkenBruceWayne, a theory I too once believed. However, after I publicly aired my suspicions, he and I were kidnapped by the DrunkenPenguin then saved by DrunkenBatman. So I've seen DrunkenBruceWayne and DrunkenBatman, together.
easy, tiger ;o)
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Just how can a NDA restrict the redistribution of an opensource based OS?
If it's 50% based on BSD software does this mean they can only sue for 50% of damages?
And if tiger was a bit of music or art or something i was working on . Then some guy(23 is not a kid , I'm 23 I stopped being a kid a long time ago) I was showing it to , decided to make a copy of the work and hand it out. I imagine i would be rather pissed off , and probably want to punch the guy, so from this i can understand the actions of apple up to this point. .He has suffered his virtual punch from Apple,Although he comes out with the "I'm so Naive"
Which would probably make me want him to suffer a while longer for coming out with such a load of nonsense .
But that would be it , I doubt he will do it again
Now as much as i believe that all software should follow the GNU way , I also respect the rights of developers to decide how they distribute the work they have created.
distributing Commercial software over Bittorent in the USA is not a good idea , its playing with fire and if you're caught you will get burnt.
I do feel sorry for him though
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I don't mean to upset those queued up in the "can I please blow you mr jobs" line but you'd have a point if MS charged for SP2 - it didnt. My only exposure to OSX is troubleshooting the problems my mother has with it, however, how on earth is charging for what are really nothing more than service packs a good thing? The Apple-Worship on here is nothing but astonishing.
From the interview (one of the admins of the bittorrent tracker speaking):
You see, all of these are copyrighted unless they're around a hundred years old (depending on jurisdiction). Of course distributing them is not copyright infringement ("piracy") if you have permission by the copyright holders, but I highly doubt this site has permission to distribute those service manuals and -- especially -- games.Just because the company making them is gone doesn't mean there isn't a copyright holder -- there's always some creditor happy to pick them up. They may not sell the game any more (at least currently), but that matters zilch. They may not be suing you because they don't have enough to gain from it, but that doesn't mean they can't and it doesn't mean that this isn't copyright infringement.
Yes, it sucks. You see, that's one reason why some people think copyright law sucks. Especially with the super-long copyright terms of today.
I find people annoying who copy old proprietary games, don't feel that they're doing anything wrong, and then go, "I totally respect copyright law! I would never pirate anything!" If you think copyright is so cool, how come you are so happy to bend it when it's inconvenient?
(NB. I admit that I haven't actually checked the site; the games there may yet be under license terms that permit re-distribution after the company making them has folded. If so, sorry of associating the general rant with this specific case. But I doubt it.)
For the record, the supplied document lists Apple's requests as follows:
- Compensatory and examplary damages to be determined at trial
- Injunctions restraining the distribution of the software
- Injunctions restraining the breach of the agreements (not clear what that means)
- An accounting of any profits the defendants have derived from their distribution of the software
- The cost of the suit
- Any other relief the court deems just and proper.
Some- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
He needs to look up the definition of malicious. He came into posession of a piece of copyrighted software and then made the conscious decision to seed it to others. He was pirating and he was trafficing stolen goods.
Apple has every right to go after him.
I never knew that Jobs was such an ass. Egomaniac? Sure! Asshole? it seems so.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Does anyone know the consequences of the following.
1. A person breaks into apple HQ and steals 20 copies of Tiger on CD. They get caught.
2. A person uploads tiger via Bittorrent. They get caught
I assume for the first you'd get a suspended sentence for first offence or a few months in Jail.
But for the second I guess you'll be paying for it for the rest of your life.
Conclusion throw away your keyboard and trade in for a crowbar.
Not his fault? Gimme a break.
We are all incapable of resisting marketing and ad copy? Boo-fricking-hoo. I go to the Detroit Auto Show and I see a Ferrari, I like it, it's a sexy fucking car, I want it. Because Enzo Ferrari is so good at making a street legal F1 car, and he spends so much money on marketing it (F1 team anyone), it is not my fault if I steal the car, it is Ferrari's? Give me a break.
Now I am a liberal, but pulling this socialist crap is ridiculous. If marketing makes products so irresistable to you that you ruin your credit, whore yourself out for $5 a shot in the mouth, or steal, you have nobody to blame but yourself, because you are an idiot who cannot control impulses.
Your logic justifies raping a provocatively dressed woman. She made you want it so much that you just had to take it. Nice.
The kid was stupid, he broke the rules. He didn't just get a gray-market copy, he then set out to distribute a gray-markey copy. The 5 or 6 friends part is bullshit, he had more people in mind, or should have known it wouldn't stay small. It is like telling 1 friend in highschool that your parents are gonna be out of town for the weekend. You either know it is gonna get around or you are so stupid that you derserve what you get.
I don't mean to upset those queued up in the "can I please blow you mr jobs" line but you'd have a point if MS charged for SP2 - it didnt.
If Apple charged for the 10.3.7 to 10.3.8 upgrade you would have a point - they didn't.
how on earth is charging for what are really nothing more than service packs a good thing?
10.4 is a new OS version. It's like going from Windows XP to Longhorn. The only difference is Apple is actually more or less on schedule.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If someone distributed the Linux kernel under conditions that do not meet the GPL, what would you be saying then? The code was licensed under an agreement, whatever agreement that happens to be, and this person broke the terms of that agreement.
You sure have a good knowledge about justice and how courts work in general.
It says he needs an IP lawyer -- but as I understand it, leaking a developer beta of OS X is first and foremost a breach of contract -- when you promise a company you won't do something damaging to said company, and then you do it anyway, a lawsuit is to be expected. Copyright and trade secret COULD be invoked but this looks more like a contract case.
I use Bose noise cancellers at work with my iPod. A little more than $30, but, man, I never really noticed the air conditioning system noise until I cancelled it out.
Are there free legal resources available to help people in this situation? This kid's mistake is a pattern that we see recited over and over. There are free legal clinics that help people in all kinds of other situations, landlord/tenant disputes, immigration, etc.,...but I haven't seen anything to help common people when they accidentily cross these IP boundries.
Sounds to me like Apple works like the cops on Law & Order. They find the lowly perp and tell them the whole job is gonna come down on their unsuspecting and mildly involved act unless they give up their boss.
I agree with this tactic.
The 23 yrs old "kid" (at 28 am I a "teenager"?), acted as the distributor, but Apple really wants the supplier, the chink in the NDA armor for their developer network.
So the "kid" (I just love assigning that term to a med-student), needs to giveup his source or serve the sentence for supply and distribution.
Hey, I know it aint cool to back the global-enterprise, but when you spent hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D, all you have protecting the investment is the word of your development team and the law. Take away the law, and you don't have much.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I seem to recall that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak used to manufacture/sell phone phreaking equipment. Almost certainly illegal :)
How much "theft" did these two engender?
Did they ever go to jail, considering how well known their criminal past is?
And where would the personal computing world be today if they had been arrested and ruined as this guy will be?
Apple is going down the path to corporate hell. Steve! remember where you came from. You might be destroying someone who will implant the first artificial eye, or who will finally bring medical information processing into the twentieth century. The kid didn't hurt you or your company.
Don't be a hypocrite.
NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement.
You'd have to be as thick as two planks to not understand the basic terms of an NDA from this name - ie you're not supposed to even tell people about the software/documents etc that you're given, let alone distribute them on the internet. I simply don't believe he didn't know that was wrong.
The basic tenet of *every* NDA is that, guess what, you don't disclose what you're allowed to look at. You don't have to read any of the license at all to understand that. It's there on the download page in red letters as well - do not distribute.
To say you didn't read the agreement when it's a commonly used public contract (like that of marriage for instance) is a very weak excuse, and quite apart from that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law.
These court papers are quite interesting. Apparently, one thing that Apple is worried about is the competition getting their hand on Tiger pre-releases, as they state:
"Maintaining pre-release software as a trade-secret is essential to Apple's ability to compete in the markets for personal computer hardware and software. If Apple's competitors had access to Apple's Pre-Release software, those competitors could benefit economically from the knowledge gained from that access by directing their development or marketing efforts to frustrate Apple's plans." (this is on page 5, point 18)
Now, I would understand this if they were actually not providing pre-release software to anybody. But really, what stops any Microsoft employee from getting into the ADC and distributing it to the Longhorn development team ? Does Apple have a list of all Microsoft employees so that they can prevent them from entering the ADC ? I'm puzzled...
I'm not pro-corporate. Let me say that up front.
Apple has a NDA that they require of all developers who receive "pre-release" copies of software in development. If Apple does not pursue litigation then their NDA basically means nothing. They are perfectly within their legal rights to insist that the agreement be kept. So, the poor bastard who's getting sued should have known better.
There are open source packages out there to distribute freely without the wrath of the owner. It seems that there are many slashdot readers who are not mature enough to recognize that the world doesn't work that way. I'm not saying it's right--I'm just saying that just because you think IP laws are rubbish or do not apply to you doesn't change the fact that they the law and they do, in fact, apply. It's naive to think that electronic civil disobedience will not be met with the very sharp teeth and claws of the corporate legal eagles/weasels. Everyone always says, "Oh, that poor grandmother or little kid getting picked on by the corporations."
Fight the law with the law. Vigilante piracy isn't going to magically tip the law in the favor of Utopian RMS world. It's friggin' common sense people--DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN CORPORATIONS. Everyone here knows it's against the law to share copyrighted music, software, or some other IP. If you do it anyway don't bitch if you get caught. Just because we don't like the corporations doesn't make it right to steal from them--that makes us immature miscreant punks. And the legal system will treat you as such.
This world runs on money--corporations are greedy entities that will suck the lives out of every human being. Don't buy corporate. Fight with your power as a "consumer" by not being one. DON'T BE A CONSUMER WHORE but be a law-abiding citizen, too. [PSA brought to you by catdevnull].
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
extradition .
Advances would stop?
Here's an honest question. Do you really think your computing experience has improved that greatly on your spiffy new 3.4Ghz P4 compared to back when you had a P2 class machine?
IMO it hasn't. You've gone from Win95 to WinXP.
Look at the Apple scene now. OS 9 to OS X, now that's progress.
So, this guy (not a kid, he's 23) makes Apple's OS available on bitorrent and now they're suing him? Okay, that's what happens. I read about how this is going to ruin his life. I guess I'm confused, but his life will go on, he'll just owe some money.
Ah, but he won't be able to finish med school. Is that what we're so worried about? I'm not sure that I want someone with such poor judgement being a doctor.
Call me a jerk, mod me down, whatever. The guy did something really stupid, something really illegal, and now he's being asked to pay.
By the way, Woz. If you want to help the guy, $1000 isn't going to do much.
One other thing while I'm burning karma. To the guy who wrote that he wonders if the company is being run by Jobs or greedy lawyers: you might want to consider the oh-so-tiny possibility that this is the result of Jobs running the company. I don't blame him, I'd do the same thing.
I just don't find this surprising, except for the people rushing to his defense.
Do you have ESP?
Interesting point from the article:
desicanuk created and seeded the torrent, but soon after there were several other "buddy seeds" from _independent_ copies of the file (i.e. not from other users who downloaded desicanuk's file)
It seems that Apple is only going after desicanuk because he's the only one that they can tie his MTKA (BT tracker) IP and username to the ADC IP and username.
Furthermore, desicanuk is not the one who originally leaked the software (obviously), he was just stupid enough to share it. His claim that he didn't realize that he did anything wrong probably doesn't hold much water. However, as others pointed out, there's no monetary, reputational, or intellectual damage to Apple, and it seems that Apple is going after the easy target.
One thing that didn't come out in the interview and discussions: Did desicanuk give up the identity of the person who sent him his copy of Tiger? It seems that if Apple wants to find the real leak, that's the right direction to go.
He'd also have a point if MS charged you for upgrading to XP (NT 5.1) from Windows 2000 (NT 5.0).
Oh wait. I believe they do want some money for that. Check into it and report back, would you?
No, they don't.
If you buy the retail version of Windows XP it will cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but if you want to upgrade from a previous version of Windows to Windows XP, it costs $99 (for regular consumers or business people, not students).
That's $30 less than Apple charges regular folks for an OS X upgrade, according to your post.
SP2 for XP is a free download too, so I'm not sure where you're getting your information. I don't like Microsoft any more than the next guy, but prices are pretty easy to check.
Windows XP Upgrade $99
Putting moderation advice in your
After Cloud Nine went belly-up, he gave the 800 number (800-999-9999) to a teen runaway hotline with neither press releases nor fanfare; he did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.
Compare and contrast as you will.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Apparently some Apple resellers and consumers have joined to sue the company over some of its alleged practices, including use of confidential info, manipulating supply, etc. Slightly OT, but it relates to Apple public image. Of course, suits are easy to start but harder to win -- SCO anyone? -- so who knows... http://asia.cnet.com/news/personaltech/0,39037091, 39218703,00.htm/
I'm an Apple fan (ok, a little less so if Apple does this kind of things), but I think that Apple is to blame to a major extent.
- Apple is very much aware of rumor sites and knows their following crave for Apple-news before it is out. This sure keeps people interested in what's comming up from Apple. I for one visit those sites regulary and keep me in touch. (I don't like sites speculating on pricing, because it is too easy to get excited about a product, which may become a disappointment if the product is indeed as good as rumored, but at a higher price. If they'd not speculated it, it would probably still be considered a good price).
- Apple can easily make the Tiger beta's such that they only run on Macs with registered MAC addresses (ethernet addresses, whatever) which are unique for a computer. So, if a beta gets out in the wild nobody can run it.
- Apple makes a fool if itself by writing in the writ that they are in such a competitive business and their IP must be protected blah blah blah. Firstly, if they did really care, they had take proper precautions (see previous point). Secondly, Steve said that companies like Microsoft are busy integrating Tiger's Spotlight technology into Office. For that, you need a Tiger beta. So, the competitor who has 95+% marketshare has a copy of
that intellectual property. Apple can handle the rest: even the current version of Mac OS X is a great product.
Sure, the guy did something wrong. Apple, oet him pay $2500 Tsunami disaster relief and let it go.
Bert
Apple can't afford the negative publicity of ruining an individual like this, but they can't just drop it, either.
I predict they will win the civil case and then waive their right to collect any damages.
Unfortunately, the legal fees to get to that point could still be crushing for an individual.
In other words you are providing opinions on a subject about which you know very little.
Your false assumption has been repeatedly made on Slashdot. To reiterate, Apple freely provides it's service packs (it has release 8 major updates for Panther, which is currently at 10.3.8). However, charging for Tiger, which has an abudance of new features, is no different than MS charging for Longhorn. In fact the new features in the two have often been likened).
This is not "Apple-Worship". Personally I have many issues with Apple in regard to the build quality of their hardware, along with their support and pricing in Europe. However, in this case I'm just pointing out that you have your facts wrong.
From Microsoft, Windows XP Pro for $299, Upgrade = $199
Now... also keep in mind that $129 gets you the full version of the OS. So its $129 vs. $299.
RTFA.
Not every business needs to have a respectable name like "Federated Usable Computational Devices, Inc."
So the company would basically be FUCD?
:-)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
If you buy the retail version of Windows XP it will cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but if you want to upgrade from a previous version of Windows to Windows XP, it costs $99 (for regular consumers or business people, not students).
All of this is trying to compare apples and oranges. For example the difference between Windows 98 SE and Windows ME was window dressing and bug fixes. The difference between ME and XP was mostly bug fixes and some new features (from an end user point of view). In fact, the only reason I upgrade to a new version of Windows is because my company pays for it, or because the old version will not get vital security fixes. On the other hand, each OS X release (aside from the free one) was mostly new features. All the major bug fixes and all the security updates are available for the older versions.
I guess what I am saying is yes, Windows can be upgraded more cheaply than OS X if you always buy the most current release of each OS. Apple is faster to add new functionality and release new versions, and each version costs slightly more than a typical Windows release. On the other hand, you get a lot more for your money in terms of new, useful features. Also, since each version of OS X gets faster instead of slower, you don't have to buy new hardware as often and when you do, you can bring you OS license over to the new machine, if you so desire. With Windows, each OS version is tied to a machine and cannot be transferred to a newer one. It is a very unequal comparison.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you get your legal advice on slashdot, your psychiatric problems are more serious than your legal ones.
That has *absolutely* nothing to to with the state.
The bankruptcy code definces certain types of debts that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, including debts for
1) support payments
2) recent taxes
3) intentionally caused harm
4) fraud
5) student loans for several years
and many others
Liability for disclosing the information in this case would be far-fetched. *HOWEVER*, if he "induced" the employee to break the NSA, that could be the tort of interference with contract, and could come under the intentionally caused harm category.
hawk, esq.
That phrasing should be for the macrumors litigation, not this one.
Uploading it to share it would certainly be an intentional copyright violation, no matter how many he expected to download it (1 or 1,000,000). It's not the general liability, however, that would be nondischargeable. It's the intent to cause the harm that matters.
hawk, esq.
As a nation, the US is struggling with that "proportionate" part.
Think of all the ways in which we're drifting, semi-consciously, toward authoritarian responses to crime. The death penalty, "three strikes" mandatory sentencing rules that take sentencing away from judges in order for politicians to appear "tough on crime," drug sentences that put people away for disproportionate sentences compared with the punishment violent criminals get hit with. Any sense of proportion goes out the window once you've got the public responding to politicians who'll play to that. We've got plenty of /. posters who reacted to the "webcam break-in" story last week by saying "throw away the key" when they found out the guy only got 11 months in prison. Politicians eat that stuff up.
(Or take a look at Martha Stewart; it's completely freaking clear that she didn't do anything other big stock players aren't doing right now. She's being made into an example. Meanwhile Ken Lay? Connected to our President, and I don't notice him doing crime for destroying countless Enron employees' retirements through his quite extreme reckless behavior and that of his entire energy junta. That's not proportionate justice.)
Meanwhile, the corporate influence on government is simultaneously de-fanging potential civil suits against big corporations and giving them those corporate entities the ability to completely ream individuals who can't defend themselves in any real way against the money the big players can array against them.
This guy sounds like a fool -- the "I'm not hiring a lawyer" idiocy that some posters here are backing has partly gotten him into this spot. ("The person who represents himself as a lawyer has a fool for a client.") But he shouldn't be destroyed. He should be made aware that he has to think about what he's doing, and he needs to feel that message.
What needs to happen is that he gets a lawyer, Apple makes a big show of being amiable about this but also bares its teeth for a while, and everybody goes home with the usual "undisclosed settlement" -- equivalent to a month's salary for him, or something like, but never to be disclosed.
How this public letter approach is going to play will be interesting. Apple doesn't want to take bad PR, no -- so they need a way to come out of this as the Good Company.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What is the URL of that popular MAC torrent site? Just for research purposes of course.
San Francisco Photographers
Here's an honest question. Do you really think your computing experience has improved that greatly on your spiffy new 3.4Ghz P4 compared to back when you had a P2 class machine?
IMO it hasn't. You've gone from Win95 to WinXP.
If you can't tell the difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP you need to get your head checked. Seriously. (Though, 90% of the differences came in at the Windows 9x -> Windows 2000 jump, but I could say the same about the jump to OSX 10.0).
If you want to see some progress, compare the Linux distro's from 7 years ago to the ones today. On the OSS side of things, I haven't seen any stagnation, everything gets better everyday.
I'm personally tired of being called a "fanboy" just because I decided to buy a Mini for the hell of it.
As for the topic at hand... I think Apple's true concern should be finding the individual who leaked the disc from inside the company. Perhaps they should offer to let the guy off the hook if he explains where the thing came from.
Call a product Windows 98 and then change it's "upgrade" to Windows Me (please no ME jokes...) and everything is dandy.
Call a product OS X 10.3 and then its "upgrade" OS X 10.4 and people moan and bitch.
I seem to remember a lot of complaining about Window ME when it came out. Of course, it was pretty easy to ignore the Windows ME "upgrade" if you already had Windows 98SE, and many people did just that.
I think the problem is that everytime Apple updates OSX, there is some gotta-have features in it, which means forking out another $129. It's pure marketing.
Oh come on now. Even you must realize that you are the exception to the rule. There's always a few, and they feel compelled to inform everyone that they are the exception.
Let's just clear this up now: no one ever said that each and every P2P user is violating copyright (well, except maybe the irrational thinkers at the MPAA / RIAA), but it's pretty safe to say that most P2P users are violating copyright law, or have violated copyright law in the past.
All clear? Mmkay.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
If the EULA, NDA and other agreements he had to read were too much for him to comprehend, he should have taken that as a sign... perhaps something as complex is medicince is out of his league
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.
It was suggested that I used MTKA, an invite-only bittorrent community to share it. Since the community was invite only, and the majority of the people who frequent the boards were hardcore mac fans I couldn't see harm in uploading the file.
It sounds to me like notions of whether the software was open source or not didn't even enter his mind. Issues of legality certainly didn't enter his mind either (if we take his statement at face value).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You are turning things around. This guy is being accused of distributing something. Breaking the GPL would mean not distributing something. You can easily undo the wrong to the GPL by distributing the source.
So from a negative point of view the difference is between wrong you can easily repair and wrong you have no way of repairing. Apple is not asking this guy to straighten his ways, it's asking for a punishment. While I would no go as far as saying that one is about fear and one is about love the contrast is obvious.
Man I thought that would be one sweet and respectable name for an ISP
Bravo. Exactly what I was thinking :)
Apple is not likely to actually take this to court. The fact is it would cost Apple far more money to sue him than they could ever recover. He's a college student. It's unlikely that he has any assets.
In the mid 90's Microsoft sued their first person (as opposed to company) for putting a crack for MS Office on the web. The crack turned a $3.99 demo version of Office into the full blown product. In the end MS saw that you can't squeeze blood from a turnip, and offered a settlement that I'm told involved little to no cash.
While I realize Steve Jobs has a reputation for holding serious grudges on security leaks, the fact is taking this kid down to the mat does not enhance the shareholder bottom line.
This case will likely disappear after a month with a private settlement.
While I don't think the act was justified, there is a difference between breaking the GPL by using publicly-created source code in a commercial software and uploading beta compiled code for people to play with. One is making a profit from people's volunteer efforts, the other causes very little harm and may end up benefitting apple in the long run. It's not like the guy stole the Tiger source and is making his own version to sell.
I think that if you pay three times the cost (If you take my numbers seriously you need to take a paxil right about now) of a comparably equiped peecee you should get the OS for free. Or even better if you pay $129 for a new version of the OS you should phone support without having to pay more for it. Keep in mind, this is the company that charged $30 for a public beta of it's O/S and then charged another $130 for the REAL Public Beta of the O/S. Apple has no problem taking advantage of their customers loyalty. Thankfully there appears to be very little copy protection on the OS discs.
Yes, I know I'm being idealistic and naive...Apple is a company...yadda...yadda...
WARNING ZEALOTS READ HERE: I am a Mac user who has used windows in the past and I support it at work. I run FreeBSD on my x86 hardware.
a thousand words.
He Stole it, that's illegal and he deserves to go to jail. Most 'honest person'? Makes me wonder what kind of people he's met, honest people do not steal million dollar software!
Again, he stole it, he's a criminal! If it was your TV or car would you all be gushing about how good this guy is? No, you'd be looking for some rope...
You are abound by the terms of a contract even if you fail to read the terms.
Hill v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 105 F.3d 1147 (7th Cir.)cert. denied, 522 U.S. 808 (1997)
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996)
I mean, if you could just get out of a contract by claiming that you didn't read the thing they wouldn't be worth the paper they're printed on.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
it's not that Apple will sell one less copy of the new OSX because of it) that it really merits ruining his entire life? And that's exactly what Apple is doing and it'S disgusting.
Apple is suing for an injunction to stop distribution, court costs, whatever damages they suffer as a result of the distribution, whatever profit the defendant made (if any), and whatever punitive damages the court sees fit to award.
2500 copies of the software were known to have been downloaded as a result of this bit torrent posting. Court costs will be several thousand dollars, at least. The other damages will be decided by the judge and/or jury.
The defendant is a student who plans to become a doctor. I have no idea how much money he has, but maybe it is fair that he pays for whatever damage he caused? If he does not have the money, I'm sure a career in medicine will allow him to scrape together a little bit. He is pretty obviously guilty, and if he has half a brain (questionable at this point) he will settle for an undisclosed sum and a public apology, pay it off when he makes the money, and never do something this stupid again.
About the other case. It's about a news site posting rumors, no more, no less. You know, journalists do this all the time, posting information they got from inside sources.
It is illegal under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act for a journalist to publish what they reasonably expect are trade secrets. Their is no exception for journalists, except whistle blower statutes (in the case of government corruption, illegal activity, or public health concerns). They broke the law, for profit. Can you reference any cases where an insider leaked trade secrets, which were then published, and were not prosecuted? Just suing for the name of the leak is Apple being very, very lenient. Several market rags reported Apple stock dropping by several points as the result of this disclosure. They could sue for enough money to ruin the lives of both the leak and the journalist. In this case, all they care about is finding the leak and firing their lying ass. Which in my book, means they are being very, very lenient.
For more /.ers, its an exclusive-or thing.
You can blink (common) or you can read the intro (uncommon)--but not both.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
What needs to happen is that he gets a lawyer
The trouble is as the article (or was it the linked interview?) says, he's got something like $200 to his name plus $1000 from Woz. Unfortunately the ability to get justice costs more than $1200.
Im not turning things around at all, regardless of the fact that breaking the GPL means not distributing the source (or distributing it under a different license), if I distributed the Linux kernel without giving you the sourcecode for that particular version then I have broken the terms of the GPL. This person also had terms to abide by, which he didnt, and Apple is well within its rights to call for punishment.
Anything else is pure semantics, and tantamount to saying 'Laws should protect one aspect of a populace and not another'. Not everyone subscribes to Stallmans views, but to say that closed source software is 'evil' and opensource software 'isnt evil', which the grandparent was, is ludicrous and has absolutely no basis in fact at all.
If you were to say that one was about fear and the other was about love, then that would be your opinion, but it wouldnt make it any closer to reality - both are methods of licensing software according to that software creators desires and end goals. Why should Apple say 'mend your ways' - its up to a Judge in a court of law to say that, or do you not realise that the whole point of a central judicial system was to stop arbitrary and unjust punishments by victims?
Calling closed source software evil is like saying the brick wall around your neighbours garden is evil, because you let anyone into your garden and he wants to control access to his. Just because Apple doesnt want to let you play with their ball under your terms doesnt make their software license evil.
Nice troll post, and I can't believe some idiot moderator gave you points for that crap.
XP is $299. Microsoft has always priced it at that. Apple OS X is $129. So while not quite 3x, it's 2.32 times as much. The point is still the same.
Of course, you can find people that sell copies of Windows or OS X for slightly less, but that's true with any product.
All reading the article aside..., I didn't even know there was a Tiger release floating around. Now I do. And now I am going to download it. I find if the companies downplay these kinds of things, the less it hurts them. Or maybe that would just show they dont care and people would do it anyway. I dont know...
deliberately harmful;
Sounds like he knows what it means. He was not malicious in his actions. Let me give you an example...
You get into a fight with someone, and you win. To make him regret fighting you, you pick up a nearby small rock and throw it into his face. He goes blind in that eye and sues you.
In the second situation, you and your friend are roughhousing as normal, and he throws a small rock at you and accidentally hits you in the eye and blinds you.
They are both "intentional", but have very different circumstances and thus deserve significantly different punishments. He was neither trying to hurt Apple with his actions, nor was he trying to profit from this. He was just stupid.
I'm not saying let him off with a $1 penalty, because then the only lesson he would have learned is that there are no repurcussions for his actions. However, I hope this isn't a life-changing mistake, because it's an easy mistake to fall into.
When I was in high school, I decided to pull a prank that involved changing our school's AUP to something more humorous. I did not mean them any harm, but they ended up launching a very big investigation that cost both money and time.
By interviewing students, they found out it was me. I was more or less given the opportunity to "resign" and go to another school (or be expelled). The matter was also turned over to the police.
Did I do something wrong? Yes! I have learned from my lesson. In my case, I had a happy ending. I switched to a private school, did some community service (where I am ended up networking the entire organization I was volunteering for) and escaped not only unscatched, but a more wise person.
Although the school district wanted to make an example out of me (and they did), I was given a second chance in both school and from the police.
This second chance does not exist in civil court! The only thing that can save Sunny is Apple realizing that Sunny is not the problem. Sunny made a mistake, and from I've read he has learned from it.
Apple, I have purchased various (expensive) hardware and software from you over the years. You are an innovative, non-traditional company. I hope that the collective genious that is Apple can find a way to solve the problem without condemning a few foolish students to failure in life.
Just goes to show Apple aren't as groovy as people seem to think (not that I expect them to be they're a business after all)
But on this note if they were a "groovy" company then they'd allow Linux distros to switch on bytecode enconding when they compile Freetype.
The simple act of uncommenting this define and recompiling Freetype has turned my Linux boxs desktops from being an ugly and eye straining mess into being usable as a day to day desktop.
And the reason it's not switched on by default ? Apples patents.
Ho hum.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
The Cluetrain obviously missed this guy's station. Sheesh... "I was just sharing it with 4 or 5 other fanatics". OK, buddy, then put it on your website and let ur buds download it... then pull it. You don't put it on BitTorrent.
Folks, next time you want to break your NDA and share Apple or Microsoft pre-release software, please follow these simple steps.
1) Find some warez on your disk.
2) Read up some NFOs.
3) E-mail some pirate group and say you have some useless^H^H^H^Hful shit.
4) If they are interested, ask for an FTP address to upload it.
5) Upload the files.
6) Enjoy knowing that millions of people can safely get the "stuff" from their favourite P2P, you are completely safe (unless the copies are signed) and managed to "stick it to the man".
P.S. Stop seeding when the file was fully uploaded to the network.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Because sharing is good, regardless of what the law says.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
FYI, the difference between 10.3 and 10.4 is not a service pack's worth of difference. It's a WinXP->Longhorn (or, hell, Blackcomb considering what they've dropped from Longhorn) worth of difference.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Woo BFD. This is obviously just a PR exercise rather than an acutal attempt at heleipng. The defence lawyers have already said any kind of defence will be $7500 minimum.
If Wozniak REALLY wanted to help he should drop this case. It's his company thats bringing it, after all.
How about $79 for XP, ($99 before rebate)?
We're talking about upgrades here, not the version of XP you would buy to install on a freshly built PC.
SP2 was and still is a free download for users of XP. SP2 is comparable to one of these .1 version upgrades for OS X.
Putting moderation advice in your
I think you have read more into my post than was there.
I actually don't agree with the grandparent about proprietary licences being evil, the guy accepted that licence and so should not be surprised if he is asked to pay the consequences.
I was agreeing with the parent that the GPL is enforced and pointing out that if the guy had chosen to distribute a piece of GPL software he wouldn't have been in any trouble which is the point the great grandparent was making but the grand parent post seemed to have misunderstood.
maybe you ought to read descriptions about the Reality Distortion Field that surrounds Jobs.
Mac fans and students of product development should bookmark www.folklore.org. It is a valuable resouce for understanding *creativity*, software, hardware and other esoteric themes at Apple around the time the Mac was created.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
What an appropriate acronym.
I don't get it.
> can't tell the difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP you need to get your head checked
Nice work Mr. Microsoft apologist. He was talking about for end-users, and he's is right. You still have the same pitiful GUI on XP that you had on 95. You still have the broken Start button (WTF, I hit start to stop?) and poorly thought-out menus that you had on 95. Think from the terms of an end-user. Microsoft has made zero progress in over 10 years.
What, screw around with the interface just for the sake of screwing around? Microsoft likes to do that (ooh look, fading menus! ooh look, a shaded mouse cursor! ooh look, a green start button!). I just turn that crap off. The only real reason the Mac has come so far is that OS9 was such a steaming pile of crap to begin with.
Sure, Windows does have some quirks, but if you are going to complain about having to hit the start menu to shut down the computer, then I'm going to complain about having to drag volumes to the trash can to unmount/eject them (seriously, how dumb is that?). Or how you can irreversably delete shortcuts off the dock by dragging the icon off the dock. I have seen people do this more than once, who weren't experienced enough with OSX to know better - or for that matter, how to dig around in the Applications folder get the icon back.
Also, what archaic version of Linux were you running? You should try Knoppix, everything you need on a bootable CD without having to touch the PC's harddrive. Try Fedora, or Mandrake, or any other modern distro for something more permanent. Gone are the days of manually configuring X and having to partition the drive yourself (unless, you really want to). Most Distros now pretty much install themselves with no fuss.
The point here is not that this guy should go un-punished, but that the punishment is unjust/excesive. Does this guy really deserve to basiclly have the rest of his life ruined, simply for breaking the NDA and copyright of some software?