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Apple Settles with Tiger Leaker
The Hobo writes "CNet is carrying a story about Apple reaching a settlement with one of the Tiger leakers, 22-year-old Doug Steigerwald. The terms of the settlement were not released, but it was said that money will be paid to Apple. To quote Doug, 'As a member of Apple's Developer Connection program I received a pre-release version of Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' software, which I promised to keep confidential, instead, I disseminated it over the Internet, and thousands of unauthorized copies of Apple's software were illegally distributed to the public'"
at the zoo, and boy let me tell you they must drink a lot!
means that you won't disclose anything. Or give away a few thowsand copies of licenced, un-released software... huh.
What was the tiger leaking?
All humor aside. You have to assume when you receive a beta copy of something and signed an NDA there is some way for them to track you.
What's sad here is, he likely got pressured into giving up a copy or two to some friends, who probably SWORE they wouldn't share it.
They stood to lose nothing, and shared it with more of their friends and, etc, etc.
Wonder how those people feel now.
-NetMagi
OSX is better. Windows only has memory leaks!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
the case has been settled, and everyone's happy...
:)
Where's my torrent?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
like $50,000 a year to Apple from him not working there anymore?
If you had even read the slashdot blurb of TFA, you'd know that he wasn't an apple employee, but rather a developer's connection member.
Can't blame Apple here, I'd rather see their lawyers working on this kind of case than on better ways to enforce DRM. Pre-release versions give you a heads up on software advances and help companies release a better product.
On a side note, it's good to see this guy actually take responsibility for his actions, instead of hiding and blaming Apple.
I forgot what I wanted to say, but honestly, it was important.
The article says he's a "recent graduate of North Carolina State University who is currently looking for a job". I can't imagine this kind of publicity is a good kind to have when you are out interviewing.
Sure, most guys looking over the resumes aren't going to recognize the name, but there's got to be a company or two out there that actualy does the background checks.
Anyways I can't imagine is prospects are all that hot right now...
As far as Apple is concerned this is nothing at all to do with the money. It is entirely about putting out the message that if you sign a legally binding NDA and the distribute code/information then they will not stand idly by. The guy broke a contractual agreement that he had and I'm afraid he has to suffer the concequences.
RikF
In Soviet Russia you own your cat
there is a widely-held view that NDA's are meaningless and un-enforcable. this shows clearly that is not the case. i'm sure apple wants a certain amout of publicity around this to get that point across.
I'm sure it was more like "In exchange for an apology and being an example to others, we'll reduce the fine from $500,000 to $10,000". So if you want to call lessening the punishment "coherced", you can. Apple gets what it want, untrustworthy developer get what he wants. Others might call it an equitable settlement.
In the shadows of the night.
What immortal hand or eye
Dare leak thy secrets P-to-P?
Tyger
As these comprehensive databases like ChoicePoint record more civil an criminal judgements, it gets harder to obtain a job at a mainstream company. Article in Wired about this issue yesterday.
Setting a precedent and standing up for their rights while not mauling the guy to death. Nice.
from TFA: Steigerwald is actually not a student, but a recent graduate of North Carolina State University who is currently looking for a job.
Well, thanks to this story he has officially been transitioned to the permanent tech no-hire pool. I don't think any company would want to hire someone who so blatantly broke an NDA, and made the headlines for it.
I hear those people who drive snow plows make a killing. Maybe he can do that instead of software development.
"Members of (the) Apple Developer Connection receive advance copies of Apple software under strict confidentiality agreements, which we take very seriously to protect our intellectual property," Apple said in a December statement.
How horrible that Apple should go after someone who broke a confidentiality agreement and disseminated software which wasn't his to begin with and which he had no right to disseminate.
Oh the horror!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"While Apple will always protect its innovations, it is not our desire to send students to jail,"
I thought it was a civil case, or is Steve Jobs made a royalty here so that offending him carries jail sentences? Besides how exactly do you "settle" a criminal case?
Any of us who work in the commercial sector will know that this guy only has himself to blame, and good on Apple for acting quickly. OSX is commercial software. He signed a NDA. He broke the terms of the agreement. End of story!
Jonathan Beckett http://www.pluggedout.com
A financial settlement with a fresh college grad? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
What sort of settlement would you accept then? Corporal punishment? Or should Apple say "You naughty naughty boy, you pirated our software, but that's OK, we don't want any sort of punishment for you, otherwise emil (695) won't buy our products"?
I'm not sure how much the settlement is, but it is well within Apple's rights. Maybe they asked for and received a token amount just to make an example of him.
For the record, MS has gone after people before. Parts of Win 2000/NT source code have been released. There has not been any news of capture but MS will probably use all their means to punish the offenders.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The idea of the early release is to give developers who are willing to pay significant money, a head start in developing their applications so that they use the very latest and greatest features of the new OS (which in case is spotlight, etc). If Apple weren't to take action against piracy like the for-mentioned then these developers would lose faith and it be a lose-lose situation all round (including the end customer/user).
So if you want to call lessening the punishment "coherced", you can. Apple gets what it want, untrustworthy developer get what he wants. Others might call it an equitable settlement.
"In exchange for an apology and being example to others (by signing this confession), we'll reduce the sentence from death to twenty years in the Gulag". So if you want to call lessening the punishment "coherced" [sic], you can. Russia gets what it wants, untrustworthy citizen get [sic] what he wants. Others might call it an equitable settlement.
See the problem with your logic, and your definition? I hope so, even if you can't bring yourself to admit it publicly.
I don't want to defend or excuse the actions of this fool for having disseminated Apple's secrets all over the net, violating not only the NDA, but trade secrets and copyright, but to call what happened "uncoerced" is to redefine the term along Newspeak guidelines.
Was what he did wrong and illegal? Yes.
Was the law clearly on Apple's side? Yes.
Could it have been worse for the offendor? Yes.
Was the offendor coerced into making a public apology and serving as a scary example to others? You bet he was.
$10,000 is probably a lot to most any 22-year-old. $500,000 would have destroyed him. "Do what we tell you or we'll destroy you" is about as coercive as it gets, whether or not the one being coerced is on the right side of the law. If you have any doubt about this, I suggest referring to the definition of the word, which I have conveniently pasted above.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Actually he signed up under the free membership. Someone who had a professional membership transferred one of their seed licenses to him. The reason why it works this way is that for example, I have an ADC membership. I can purchase a an annual paid membership, but instead someone else at my company (in purchasing) does this and then transfers assets to someone on the development team who then transfers them to other team members (like me).
Assets include DTS questions, seed licenses, hardware discounts, WWDC tickets, and other things.
We always have left over seed licenses. Apparently some *real* developer transferred this kid a seed license. Because he had only signed up for the free service, he didn't really think about the NDA much.
Apple's new rule is that you can only transfer assets to people at your company. I am not sure yet how that rule will affect me. I do some consulting and so I get assets transferred to me by multiple companies. I've had my membership for 10 years and worked at 5 companies during that time, plus other consulting work.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Sure I downloaded For I was curious about it. Never got it to boot or anything, but I forgot about the copy left on the Limewire shared folder. Didn't think much of it since I never got the software to run properly, so I figured it was broken.
Couple of weeks go by and I get a very angry call from my ISP telling me to delete the file immediately. Apparently, Apple called them and told them I had an illegal copy of their software on my machine. Needless to say, it scared the crap out of them and they in turn scared the crap out of me for they were fearing a lawsuit, etc. etc.
The point of this little story is that this is nothing new on Apple's part. They're always protecting their R&D investment. And while the young and restless will snicker, it really taught me a lesson about respecting other people's hard work. This is something you don't learn until you start getting older apparently, for I would never have felt that way about it when I was a younger.
Do I feel sorry for the guy that got sued, well, not really. He violated a contract, an agreement, and when that happens you have to suffer the consequences. Besides, I think there is more to the story than we are privy to. It's a waste of money for Apple to send their legal bird of prey after a 22 year old unless he really did some damage. These days with things like BitTorrent, the damage grows exponentially...and unfortunately, so does the punishment as a result.
So that's what happened to Michael Jackson's nose.
When did his "The More You Know!" PSA air?
IronChefMorimoto
The guy broke a NDA, he signed an agreement not to release the software. This is speaks to the one of the foundation of our society, the ability to make an hold to an agreement.
The ad hominem attack on Jobs is a nice little aside to the fact that the law recognizes agreements as important to the structure of business.
Plus, it has to do with karma, Slashdot currently sees MS and the RIAA as entities without karma, both have done so many stupid and malicious things that they can't help but react with pitchforks and 'effigies'. Meanwhile, Apple has created nice products without finding interesting ways of screwing its customers. That's the difference; you shouldn't have gotten Troll but rather Redundant for saying something that has been in every thread here for the last year.
Try to be more clever; like 'Reich-publicans' I like that.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Since the amount was not disclosed, I would think it to be a small amount. If it was some large amount, I think they would have published the amount. An unknown amount may have as much, if not more "fear factor" than a known large amount, when it comes to discouraging future behaviour in others.
So, I think the carping about picking on a "poor student" is a load of crap. To enter into a binding contract, one must be of the age of majority. If he then broke the terms of the NDA, I have no sympathy.
"Breach of contract" isn't the issue here that is criminal in nature, "misappropriation of trade secrets" is. CA Penal Code section 499c indeed makes misappropriation of trade secrets a crime, punishable by a year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Okay, this guy (who we'll refrain from calling "a total dumb@ss" for now), signs the usual legal agreement with Apple and receives confidential software, that he then, against contract, distributes to the web. Apple, with contract in hand, takes this guy to court. They bring this guy to the full accountability of the court, (which he knew about beforehand). In an act that I would describe as barely short of weakness, Apple offers this guy a way out of having to pay 500-Grand. ...
And people have a problem with this?
The guy willingly and directly defied his contract agreement by distributing this software, and Apple rightly came after him. Considering the way in which he broke contract, they should have nailed him to the wall!
It's more of an example to pirates when companies show no mercy!
This guy broke the law. Deliberately. It might be different if he like, had his computer stolen or something. What? Is he claiming that he opened a can of Jesus Christ and was told to put Tiger on the web? Please...
If Apple wants to send a message to software pirates, they shouldn't do it by showing that they give pirates a break. If the full penalty crushes this guy into a sublevel of hobbo that he'll never recover from, so be it. He knew what he was doing. They should lock him away in a deep dark hole for the rest of eternity (or, if yer a darwinist like me, shoot him).