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Apple Fires Five Employees for Downloading Leopard
BuzzardsBay writes "The good folks at VARBusiness are quoting a ThinkSecret report that claims five Apple employees got canned over the unauthorized downloading of the Leopard OS. According to the article: one of the employees says:
"Because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated. If we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?""
Would Apple have continued investigating? How would they have investigated? According to the ThinkSecret article this is based on http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0608retailleak.htm l? there may be dozens more people getting fired fairly soon.
Good on Apple. The product isn't done yet, so it doesn't deserve to be seen.
Oh no, not again.
As to Apple, the whole company has been turning into shit since introducing CD keys for home OSX installs 2 years ago.
Eh? I never had to use a cd key for any of my Tiger installs. Methinks you are talking about Server, not client.
Confusion at best, FUD at worst. OS X has never required CD keys for home installation. The "Family Pack", which lets you install on up to five machines, has no CD keys, either. Apple has traditionally taken a "give the consumer the benefit of the doubt" view of their OS. There are no technical barriers preventing you from buying one copy of Tiger and installing it on a hundred machines, but Apple trusts you not to do so
As was mentioned above, however, OS X Server does require CD keys for installation.
Yes, but if they downloaded it via a torrent, then they did re-share it. That's the way torrents work.
The 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination applies only to the government (to the federal government directly, and to the various state governments by virtue of the 14th Amendment). Thus, you can't assert this right against a private employer, who is perfectly free to fire you for refusing to answer such questions.
Apparently, you don't understand how business works. The guy was your manager. When he said "I accept full responsibility", what he meant is that he isn't blaming you or any of his staff, nothing more. The consequences for him are between him and his manager, and if this failure mattered to the business, there probably were unpleasant consequences for him even if you don't know them. The fact that there also were unpleasant consequences for you is just a fact of life; nobody can shield you from the fact that often, whether you do well or poorly depends on the decisions of others.
If the guy was actually the owner of the business, he may not have been very smart to share the pain with his employees, but perhaps he simply didn't value you enough to do so.
Crack quite possibly, but also could have been had.... UMAX did make Macintosh clones, a loong time ago way back in 1996. Before Steve came in and killed the whole practice. At LEM they have a write up from 2002 on getting OS X to work on the hardware, so it is not too far fetched to say that you might have a UMAX computer with OS X, anything further than that is BS. Keys... never seen it on a Mac OS (never touched server, so can't say anything about it). I did recently notice that Apple has computer specific install disks that come with their computers. I had an OS X install disk from an iMac that I tried to use to upgrade a G4 with, and I got an error saying that I couldn't do that. They may have been doing this for awhile, but this is the first time I've ever ran in to it.
Artist will always make art.
Not sure why I'm answering an AC but anyways: No CD keys on OSX, and there has never been any, except for OSX server, so you are simply remembering wrong. There is a screen where you can fill in personal details to register at Apple but you can simply press Cmd-Q (Quit) on the screen to skip that.
Most businesses (in the USA) can fire you on a whim. It's called AT WILL employment.
If you are in a "protected class" (crippled, black, female, gay, etc) they must be able to prove that that's not why they fired you. So, most companies will keep a record of your misconduct (minor, major and in-between), making it all sound as bad as possible, so that they have legal cover when firing you.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We all know Apple is incredibly protective of their IP. Part of that IP is keeping everyone from just being able to get a copy of what they have in development, so as to keep some things closed and hidden until *they* want to talk about it.
Note: I AM an Apple employee, and I would expect that if I did the same, I would face the same punishment. Apple's new hire training actually goes over all of this, and states exactly the punishment for doing anything against their policy. Part of that policy is that if you use or divulge unreleased software or information without the proper authority, you *will* be fired, at the least. I'm sure if they wanted to, they could have taken this much further.
Think here for a minute, these guys downloaded an illicit copy of Leopard, knowing that just that was grounds for being fired, *and then* proceded to talk about it at work, where they were overheard. Surprising to me would be if they *didn't* get canned.
I hate sigs...
If you are in a "protected class" (crippled, black, female, gay, etc) they must be able to prove that that's not why they fired you.
Actually, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Firing is an expensive act. Apple can expect to lose the productivity the fired employee would have given to the company during the time it recruits and trains the replacement, and recruiting is hardly cheap either.
You're talking about some schmucks working in their retails stores. This is hardly on the same level as an engineer who has deep internal knowledge of things and must be debriefed so his team won't lose ground...Not to mention, as others have said, when you illicitly take something from your employer, then proceed to talk about the action while at work, then boohoo for you if you get fired...
This guy's the limit!