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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?""
"All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated," said one of the fired employees, who spoke with Think Secret on condition of anonymity.
If you are full well aware that you violated the Non-Disclosure agreement -- in addition to the ethics policy -- you signed when you came on board, then, well, you should be full well aware of the fact that all you can expect is to be fired over it. NDAs are sort of a big deal for companies. Ethics, on the other hand, are a big deal unless if you have enough power.
The summary left out a big piece of information, in my opinion. They were just retail employees, not developers. I was puzzled why some developers at Apple *didn't* have Leopard at first.
It makes perfect sense, and many legal systems historically have used this principle. A functional legal system will attach a penalty for crimes which exceeds their actual cost, proportionate to the chance of getting caught. I.e. if you destroy $100 worth of property, and confess to it immediately, you pay the $100 back, but if you have to be caught, you must pay significantly more than ($100*X/1), where X is the likelihood of apprehension in those circumstances. So if you have a 50% chance of evading punishment entirely, the fine needs to be over $200, otherwise it's rational to attempt to evade detection. If the fine is for example $500, and your chance of evading detection only 50/50, it makes good sense to immediately confess and pay $100 instead. If most people do that, then law enforcement can realistically attempt to catch the rest, but if the fine is the same amount either way, everyone attempts to evade, law enforcement has too many cases to chase, the chances of evading and the number of offenders attempting evasion start increasing in a feedback loop, and the result is uncontrolled breakdown of law, or a police state, which is sort of the same thing, and at any rate equally undesireable.
The whole plea-bargain system in this country, btw, is NOT an example of this. It actually has the opposite effect. If you confess your crime immediately, you won't be able to plea-bargain, since you have nothing to bargain with. But if you evade, not well enough to avoid arrest, but at least well enough to give your lawyer something to work with, that's how you get a plea bargain. This actually increases the incentive to evade, driving ever-increasing law enforcement requirements...
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That's all there is to corporate ethics policies, nothing more and certainly nothing on which anyone should being using to judge a person's character.
As for violating Apple's NDA - sounds like they used bittorrent to get a copy of the software from someone else who had originally made it public. That means they did not themselves take an internal copy from Apple and redistribute that. They only did what any other person on the net was capable of - go to a public website like isohunt and use the public information to get into the public torrent for the files.
Because bittorrent makes you a redistributor as well as a simple downloader, I am sure they are technically in violation of Apple's NDA - but realistically their employment at Apple had nothing to do with their downloading of a copy.
Thirdly - Apple, or rather whatever uptight member of lower middle management who actually made the call to fire these guys, is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Any retailer should be ecstatic to have store employees as interested in their own products as these guys (kids?) are. How many times have you all gone to best buy, or compusa or circuit city, etc, etc and been told absolute bullshit by some ignorant "sales associate?" When you've got employees that are so into your own products that they hunt down pre-release versions on the internet just check out for themselves, you need to keep them around, not fire them for trivialities.
Last and probably least, but it made me chuckle, did anyone else notice the plagarism at VAR Business? Their link to the story at ThinkSecret includes an unnecessary "?www.reghardware.co.uk" in the URL, which is another computer news website. Looks like a violation of corporate ethics policy to me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
When I was at the Valley Fair store for the Panther launch, a man asked me "what happens if I install this on more than one machine?" I told him "Well sir, you need to have a license for each machine." He said "Yeah, but what happens?" So, getting his drift, I answered "Well, there's nothing on that disk that's going to phone home to Apple and rat you out, but legally, that package entitles you to use it on one machine." He then said "See, that's what I love about you guys!" and he put back the single-license package and bought a 5-license family pack. He then came back to where I was stationed, and told me all about how much he hated Microsoft's product activation system for the next quarter hour or so. ;-)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Many years ago I was arrested (erroneously, but no matter) and while awaiting my turn in court I got to see the previous night's arrests being arraigned. There had been a prostitution raid, and a number of women were brought into court. One by one they would approach the bench, plead guilty, get fined $500 and be released. One woman, indignantly denying being a hooker, said she was only on her way to the corner store for groceries when she was arrested. When she pleaded not guilty the judge set bail at $1500 and remanded her to custody. Her response: "Wait a minute! If I'm guilty I pay $500 and go home? If I'm innocent I pay $1500 or go to jail? I plead guilty!" The public defender tried in vain to dissuade her, but to no avail. The judge accepted her guilty plea and she went home.
The moral: I don't know.