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SAP Admits to 'Inappropriate' Downloading of Oracle Code
netbuzz writes "SAP's CEO Henning Kagermann uses the undoubtedly lawyered term 'inappropriate download' to describe the company's questionable actions. Henning blames a rogue business unit, but there can be no mistaking the fact that Oracle caught SAP with its hand in the IP jar on this one. The legal proceedings that will follow should prove interesting. 'The admission hurts SAP's reputation in the battle with Larry Ellison's Oracle in the $56 billion market for software that manages tasks such as payroll. The rivalry between SAP and Oracle escalated when Oracle filed its March 22 lawsuit claiming SAP workers hacked into a Web site and stole software codes on a grand scale.'"
I did not have inappropriate downloads with that source code!
Oracle has pr0n embedded in it's downloads.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
They stoles codes? Oh noes!
Just a little harmless copyright infringement. There shouldn't be a problem here.
I believe that the Slashdot zeitgeist is that the word "stole" is used incorrectly here -- many Slashdotters believe that the term "to steal" should only be applied to an instance where a physical item is moved from one place to another, and should not be applied to instances of copyright infringement or unauthorized duplication -- although I presume that exceptions can be made for "theft of service," "identity theft," "you stole my thunder," "stolen kisses" and the like.
So -- was the code really stolen?
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
How likely is it that Oracle left a honeypot for SAP, MS, MySQL, or any other competitor to walk into, so that they could get rid of that competitor, or at least ruin their reputation and get some money? The fact that their was code on a website accessible to the outside world seems a little suspicious to me. Who leaves code on a publicly accessible server? I think that Oracle would at least be security savvy enough not to let their code be stolen. Anyway, not to start any conspiracy theories or anything, but I just find it a little odd.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This is illegal and perhaps fradulent (ie they claimed they were customers seeking service). But what gets me the most about this is how blisteringly stupid it is. "There's no way they could know it's us! Well, there's no way, apart from the webserver logs, that they could know it's us!".
From the article: So not only are they picking a legal fight with Oracle, pissing of the DOJ, and destroying their reputation, but they've basically shown they're not above pretending to be their customers. I bet the SAP CEO is turfed before the end of the next quarter.
Just think how many problems like this could be solved if someone went and invented some sort of free software licensing system, and everyone adopted it...
...that's stealing. People may try to justify stealing because the laws are bad (and the laws may need to be changed) but that doesn't change the fact that we steal things that don't belong to us.
We are stone-cold thieves. That's the human condition.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Then, if that ever came out, the reputational and legal implications for Oracle would be disastrous.
While it's feasible someone with "pull" at Oracle is dumb enough to try something like that, it's not within the realm of reasonable probability. Courtesy of Sorbannes-Oxley, companies have checks and balances built in to prevent just these types of things (audits and reviews), meaning that the collusive elements required to pull this off would be fairly distributed, and difficult to contain.
There was no source code on the website!
It was Technical Support documents and patches that SAP was downloading. The only "theft" here is that SAP did not have support contracts to download the patches and documents.
"Unbreakable", my ass.
sic transit gloria mundi
FTA (emphasis mine):That is most certainly the case.
And now for the snark. Wtf? PR special forces? What kind of training does that require? Going seven days without using buzzspeak or powerpoint? Writing press releases and giving presentations under hostile fire?
And, most importantly, what color are their berets?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think you qualify for a tinfoil hat license now.
Seriously, though. If they HAD paid someone to do that... Would that person not be sitting on a ton of blackmail? Oracle could never get away with it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You can't have your identity stolen, because according to the government, your identity is not within you, it's some intangible record. It can be misappropriated though, in the sense that someone other than you can use it. It's a flaw that criminals take advantage of to view private information, take your stuff, or take actions on behalf of you, and THAT is the actual problem.
As for stealing code, I think the problem is not actually that the code is stolen but that the copyright and license have been violated, and in addition they have made money from someone else's work without them knowing. If SAP is getting Oracle's customers when they would have otherwise gone to Oracle if SAP had not used Oracle's code, then SAP is altering the course of revenue that Oracle would otherwise have, and that is a crime.
Twinstiq, game news
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
And, most importantly, what color are their berets?
Blackberry.
Well, did they "remove" the code from all of oracles servers and backups or in anyway harm the original code? If so, it wasn't stolen.
If they merely copied, then no, nothing was stolen.
Why does the press refer to IP infringement as theft? It gets the common folk riled up. Remember the press is tied directly to the 'media' which desperately needs this to move their agenda along.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article summary by "netbuzz" is plain flamebait. As TFA says, SAP was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of customers. The SAP support people made "inappropriate downloads" of fixes and support documents without direct customer need, but they don't state anywhere that there was any hacking or any "stolen" code or "intellectual property" beyond what Oracle specifically made available for support purposes!
When you now refer to their work as RIMjobs, I'm SO out of here...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Information wants to be free. Does not it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
should not be applied to instances of copyright infringement or unauthorized duplication
... copyright infringement. However, when a trade secret is stolen it is ... theft. The two different types of protection have completely different laws. Copyright infringement would only apply if Oracle was distributing the code already (to people not covered by an NDA contract!), and SAP acquired its copy through participatory infringement. This is a clear-cut case of theft of trade secret.
While the term "intellectual property" has little collective meaning, there are four types of government protection that is generally classified as "IP":
Copyright
Patent
Trademark
Trade Secret
Slashdot seems unable to grasp the existence of the fourth one. When a copyright is infringed on, it is
Other recent examples of trade secret cases:
- The early release of the final episode of 24. (I would readily argue that unreleased creative works can be classified as trade secrets, since a publisher doesn't want his novel/unique ending recreated in a soap opera before his publication.)
- The Coca-Cola theft case. The secretary and others that stole the formulas and tried to sell them to Pepsi weren't convicted of copyright infringement; they were convicted of theft of trade secret, as the law applies.
(Yo! IANAL and probably used a few terms slightly wrong.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I presume somewhere in the contract between Oracle and Merck there is something which says "only your employess may use this account", and there is probably a notice on the website which states that you can only access the account with your own login. The whole setup would be used to prevent other companies from supporting Oracle installations, I guess.
It's all about preventing competition and replacing innovation with lawsuits, in my opinion.
I'm just glad that we (the human race) invented the wheel _before_ we invented copyright.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
It seems to me that this is as much an embarrassment for Oracle as it is for SAP. Don't they have that "unbreakable" os and software there? :) I guess no matter how secure your software is, if your human personel place your intellectual property on a web server or connect it into your network to the same subnet as the web server you still have huge security holes!
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
Umm this is SAP we're talking about. If you've ever used SAP you'd know there's no possible way they improved anybody else's code ;)
Was that a tongue-in-cheek comment?
All of the download activity in question was performed by TomorrowNow... a competitor to Oracle, who sells support services to Oracle application customers.
In essence, this was a competitor, stealing a company's information (IP) in order to resell it back to Oracle customers as their own brand of support, and at a lower rate. Regardless of your stance on Oracle, it's just a dirty practice, and something that SAP deserves to get hell over.
If you haven't done it yet, check out the legal filing.. it's pretty decent read.
I used to work for SAP's IT dept. TomorrowNow is a third party support provider for Oracle products, including PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. SAP purchased them to provide a support bridge for products Oracle would be sunsetting, and hopefully bring those customers to SAP's product line as they eventually migrated away from the legacy products.
Clever idea, but this sort of situation was always a concern. How do you provide support for your competitors' products without getting dangerously close to (actual or apparent) IP theft when you need to look something up or do research on those products?
SAP always took that concern very seriously and had very, very strict security policy and access restrictions in place between TN and the rest of the SAP world to try to isolate any exposure. Even still, it always felt (to me, at least) like it was just a matter of time before this happened.
And, most importantly, what color are their berets?
Why, any color you want them to be!
> Henning blames a rogue business unit
Uhhh yeah. That would be your "Industrial Espionage Division."
If the usual theft laws don't apply and the Courts etc would need to use a Copyright/Patent/"Anti-Hacking" Law to make it illegal, then it isn't theft (by legal definition). Similarly for plagiarism and fraud.
Of course if people keep having a muddled thinking about stuff then the definition of words could change and then the lawyers and judges could then interpret the laws differently.
The *AA naturally would be happy if their preferred meaning of theft is spread.
In fact, retroactive extensions of copyright terms is far closer to theft than illegal copying, because with the former, people involuntarily lose their rightful access to something (they can no longer freely use the stuff). In contrast the *AA do not automatically have access to your money (yet?), so even if copying may deprive them of your money, it's still your money in the first place.