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Court Rules Code Not Physical Property
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, who downloaded source code for the investment firm's high-speed trading system from the company's computers, was wrongly charged with theft of property because the code did not qualify as a physical object under a federal theft statute, according to a court opinion published Wednesday." Adds the submitter: "The RIAA's definitely got to give Goldman Sachs their secret recipe ..."
Code can only be created by intellectuals, like /. readers; therefore, it is Intellectual Property, not some ho-hum, run-of-the-mill property...
This is a procedural error, not a statement that 'stealing' code isn't a crime. Rest assured, legislation is being drafted that will ensure that stealing from a poor, innocent company, will earn you at least 30 years in jail and an 8 trillion dollar fine. Really, it would be less troublesome to just murder the CEO the way the laws are being written these days...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Well, duh.
Nice to see some intelligence in the courts now and then.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
That's the difference between the RIAA and Goldman Sachs. The RIAA doesn't arrest anyone or even get the state to arrest anyone. They just file lawsuits. Goldman Sachs actually wanted criminal charges.
I'm sure that Goldman Sachs will now file a copyright infringement lawsuit.
But it begs the question if anyone has ever been jailed for copyright infringement. My google skills are lacking now that I'm in my post-lunch coma...
We don't live in Shouldland.
This is as old as Napster and other file sharing technologies. The copyright holders would rather use the laws for "theft" than "copyright infringement" but that's just not going to work. Good lawyer work on the defense side I think.
Sounds like they just picked the wrong law for the charges.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
They should have gone after him for misappropriation of trade secrets.
There's no ambiguity in that case
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Court rules that downloading binary bits does not qualify as theft.
if this was Windows or some other piece of sold software then he would still be in jail
GS was using the code for internal use and not reselling it. interstate commerce does not apply then according to the court. because there was no commerce
looks like plaintiff lawyers screwed up
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So the prosecutor got the wrong criminal charge. Am I supposed to be impressed?
Goldman Sachs can still go after him and ruin his life for theft of trade secrets, copyright infringement, violations of his employee agreement, and a host of other things. That will be before another judge in civil court, folks, with different laws entirely.
Let me see: the guy downloaded a copy of the code, he didn't remove the original, right? If code were physical property, the original would have magically and necessarily vanished from GS's system the moment he downloaded it. If it was still there, code cannot be physical property. It's as simple as that. Of course, it could still be considered intellectual property, but that's something entirely different and not what the Court had to decide.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world If they all downloaded, men would see women and women would see men.
Code can only be created by intellectuals, like /. readers; therefore, it is Intellectual Property, not some ho-hum, run-of-the-mill property...
Seems like your attempt at snark was almost as successful as your spelling in the title.
But, perhaps by accident you've hit the nail on the head. This should have been charged with a copyright or trade secrets violation, or some security breach, not theft of property. Most states have laws covering criminal use of computers, as does the federal government. There was never a need to base these charges on the theft statutes.
In California (by way of example) there are specific laws concerning taking information from a computer in an unauthorized way. (Penal Code Section 499c 2.)
But the bigger question is how many others have been charged with simple Property Theft under federal law in the past for this same sort of breach (downloading source code) and paid the penalty or served the time?
To what extent does this change the landscape for computer break-ins?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Well, of course. Copyright violation isn't theft, no matter what the RIAA's commercials tell us. It's copyright violation. It may be breach of trust, and it may involve lots of stuff that can land the perpetrator in serious trouble, but it's not theft, and it's not piracy.
If the value to GS was that the algorithms in the code were secret,
then maybe making a copy did deprive GS of the whole value of the code.
(Which is a little different than things involving the RIAA.)
Yeah how about DEATH SENTENCES for that secret recipe?
Words mean things and using them improperly effects public opinion, and in turn legislation. ( just look at what happened to the term 'hacker' ).
Its simply not 'theft' its 'infringement'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
aren't stupid enough to go for a theft charge.
Let's see they could try for a theft charge that the person stole 50 songs at 99c a song on itunes for under $50 wroth of theft.
Or they chould try for a copyright infringment charge that the person aided in thousands of copies being made by sharing the files. With statutory damages of $150,000 up for grabs.
Wow, hard choice...
This is just like the judge in the UK that ruled that an electronic key was quiet different to a physical one (the infamous Prestel hacking case) - where any "reasonable" person would say they perform the same function so they are the same.
As Spock said "A difference that makes no difference, is no difference"
http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/hackethic.html
Everything is a collection of state in space.
The property concept comes from the "shell" we perceive to surround a collection of state so that we can tell things apart; an egg is a property, but is it really no different from a file?
When you download a file, an exclusive region of space must be reserved on your end to hold it, which is then synched to match the state of the source space.
It's free, if you disregard the energy required to synch the state or keep it, but someone arranged the state to begin with.
There are other applicable charges (misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, etc.) that would be applicable to the case. It's just not "theft".
It can't be "theft" if the original property is still in the hands of the original owner.
If I photocopy a document and take the copy, it's not "theft". If I take a picture of a painting, it's not "theft". Similarly, if I duplicate a digital file, it can't possibly be "theft".
Even if we posit your definition, it's not theft. The original bits on the server hard drive were not removed.
This is interesting because Vermont is trying to apply the sales tax to cloud computing. If code isn't physical property then Vermont my be up stick creek without an addler.
Code can only be created by intellectuals, like /. readers; therefore, it is Intellectual Property, not some ho-hum, run-of-the-mill property...
Seems like your attempt at snark was almost as successful as your spelling in the title.
But, perhaps by accident you've hit the nail on the head. This should have been charged with a copyright or trade secrets violation, or some security breach, not theft of property. Most states have laws covering criminal use of computers, as does the federal government. There was never a need to base these charges on the theft statutes.
In California (by way of example) there are specific laws concerning taking information from a computer in an unauthorized way. (Penal Code Section 499c 2.)
But the bigger question is how many others have been charged with simple Property Theft under federal law in the past for this same sort of breach (downloading source code) and paid the penalty or served the time?
To what extent does this change the landscape for computer break-ins?
Probably not many (given that the same ruling would have occurred before.) It was a stupid blunder to have prosecuted this as property theft since (as you pointed out correctly) there are effectives laws for this type of crime already.
So, if I make a copy of a database with user names and passwords, then set the bits of the database to all zeroes on the server; it's theft? Because I now moved a "painting" from one area of space to another?
The thing is, the original state was reconstructed somewhere else without the permission of the property owner (the one/ones who arranged the original state), and that's what theft is. It's the same as moving a painting (a collection of state) to another region of space, but it's not easy to replicate a painting, so it gets exclusivity as well, but it's still the same concept; one thing appearing somewhere else in space.
The less obvious part is that you always HAVE to destroy (change) some other region of space in order to replicate the state you want a copy of, but you don't have to destroy the state in the source space. Due to the ease at which one can copy state within the realm of digital computers, the default behavior is to leave the state in tact, or you may not even have access to modify the source space.
As with the painting; less energy is required to move the state from one location in space to another, compared to replicating the state. This naturally adds exclusivity to the state, but still, you did not have permission to move the state, and that's what you are doing when you copy; you move state (not in a cut/paste manner) from one region of space to another.
This is just the sort of affirmation GS needs;
So, if code is not a physical object, and therefore stealing it is not theft, what dose that say about the digital currency (also non-physical) they trade every day...
And how about loosing it(the money)?
Back to the point, what if he printed the code...
Because once the trade secret is out, it loses all protection.
Hence they DO NOT WANT to go for trade secret. They want to get that pony back in the shed.