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Ex-Microsoft Employee Arrested For Leaking Windows 8
SmartAboutThings (1951032) writes "Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee has been arrested yesterday for stealing and leaking company secrets. The former software architecture engineer is accused of leaking early Windows 8 builds to a French tech blogger with whom he was communicating inside a forum. The ex-Microsoft employee also stands accused of leaking some Windows 7 program files and also an internal system meant to protect against software piracy. Kibkalo is said to have leaked the Windows 8 code in the middle of 2012 because he was angry over a poor performance review."
That makes sense. I mean, if you were driving down the road leaking botulism toxin or liposuction reclamation material, you'd get arrested...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A developer stole the code he was working on? How does that work?
Because his work is not really his. It belongs to the corporation. Everything belongs to the corporation. Space, time, all matter and all energy belong to the corporation according to the corporation. They got the lawyers to make it happen. He doesn't.
Work for hire. It isn't his to begin with. Plus he probably had code he did not write there too.
It wasn't solely his work.
Thirty four characters live here.
Summary says he released early builds, then it says he leaked "Windows 8 code". Code and builds aren't the same thing. So which was it?
Better known as 318230.
Many prefer to keep these leaks in house, lest current disgruntled employees get the -itis.
In the form of a question, Alex, "Which former Microsoft employee is not up for a Snowden award?"
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I assumed it was more along the lines of crimes against humanity.
It's not pedantic there's a huge difference... take your ignorance and leave.
Another Microsoft injustice.
They told him he performed like Windows 8?
Yeah, blah, blah, corporations are evil and holding down the poor hard working honest guy. Nonsense. If I start a small corner store business making widgets, then hire you to help. I instruct you have to make my widgets, give you the tools and material to do it, pay you as we agreed, then you steal my inventory and give/sell it to someone then you are a THIEF. Just because it is software doesn't make it belong to you, and just because it is a corporation doesn't give you moral superiority.
could possibly be as bad as what Microsoft's own management is doing to Microsoft every day.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This is ridiculous. He did not deprive the owner of their property, the elements of theft have not been met. This should have been handled as a conversion claim in civil court. What I think is criminal is the corporation using their power to influence the criminal justice system.
On Slashdot, we often talk about how ridiculous it is that software is covered by copyright AND patents, but no one addresses the fact that source code is also covered under trade secret law. This is a conflict of interest and shows how screwed up our intellectual property system is. The intent of copyright is that you get protection in return for making your works public. But in the case of source code, companies get all of the protections of copyright law on that code without being required to ever actually release the code to the public. That is made evident by this exact case.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that every software development company should be forced to release its code, but I do think they should have to choose between receiving copyright protection by releasing the code or receive no copyright protection and keep the code guarded by trade secret. I can't think of any other industry that gets protection from both copyright and trade secret and I haven't heard anyone suggest why software should be made an exception.
The developer stole nothing, one element necessary for theft is intentionally depriving the owner of their property and the owner was never deprived of their property. This is conversion
Theft is in nearly every jurisdiction that I could think of defined as taking something movable from the possession of someone else with the intent to keep and the intent to deprive the original possessor of its use.
So, no. The only part that might be fulfilled is the "intent to keep", but that's not enough (if that would stick, buying something would constitute theft, because people usually buy stuff with the intent to keep).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Was it the Metro police?
Now, they can't give away full copies of Win 8. The #1 faq on HP support for my bosses new laptop I was working on 2 weeks was, can I downgrade my operating system on my laptop and install my own copy ?
Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee has been arrested yesterday for stealing and leaking company secrets..... Kibkalo is a Russian national and has worked for Microsoft for seven years; he has joined 5nine Software in August 2013 as Director of Product Management for Security and Management products after quiting his job at Microsoft.
I wonder how he worked for MS for 7 years as H1-B Visas are supposed to be limited to 6 years.
Indeed, by physical standards he stole nothing as the owner (licensor) of the software still has it.
Normally software theft can be counted in lost sales due to leakage...
.... and let's face it. Microsoft lost nothing from the leak itself.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
The developer stole nothing, one element necessary for theft is intentionally depriving the owner of their property and the owner was never deprived of their property. This is conversion
In an interesting sense, you are technically correct because the owner is not being deprived of anything. The owner, Microsoft, still has the code and is thus deprived of nothing. This fits better under industrial espionage law. Unfortunately, case law precedent makes it possible to prosecute the actor under theft statutes.
A developer stole the code he was working on? How does that work?
The same way it works if a mechanic that works on your car doesn't own your car, and the carpenter that builds my house doesn't own my house.*
*This analogy applies to everyone except Mark Zuckerberg.
Given MS's management organizations and work teams, this is not surprising
Work for hire. It isn't his to begin with. Plus he probably had code he did not write there too.
Pretty much 99% of the contracts you see in the programming world (and a lot of other industries) state that anything you develop while on company dollar you don't own nor can you take it with you. Sometimes you might even have a clause that states you can't develop anything off company time unless you get legal permission from your employer before hand.
They told him he performed like Windows 8?
The words they used were worse than Windows 8. That's what really stung! :D
The developer stole nothing, one element necessary for theft is intentionally depriving the owner of their property and the owner was never deprived of their property. This is conversion
In an interesting sense, you are technically correct because the owner is not being deprived of anything. The owner, Microsoft, still has the code and is thus deprived of nothing. This fits better under industrial espionage law. Unfortunately, case law precedent makes it possible to prosecute the actor under theft statutes.
Theft of secrets. Yes, the original blueprints, code, whatever, remains with the original owner. What has been stolen, however, was the exclusivity of the trade secrets. And trade secrets are only protected as long as they are secret.
This being Windows, 8, probably the most applicable route to prosecution is Illegal Disposal of Toxic Waste, but nevertheless...
He really didn't like having to wear the Window 8.1 "Start Menu" flair!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Everything you say is true when we're talking about general production of physical widgets -- the raw material and production equipment belong to you and your employee performs simple repetitive, non-creative actions to build the widget for you. But does that analogy also apply to intellectual property, like software? In this case, the employer pays for a chair, a desk, electricity, cube/office, and a computer with software. None of these items are terribly expensive and are one-time investments. A developer can easily purchase them himself.
The employer then essentially provides a spec (which is often just a extremely vague set of requirements) and a monthly salary. We can therefore say that most of the software is created by the creative talent and skill (the raw material and machines in your analogy) of the developers. Does the work created by the software dev still completely belong to the employer for a few thousand dollars because of a few words written in the employment contract? I think not! Most of software is written by developers with little contribution from the employer and therefore should be licensed to the employer the same way a song is licensed by the musicians to record labels, how writers license their books to publishers etc.
The exclusivity of the trade secrets was not stolen, neither party has exclusivity anymore...
The exclusivity was destroyed, since no noone has exclusivity.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Was he trying to warn the world how bad Windows 8 was?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The employer then essentially provides a spec (which is often just a extremely vague set of requirements) and a monthly salary. We can therefore say that most of the software is created by the creative talent and skill (the raw material and machines in your analogy) of the developers. Does the work created by the software dev still completely belong to the employer for a few thousand dollars because of a few words written in the employment contract? I think not! Most of software is written by developers with little contribution from the employer and therefore should be licensed to the employer the same way a song is licensed by the musicians to record labels, how writers license their books to publishers etc.
That sounds great, except that's not the contract that was agreed upon. If the agreement states that the developer is licensing the code to the employer, then great. But if a developer chooses to enter into what is currently the standard contract, then no, it doesn't work that way. If the developer enters into this type of agreement, then they can't simply decide it's going to work the other way. They can renegotiate with the employer for a different contract or leave the company.
And there is a considerable investment by the company. Not only do they need to pay for the items that you describe, but software, network expenses, and keeping those computer up to date. Chairs and desks do wear out. And rent and electricity are not one time investments. However the real expenses are in the marketing, packaging, support of the product, etc. If it was as simple as one guy sitting at a computer and coding all day, then every developer would have their own business. But it's not that simple. How many software companies go under and lose all of the invested money? Someone has to finance it all, so they are taking a big risk. If you think otherwise, you are even more naive than I would have guessed.
In that case you just stole my comment right there. If I had lawyers I could make you go to prison. Right? Of course I know the code wasn't his. But is this theft?
Tell that to all those who lost their bitcoins at Mt. Gox. It wasn't real currency, it was simply 1's and 0's right?
"Theft of trade secret" is a thing.
It's kind of an odd concept. When you accept that exclusive ownership of something is a intellectual property thing, then someone who shares it while under a contract to not do so is depriving you of that exclusion. Your trade secret is no longer secret and your advantage is taken away from you.
This stuff stems from guild laws, like the secrets of making good parmigiano-reggiano or whatever that were supposed to be kept within the organization and were only shared with you if you agreed to abide by these terms.
Personally, it seems quite awkward to use the verb "theft" in this context, and I would not choose to do so, but it is established usage. Additionally, I find the whole protected trade secret concept sort of awkward, but I might not fully grasp what it is needed to protect in a modern context.
-josh
Right. "work for hire" is the efficient way of sating that.
Don't forget support staff, project managers, meeting rooms, collaboration software, networks, servers, version control software, backups, accountants, HR staff, janitors, and security guards.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The employer is paying the software developer for the work he's doing while he is there. If you want to have your work licensed, free lance, and then license your code. Do it without the tools and time and resources provided by an employer during working hours. There are lots of projects and people who do this. Specify it in the contracts you create.
I've been in all the different stages. Started out as a developer for companies, went to independent contractor, started my own business and hiring programmers who work under me. I am paying them for their time and their skills and their creative talent, and the result of their work. Why is a programmer more entitled to something than a welder? Because one is using creativity in their brain? Then how about an engineer designing bridges or planes or cars? Should they have everything they do be licensed also?
A company that wants to keep the best and most creative people offer good benefits, the right tools and appropriate salaries. Some may get stock or profit sharing. These are the rewards, payment, for the services rendered. Now, the one point I will make is that things you do on your own time (at home, after hours, on vacation) should most certainly belong to you. I remember a case where some big company said something the engineer did on their own time belonged to them, and I find that rather repugnant.
The following is my opinion.
Greed is when you place making money above all else and don't care about the harm you do to others to achieve that. Problem is, publically traded corporations have a legal obligation to increase profits every legal way possible.
Problem is, you are totally wrong in a corporation's legal obligation. I've read the lawsuit someone used to bullshit you with. It actually says the exact opposite of your claim. Corporations have the obligation to pay dividends to shareholders based on profits, but have no government-enforced mandate to make those profits larger.
The corporation, or the majority shareholder in the case of Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., can't squander profits just because they want to. Especially in the Ford case, where Henry Ford also wanted to keep shareholders from getting a large sum of money that was going to be used to set up a competing car company.
Here is a link to the pdf of the decision. It's nine pages long, and doesn't take too long to read.
http://www.businessentitiesonl...
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
linux also was leaked ot the blogger and no charges were filed.....
see the misuse yet of your tax money?
Yea, he swiped it.
... When you get a poor performance review, it doesn't help your case to engage in activity which justifies it.
But what id did is not really stealing. The original code was there ( unless he also erased all copies that Microsoft had, then we *might* be able to call it theft ). He engaged in infringement and fraud. Both illegal acts, but different things.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So this guy took copies of classified ( proprietary ) code, then gave it to ( effectively ) the enemy ( the consumer ) and hes going to jail, not being given a Nobel prize?
How does that work, i thought we now supported this sort of act?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nothing in the linked article says that all seven years were in the US. In fact, the second linked article specifically points out that that for some portion of the period he worked from Lebanon.
Even so, he could be a Microsoft employee for seven years without ever stepping foot in the US - Microsoft is an international company with branches and subsidiaries all over the world.
Prosecute Microsoft. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You're confusing him with the guy who designed it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
While i agree it was terrible, no one at Microsoft forced you to use it. So people should be shot just for making something you personally dont approve of?
Ya. Gotcha.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The exclusivity was not stolen - it was destroyed. For the exclusivity to be stolen somebody else would now have to have the exclusivity on that code, but they cannot, because the owner still has a copy.
I submitted the piece. Yes, even that surprised me. I was expecting to hear the FBI "opened" the conversations for them, but it seems that have a "special team" for that
But does that analogy also apply to intellectual property, like software?
Yes.
I could go into all of the reasons why its "yes", but it seems a lot simpler to link you to the definition for a "work for hire":
http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrig...
Corporations have the obligation to pay dividends to shareholders based on profits, but have no government-enforced mandate to make those profits larger.
They don't have an obligation to make them larger. They have an obligation to *try* to make them as large as possible. Executives don't go to jail for failing to make a larger profit. Executives will get sued and lose a civil trial if a shareholder can convince a judge that the executives did not *try* to make the company more profitable. This is because the executives in a company are the employees of the shareholders, and presumably the shareholders hired the executives under under a contract that mandates the executives would do the job they were hired for, which undoubtedly includes maximizing profits.
This is similar to hiring someone to tile your floor, paying them up front, and then finding out they never did anything. This is breach of contract.
The employer then essentially provides a spec (which is often just a extremely vague set of requirements) and a monthly salary. We can therefore say that most of the software is created by the creative talent and skill (the raw material and machines in your analogy) of the developers. Does the work created by the software dev still completely belong to the employer for a few thousand dollars because of a few words written in the employment contract? I think not! Most of software is written by developers with little contribution from the employer and therefore should be licensed to the employer the same way a song is licensed by the musicians to record labels, how writers license their books to publishers etc.
Isn't the developer in this case more like the builder/engineer who takes an architect's vision and merely implements it?
In most large organisations the developers are not the UI designers and although their code may well be creative, they are not the ones behind the creative work as a whole.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
We could spend years explaining to everyone what intellectual property is and what a law is and what a contract is.
The reality is people that don't get it never will. Do you download from TPB, at least admit it is stealing. It doesn't mean you should stop.
IP laws were originally designed to protect artists, inventors, innovation, and creativity.
These peoples only source of income, to live and feed their children was there artwork or inventions.
Put yourself in the situation. You have a software program you invented. You sell it and use the money to buy food and pay rent. Now someone copies it and sells it for a lower cost, maybe even claiming to be you (couterfiet).
You are fucked and your family will starve.
If only there were some laws to protect you.
Fast forward 20 years. Now you have employees. Because you grew and were able to compete, and became a corporation - does this mean you should not have those same rights not to get fucked over by theifs?
And this guy, even if he helped build windows - there is no way he could have done it all. If he did own it because he coded it, so does his fellow coworkers that helped. He stole from them too.
In most large organisations the developers are not the UI designers and although their code may well be creative, they are not the ones behind the creative work as a whole.
That's a strange way of putting it. UI design is a full time job. Many software developers would be quite capable of creating good UI designs (and from what I see at times, an awful lot better than paid UI designers), but not in their spare time when they have a full time job writing code. Many UI designers just don't have the mental capacity to imagine how users will use or want to use their software and get from one step to another. They live in a dream world where users do exactly what the designer wants them to do, while software developers know that they don't.
They don't have an obligation to make them larger. They have an obligation to *try* to make them as large as possible.
Actually, no. They have an obligation to do what the corporation was intended to do. Which may not involve making money at all. Now being successful and making money usually helps you doing all kinds of things, so is probably a good way to achieve whatever you want to achieve, but nothing says that making profits has to be the purpose of any corporation.
And then there's the example of Apple, who became the most profitable company outside the oil industry without ever having the goal of making profits. While companies that tried to improve profits every quarter are sinking exactly because of that.
...got a poor performance review.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Does the work created by the software dev still completely belong to the employer for a few thousand dollars because of a few words written in the employment contract?
No. It belongs to the employer due to a variety of laws, including the ones that this programmer is accused of breaking. If he doesn't want to write code for Microsoft, he shouldn't take their paycheck and then write code they specifically asked him to do, which in the modern world results in the employer owning the code (absent any other agreements.)
Most of software is written by developers with little contribution from the employer and therefore should be licensed to the employer the same way a song is licensed by the musicians to record labels
If programmers were treated as poorly as recording artists then we wouldn't have software. Well, not commercial software. Too bad you know nothing of the recording industry. Granted, it's possible to not get screwed by working with an indie label. But is Microsoft equivalent to that? Well, no. No it isn't. It's one of the great evils of the computing world, and everyone knows that.
Zero. Sympathy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the difference is minor and trivial.
lets say i stole your laptop then jumped on a motorcycle and sped off later i hit something and pancake on the street your (former) laptop stays with the bike and gets blown up with the bike. Im not going to get arrested for destroying your laptop im going to get arrested for STEALING your laptop (assuming i do not spend the next couple days bleeding out).
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> They have an obligation to do what the corporation was intended to do.
And when a corporation is founded as a commercial entity, its express purpose is profit. The corporate charter may espouse numerous other principles, but a commercial business is legally a profit-generating endeavor---everything else is window dressing.
Henry Ford wanted to lower the price of automobiles and employ more workers in order to bring the benefits of industrialization to all people in exchange for lower profits---and the court told him he could not.
In the US, the board of directors has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. That duty is ensuring profit, either through dividends or stock valuations. They have no conflicting fiduciary duties to the general public or human welfare.
> Which may not involve making money at all.
I laughed out loud. If we're talking about publicly-traded corporations in the US---and in the case of Microsoft, we are---you are absolutely wrong.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I'm guessing the word "Trustworthy" in "Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Investigations" is a homonym.
while
Close, but no cigar. While I'm no civil engineer, most buildings are not all that different, other than the appearance (UI). So if you have tens of thousands of homes/buildings in a city, the engineer/architect solve roughly the same set of problems in designing all those buildings. Those tens of thousands of buildings can be reduced to a few dozen types of buildings (here, a type is similar to a C++ class). So the job of creating a new building in the city would be to mainly tweak a previously designed template to obtain the final blueprint.
In summary, the building construction often requires solving the same set of problems over and over again -- a job of skill but not much creativity/invention. That's not true of software... if enough people need a problem solved it will be implemented in just a handful of libraries and not repeated thousands of times like in construction.
In a software analogy to construction, a software developer designs and builds an automated or a semi-automated robot that can construct a certain type of building. If the owner of this robot paid just the usual fixed salary that engineers are paid, the owner would profit tremendously and unfairly. For eg., It costs the robot owner 50 man years to build the robot. But once it's built, it only takes 3 man years to maintain it or build a new one. Now the robot owner charges 15% less per building than human builders and captures 50% of the market. It's a big win for the employer (robot owner whose profits multiple times more than human builders) and his customers (cheaper building). The robot owner is going to make tens of thousands of times more money than his R&D cost for the coming decades. The civil engineers and architects will continue to make money by repeatedly creating new variations of their building templates. However, the software home construction guys will soon be out of a job unless they can improve the robot some more because the compensation structure sucks -- it doesn't pay for repeating the same task over and over again like most other professions.
In summary, the engineers should get paid a royalty for every building built by their robot. Most employees get paid to repeat the same task over and over -- barbers, bus drivers, musicians playing the same set of songs, cooks, shopkeepers etc. The creative people like software devs, authors, music composers, painters, movie makers, food recipe makers etc. can't repeat the exact same thing over and over again. This class of workers should be compensated by royalty, not fixed salary.
If you want to get technical, in the classic torts, you are correct that this is theft and not conversion. However, he's not being charged in a tort case. He's being charged for a violation of the Economic Espionage Act, and the relevant section is called "theft of trade secrets." (18 USC 1832)
So, you can either go informal, in which case "theft" is a reasonable, common word for taking someone else's stuff without their permission. Or you can go legalistic, in which case, the charge being applied to him is called "theft" as a matter of statutory law.
Either way, checkmate.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
> And when a corporation is founded as a commercial entity, its express purpose is profit.
You are DEAD WRONG.
Go to your state's archives and look up the number of corporations which are created each month (you will be amazed at how many!), with many of them being for example music and movie label companies which are intended to actually LOSE money, acting as tax shelters for the shareholding companies and/or individuals. There are also many corporations set up solely as protective entities (holding companies for properties, etc.), registered as "commercial entities" and yet, they are not, really. They are more often than not liability-limiting creations rather than profit generation entities.
Many corporations are actually created to introduce a net loss in the world of accounting, or to simply limit the liability of incurring financial losses. Also, there are certain relationship types which neocons consider DoublePlusUnGood (for exmple: polygamy/plural marriage, or in some jurisdictions, gay marriages) which are worked around by the "partners" (spouses) creating a legal fiction to act as a holding company, an entity to provide group health benefits, own shared belongings, handle wills, and so on.
Profit is not the only reason one might wish to incorporate.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Actually, no. They have an obligation to do what the corporation was intended to do.
Maybe you should try reading my whole post. If you did you might have gotten to the part where I said:
This is because the executives in a company are the employees of the shareholders, and presumably the shareholders hired the executives under under a contract that mandates the executives would do the job they were hired for, which undoubtedly includes maximizing profits.
Making profit is not a goal of Apple? So they are using wage slave in underdeveloped countries in order to maximize what exactly? Suicides?
While companies that tried to improve profits every quarter are sinking exactly because of that.
I don't know why you equate "maximizing profit" with "maximizing profit every quarter". Nor do I understand why you seem to be equating Apple "Not trying to maximize profit every quarter" with Apple "never had the goal of making profits".
1. maximizing profits != making a profit. It can also mean minimizing losses (minimizing negative profit).
2. You are allowed to fail at maximizing profits. (i.e. you are allowed to suck) You are however responsible for upholding your end of a contract with your employer saying you will try to maximize profits.
3. Even in the examples you cite for when corporations may wish to lose money for some reason that undoubtedly involves exploiting some kind of tax loophole, the greater purpose is to maximize profits overall (i.e. the point of exploiting a tax loophole).
Microsoft own the server/service and the users agree to the Terms and Conditions of use.
These include the right to rummage through the emails, delete stuff at will and terminate the account, all without notice.
This with Microsoft complaining about Google using gmail information for targeting ads.
You are conflating copyright infringement (downloading from TPB) with commercial copyright infringement (selling copies). Don't. It makes you look ridiculous. Stealing is depriving others of their property. Copying something deprives no-one of their property. Downloading from TPB is as much stealing as looking at someone is kidnap.
Look up work-for-hire. My employer is legally considered the author of all the software I write on the clock. (Whether they have any right to software I write on my own time, with my own tools, is determined by the employment agreement and the country or (US) state I work in.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We could spend years explaining to everyone what intellectual property is
The term "intellectual property" is a propaganda term meant to group unrelated things together, and falsely equate them to property.
Do you download from TPB, at least admit it is stealing.
Why would I admit that? Why don't you admit that it's not stealing? You do realize that even the law itself doesn't say it's stealing, right? And it's not as if you can't get completely legal things as TPB, so merely downloading from TPB means nothing. The word "stealing" is highly inappropriate; you're just confusing people who don't understand copyright even further.
Put yourself in the situation. You have a software program you invented. You sell it and use the money to buy food and pay rent. Now someone copies it and sells it for a lower cost, maybe even claiming to be you (couterfiet).
Potential profit was never yours to begin with, as it's not something you can truly have. Since you promote copyright and its ilk, you must be anti-free market. Funny how you talk about poor artists and such, but all you people really want is to control others through censorship, and to control what they do with their own equipment.
Who modded this nonsensical propaganda up?
[End Of Line]
the difference is minor and trivial.
No, it isn't. It's what makes the difference between being correct and being fuckin' wrong.
And anyone who thinks they should be entitled to exclusivity of such things is a moron.
[End Of Line]
the same way a song is licensed by the musicians to record labels
You're hilarious, really. Most big labels do it the other way around - musicians are allowed performance licensing rights for their own work, while the work itself is property of the label.