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Apple Intern Reportedly Leaked iPhone Source Code (theverge.com)
Earlier this week, a portion of iOS source code was posted online to GitHub, and in an interesting twist, a new report from Motherboard reveals that the code was originally leaked by a former Apple intern. The Verge reports: According to Motherboard, the intern who stole the code took it and distributed it to a small group of five friends in the iOS jailbreaking community in order to help them with their ongoing efforts to circumvent Apple's locked down mobile operating system. The former employee apparently took "all sorts of Apple internal tools and whatnot," according to one of the individuals who had originally received the code, including additional source code that was apparently not included in the initial leak. The plan was originally to make sure that the code never left the initial circle of five friends, but apparently the code spread beyond the original group sometime last year. Eventually, the code was then posted in a Discord chat group, and was shared to Reddit roughly four months ago (although that post was apparently removed by a moderation bot automatically). But then, it was posted again to GitHub this week, which is when things snowballed to where they are now, with Apple ordering GitHub to remove the code.
The plan was originally to make sure that the code never left the initial circle of five friends, but apparently the code spread beyond the original group sometime last year.
5 people can keep a secret, if 4 of them are dead.
Hmm. It's almost as if when a company asks to to sign a confidentiality agreement, they fuckin mean it, and for good reason.
Breakfast served all day!
It will be a warning to the next Thief.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Let's say you're an artist that makes a popular webcomic. Someone got ahold of the entire corpus of years of your work, and posted it on their own site, making it available for anyone who wants it (regardless of whether they try to monetize it themselves).
So when you discover this, you're going to say "OH WELL, Looks like it's out there! I guess I'll just sit on my thumbs and accept it because I have no recourse!"
Fucking NOPE. Apple has invested billions in research and development in their source code.
I'm not sure who taught you to believe that you're entitled to other peoples' work for free without their consent, but where I come from that's called SLAVERY, you stupid fuck.
Apple is completely within their rights to pursue this as far as necessary, and to sue anyone who's been a part of it for everything they're worth, and have them locked up for YEARS.
That wasn't a "cute little mistake". IANAL but I will be shocked if this can't be prosecuted under corporate espionage laws.
This kind of bullshit enrages me (could you tell?), and no, you're not part of some "empowered" culture when you fucking steal from others. I hope they throw the book at this piece of shit.
I guess they'll have to think of an alternative to security by obscurity.
Hopefully there are no glaring security holes revealed in the code.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Name the intern so other companies can know who NOT to hire.
You want to have a position that involves trust, then live up to it. Break that trust and live with those results too.
But this intern needs to go to jail for a very long time. Theft is theft, and it was code for a multi billion dollar product.
Too many millennials cheat their way through everything in life with little to no ramifications. This is stealing no matter how you slice it. I'm no Apple fan but this person needs to be made an example. Prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Yeah I get it, but outside of IP rights, there is the whole school of though on that OS code should be open source and free to promote OS development, so you'll find people that go "Hurray! it's a bit less proprietary now", which is naive, but the subject manner here is well above a webcomic's simple IP model and probably pre-dates webcomics lol.
There's been a massive leak of the Android codebase, too. If you're quick you can download a copy here: https://tinyurl.com/4x7rfdd
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes, to distribute it more anonymously.
You grab the shit, you stash it on multiple burned cds/dvds/bdrs. You hide at least one copy outside of your possession, and ensure the others are places that wouldn't be found during a search warrant.
In 5 years you dig up those copies and release them, whether to friends, or to the community.
Almost nowhere keeps accurate enough documentation to trace back a source leak that happened 5 years ago, and even if they did it will usually no longer be worth pursuing even if it is. Furthermore in the case of potential security exploits others, such as the jailbreaking community, can use, it ensures they will have avoided scrutiny, barring a different leak, for at least that long, ensuring more hardware has the potential of being jailbroken.
Now mind you this is Apple we're talking about, so a year or two and leak is probably about as long as a device would retain relevance, while also helping ensure the next generation or two might still have similar flaws left in their code that you could leverage for jailbreaking them as well.
Assuming this stays out of criminal court, this kid's salary will be garnished for a lifetime as he tries to pay back the judgement against him.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Well obviously this is a hot button issue for you personally (and probably for many others as well), but OP wasn't making any kind of statement that it was OK to post the code. It was merely an observation that it's too late to do anything effective. The code is in the wild. NOTHING is going to change that. By now, it's on dozens, if not thousands, of hard drives and spreading even as I type this.
Does that make it OK? Nope. Does it not being OK change anything? Double nope. But OP wasn't trying to say it was OK, just that the Streisand Effect is a lesson that all companies have to learn (and I would add "sometimes many times").
Whee now I have your secret code, jailbreaks for all next week.
The stupid is on so many levels here.
So, after you had your internship, for which you most assuredly signed NDA and other legal documents ... you decided you'd release code to outside people with the express intent of allowing them to hack iOS devices? And then that code is now widely spread to a public site because your greedy stupid little friends can't keep a secret?
This idiot is now seriously fucked, because the civil lawsuits which are going to rain down on him are going to pretty much ruin his life.
And, to be perfectly honest, if you're such a stupid little shit to do something like this, you deserve it.
Apple is going to eat this kid alive. God but people are fucking morons.
Good like finding another job ever again, dumbass.
That school is thought is all well and good (and I actually support the idea), but it's ONLY appropriate if the work is donated voluntarily, as is the case with open source projects.
Taking the work of others without consent is unacceptable.
I think the point is, the code is out there. Apple can't get it back.
The hackers that care will get a hold of it, one way or another, and Apple can't do much about it. Especially outside of the United States.
Hell, the hackers that care almost certainly *already* have the code.
The reason to respond is to preserve your use of the copyright. If you're losing some value from your work by it being posted, then you may respond.
Apple isn't taking this down to protect the copyright. The take down is to prevent knowledge. They're not losing any sales to the code; they're losing sales to the information that can be gained from it. The difference is significant.
And now this intern has ruined life for all other interns in the company - past, present, and future. I'm sure all of the current interns have gotten a "leak like this guy and we'll ruin you" speech by now, and I bet web crawlers are already trained on past employees and interns looking for a hint of anything similar. Future interns will have to sign away even more of their rights, be locked down even harder, and feel like a prisoner while they're working. Thanks, asshole, for ruining the intern experience for everyone.
So when you discover this, you're going to say "OH WELL, Looks like it's out there! I guess I'll just sit on my thumbs and accept it because I have no recourse!"
Can you stop mass market distribution? Yes. Can you stop underground distribution in iPhone cracking circles? Hell no. This is mostly a show to act like they're taking it seriously and law enforcement is cracking down on it and whatever but... nope. It's still security theater, it's not going to protect against any of the actual threads.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I dispute your twisted view of the world. The intern copied a work. He didn't steal shit. Making a copy of something is the opposite of stealing. It's ensuring you don't have to deprive another of anything to gain the benefit thereof. If he had "stolen" something tangible the owner would have been deprived of said work. You can steal a painting hanging on a wall, but you can't call taking a photograph of said painting stealing because that painting still hangs on that wall after you've left.
I created artistic works in the 1990s and sold access to a subscription service. My work was routinely copied. This is not theft. Theft deprives another of a tangible good. When my work was copied I nor anybody else was deprived of anything.
After I graduated from college I went on to produce functional works. I released the complete set of source code to everything I produced. The user was free under the license to do pretty much anything they wanted and while the license prohibited certain things I'd never have pursued a lawsuit against anybody who violated the terms. If anything the license while legally binding is more of a philosophical guideline considering there is no practical enforcement anywhere in the world. I know the one person whose actually conducting "enforcement" too personally.
I also currently am involved in the production of a highly successful 10+ year syndicated radio show that airs on close to two hundred stations in the US and free to air satellite around the world. Plus a large online audience. I have also begun production of a TV show.
If you think Apple has invested billions in research and development your deluding yourself. Apple's done little more than copy others since day one. The company is the business of marketing- not research and development. Moving from a standards compliant wifi card to a proprietary wifi card is hardly worthy of being called research and development and a lot of the "advancement" is little more than the company being the first to adopt or otherwise getting to the purchasing of other companies first. Google and Microsoft and Amazon and everybody do similarly. It's standard operating procedure in the "tech" arena. The number of companies doing actual research and development in any area is extraordinarily tiny. I know because it's my day job to investigate the technology Apple's implementing.
I'm probably one of the most successful people from a business perspective you'll ever be privileged to interact with. Grow up- and figure out a business model that works for you rather than blaming others for your own failures. Business models don't always work and being angry with others who don't support your business model will just turn you into an angry disgruntled person as you clearly already are.
Well obviously this is a hot button issue for you personally (and probably for many others as well), but OP wasn't making any kind of statement that it was OK to post the code. It was merely an observation that it's too late to do anything effective. The code is in the wild. NOTHING is going to change that. By now, it's on dozens, if not thousands, of hard drives and spreading even as I type this.
Does that make it OK? Nope. Does it not being OK change anything? Double nope. But OP wasn't trying to say it was OK, just that the Streisand Effect is a lesson that all companies have to learn (and I would add "sometimes many times").
It's a shame when you have to remind an aging group of techies what pragmatic adult reasoning looks like.
That was the longest verbal masturbation I've ever been witness to.
Clearly, you think you're amazing. Also, you apparently think stealing is okay.
Making copies of a work *without* permission of the owner is a crime. Unless you REALLY feel that way, in which case I'll just help myself to copies of your social security card, birth certificate, credit card number, and other tidbits. After all, it's not REALLY stealing if it's just a copy of your information right? And if I sell those copies to someone else and make money from doing so, I haven't REALLY done something wrong, right? After all, it's just a copy, not an appreciable good.
What THEY do with it isn't *my* fault.
Also, fuck you.
LARP LARP LARP
Fuck off, kiddo, this isn't Reddit.
Maybe hire a more experienced software engineer next time.
You're thinking of trademarks, not copyrights.
All this time I thought it walked out on it's own!
Yep, but all those people committing piracy, are looking forward to a glorious future working at industries that depend upon IP, because who else should one trust with such things?
When copyright returns to a sane length, THEN you can make this argument. Until then all IP is up for grabs. Copyrights are social bargains, and we have been getting the shaft on that for a good long while now.
Good-bye
I'm pretty sure the source code for an Operating System is of sufficient length to be safely considered proprietary information (copyrighted or not).
Until then all IP is up for grabs.
Try making this argument in a courtroom without getting laughed out of the building.
Come on. That was an INCREDIBLE tribute to himselfs. I only read the first sentence in each blob, but I could see this epic Tale of Himselfs spanned many, many detailed years that nobody asked about. And I love the finish too. Probably one of most, brilliantest, someone you'll ever, anywhere. Ever.
So I take it that means you can't steal electricity, cable television, someone else's internet bandwidth, or any number of other things with no physical or tangible component?
A strict definition of theft may require that the person who has had something stolen has been deprived of something of value to them, but there's no requirement in the definition that the something necessarily be tangible, only that it has value.
And its value doesn't even need to be objective or monetary... it only needs to be valuable to the person who had lawful jurisdiction over whatever was stolen.
Consider copyright, for example, which is supposed to entail the exclusive right to control who may make copies of a work. Exclusive, by definition means that nobody else is doing it, so when someone makes an unauthorized copy, they are actually depriving the copyright holders of some measure of their exclusivity of control on the copying of that work. Whether one thinks that copyright holders should not have this amount of control is irrelevant.. it is the entire point of copyright, and because copyright is protected by law, the copyright holder is recognized as the lawful possessor of the exclusivity it entails. Once infringed, the copyright holder's exclusivity is dilluted, and is never as strong as it was before.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He didn't steal shit. Making a copy of something is the opposite of stealing.
Try that out with classified information. At least Snowden realized the implications of what he was doing -- you'll be able to argue about it for 25 years or so in a federal prison.
Who's going to court? Lul.
Your story is a bit inaccurate.
The bootloader code is an extremely small portion (a few MB of compiled code) at most. This is like some hacker stealing a frame or two out of one comic.
Would the author go after them? Maybe... I suspect it's not worth their time or effort
Prison my ass. Fuck apple. Obviously they take their own security just as seriously as their customers.
You're right. This is apple.slashdot.org and the sponsors of this sub-slashdot are really fucking mad.
How dare somebody disobey the Apple.
"But I never would have bought it anyway". There that takes care of the "value" in Slashdot eyes.
WTF, has Slashdot be overtaken by a big herd of fucking Eagle Scouts now?
Apple has rolled out a brigade of defenders, that is for certain.
Won't someone think of the shareholders?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We're not talking about an artist, this is a corporation that paid thousands of people to produce products and services, they don't get extra for giving their brainchildren, also, even if someone manages to get the code, Apple have lots of more resources to address the problem.
The worst case would be if they don't know or won't do anything to resolve the problem.
Apple is slow to resolve these kind of things but I'm pretty sure they will do this faster.
Crappie is a shit out ass company. You can lick Tim Cock's butthole as much as you want. The fact remains - they hire completely incompetent idiots to do the job.
They've always been known to have a brigade of smelly apologists on a retainer.
Their apologies are easily recognizable, their arguments are out ass and no logic, and exhibit signs of suicidal cocksuckers.
That's actually rather the whole point. If one does not believe that copyright holders should have that sort of control and that enshrining it in law is in fact redefining things like theft to mean the exact opposite of what they otherwise mean, then clearly one can have a moral compunction against it and the misuse of that word. It'd be no different if people were enshrined with the power to kill people, their duty was called executioners, and any interference was called murder because it was "murdering" society. Just because it's in the law doesn't make it right. Just because people twist words to mean something entirely opposite doesn't make it right.
PS - My issue is precisely that copyright enforcement is precisely about increasing rivalry by artificially limiting supply. This is the same sort of logic that called it interstate commerce when a farmer in a state who engaged in no interstate commerce was still bound by it because any crops he raised and sold in state would effect interstate commerce between the state and other states. Yes, there's something relationship there. Yes, you can sort of make an analogy of interstate commerce. But it's not interstate commerce and that's not what the Constitution meant. Same thing with copyright and theft.
You want to call it infringement and enforce it, at least use the right terminology. The whole reason "theft" is being used is precisely because real theft can cause substantial harm depriving a person of the things they already have; it also is a rather person thing to lose one's personal possessions. Copyright infringement just isn't the same thing. People know this. More importantly, you aren't going to pull on heartstrings or get people to accept nearly the same level of bullshit laws for copyright infringement vs theft. If we're going to just go straight to calling analogous the worst things we can think of, we might as go straight to the absurd: copyright infringement is serial rape (because you're raping profits) and offenders are serial murders (because you're depriving the makers of profit for food, so they'll starve). There's a reason reducto ad absurdium is brought up so often.
FTFY
Mod parent up!!
He was just told to 'go make some copies' without further instructions, and proceeded to copy some random files onto a public-facing website. Not his fault he didn't understand.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Where I come from, forced labour is slavery.
And where I come from, freedom is the mechnism by which you may choose to put forth effort which may or may not be worthwhile.
Which country defines slavery as not being paid for a bad choice of freedom? Because I shall avoid that country, it sounds so fucked up.
Spend more time reading what is written, not what you think is written.
The argument was made that the copyright term is too long generally.
The law does not determine morality.
Some believe that unjust laws must be confronted with civil disobedience until they change.
Getting laughed out of a building is not a typical judgement in a court case, civil or criminal.
You can do anything you want with your work. However you do not have the right to dictate my actions when it comes to creating and distributing original content. And your concept and out right dismissal of the R&D efforts responsible for creating the technology we use today is way off base. "If you think Apple has invested billions in research and development your deluding yourself. Apple's done little more than copy others since day one". This wins the stupidest comment of the day. If this is what you believe then every single one of your ideas laid out in your post become suspect and meaningless due to the fallacy factor.
And there are all type of business models but once again you do not a have the right to dictate the business model I chose to operate in.
If this guy gets caught, the punishment he gets will make him wish he was "just" a rapist.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Stopping mass market distribution has a meaningful amount of value. People/organizations do things with full knowledge it won't eliminate a problem, but will reduce it. Besides, I contend that a takedown to GitHub has increased the publicity any meaningful amount. The story was that it was available for a short period of time smack dab in GitHub. The whole horses having left the barn metaphor breaks down .. some horses are still in there, might leave tomorrow, it's an easy action to take, so it's reasonable to close it again.
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Making copies of a work *without* permission of the owner is a crime."
No it's not, it's a civil dispute.
I created artistic works in the 1990s and sold access to a subscription service. My work was routinely copied. This is not theft. Theft deprives another of a tangible good.
Really? By that definition, rape is not a crime. A woman who got raped is the same form physically as she was before the rape. What tangible thing did she lose due to the raping? Nothing, so based on your asinine argument, rape is not a crime.
IP copying is theft and you're a liar and a thief.
So I take it that means you can't steal electricity, cable television, someone else's internet bandwidth, or any number of other things with no physical or tangible component?
If you steal electricity a power plant has to make more, it's consumed just like the water from the tap. How is that not a physical, tangible resource? While the signal in a cable loop is passing through anyway, you're only listening in like turning on your radio. Unauthorized use of bandwidth is displacing other people's traffic, though I think this is more like identity theft / fraud where you trick an ISP into making virtual deliveries instead of physical deliveries from Amazon.
A strict definition of theft may require that the person who has had something stolen has been deprived of something of value to them, but there's no requirement in the definition that the something necessarily be tangible, only that it has value.
I think you've confused "strict" with "casual" because we do use it about anything of value that we've been deprived of or taken without permission, but "he stole my girlfriend" or "he stole a kiss" has never been a criminal offense. Unless he literally kidnapped her, but that still wouldn't be theft. And in these #metoo times maybe the latter will be soon, but anyway... Theft in a legal sense has always been about ownership and possession.
Consider copyright, for example, which is supposed to entail the exclusive right to control who may make copies of a work.
Yes so when you created a new right you also created a new crime violating that right - copyright infringement. Legally, it's not theft. And despite the newspeak, IPR is not property. But like all things of value we casually use words like that, same way we say "he stole the combination to my safe" even though it was more likely copied. But when you're trying to use that casual definition in a legal or moral debate you're only making a fool of yourself.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
By increasing copyright length to life + 70 years, the courtrooms have neglected the public interest basically said "fuck you" to the population. It's therefore our duty to reply "well fuck you too" and share the data love wherever it may be found.
So I take it that means you can't steal electricity, cable television, someone else's internet bandwidth, or any number of other things with no physical or tangible component?
Many years ago, in Germany they had the very first case of someone stealing electricity. At a time ages ago when not everybody had electricity supplied to their home, someone connected their home to their neighbour's supply. Got caught, and it turned out it was not illegal to any of the laws in place at the time.
They created a new law.
There was also in the 1970's a first case of computer fraud. It turned out that with fraud, you needed to convince _a human_ of something that isn't true. The person _almost_ got away with it, except at the very end _a human_ signed a checque made out to him, based on false data supplied by a computer. If that checque had been printed by the computer without a human involved, he would have got away with it. They changed the laws.
The intern copied a work. He didn't steal shit. Making a copy of something is the opposite of stealing.
I stopped reading right here.
I hear Hillary crackling somewhere.
I too take issue with this guy's use of "tangible", but you list of examples intangible goods aren't all "stealable". Theft is the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it". Looking at your examples:
> electricity
Ok, yes, you can steal electricity. If someone is paying by the kWh, and I take some kWhs, then they will get a higher bill and you are depriving them of the stuff they would have been able to buy without your theft. If they have a finite amount of kWhs (e.g. they are running from a battery) and I take some, they have less for whatever use they wanted to use it for.
> cable television
In my apartment, cable is run to every room of every unit, and those who pay for it just hook up their box(s). Some enterprising folks got together and got one "multiroom" subscription and shared it amongst themselves. Are they stealing? They are certainly depriving the cable co of revenue and are in breach of their ToS, but if none of them had cable there wouldn't be "more cable for other people to use". You could argue that the cable co would have more money to upgrade infrastructure and create content, but given that they've embezzled billions of public funds that were given to them for infrastructure and all their content is cheap, terrible reality shows, I don't think that's true.
> someone else's internet bandwidth
Now this is really interesting! At a previous property, I'd inherited an absurdly expensive to install (but thankfully pretty reasonable to rent!) synchronous 100MB pipe in a small rural village. I ran a wifi network for strangers to use (on a separate network from my actual gear, or course). The contract stated that I wasn't allowed to make my connection publicly available, so it was named "qwerty" and had a password of "12345". There was no invitation for people to guess it, but more than a few did. Were they stealing from me? Was I stealing from my ISP (who were contracted for a no-contention, full bandwidth service whether I used it 0% or 100%)? Was it not stealing because I didn't care? Or because I had throttled it so that it never once got in the way of my own use? Was I somehow stealing from the crappy 2Mbps ADSL provider that was the only other option in that area by turning a blind eye to people using my connection? How about if I hadn't intended to allow other's access, but they did, but I never noticed because I never/rarely used all the bandwidth? If I'd have been in the dark about it and my neighbours were thrasing it so hard that I couldn't use my own internet, then I'd say that that was theft, despite the fact that it didn't permanently deprive me of anything. But in the actual case, I don't think anything was stolen, perhaps in despite the intentions of the people guessing the password.
And back to the TFA, is leaking private sourcecode theft? The only property of the good that has changed is it's confidentiality. Assuming he had legitimate access to the source, he had the right to look at it, but not distribute it. It's a definite breach of trust on his part, knowing Apple a breach of contract that they would pursue in civil courts, and it almost certainly runs afoul of laws protecting trade secrets, but I don't think it's theft to share something you have legitimate access to with other people. Definitely illegal and morally scuzzy, but not theft.
In your latter example, a human is still being deceived... specifically, anyone who has jurisdiction over the funds in the account, since those people are making the (invalid) assumption the computer is only going to remove authorized funds, and of course one would have to deceive the computer to otherwise access such funds. The fact that this assumption is invalid doesn't change the fact that it's still stealing any more than it's not stealing to take a convertible that doesn't belong to you if the keys are sitting in plain view on the passenger's seat. By the transitive property, in your example, a person committing such an act is still deceiving the authorized account holder(s). The law only needed to be made explicitly clear on this point so that no further potential misinterpretation could apply.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Rofl faggot
... so he never works in silicon valley again!
If you take something from someone else, that's stealing. Copyright infringement amounts to the taking of some of the exclusivity that the copyright holder otherwise had to control over who can make copies of the work, so the infringer is stealing that from the copyright holder. Full stop.
Now you can argue that one has no compunction against stealing when it might serve what they could argue is some greater and more important good, and suggest that there is no moral dilemma involved with theft in such a case, but as far as I can see, the people who insist that copyright infringement isn't theft are generally more interested in rationalizing why it might be morally okay to commit copyright infringement while simultaneously claiming to find stealing immoral are actually just unable to verbally express how stealing, as an action, might not necessarily be morally wrong at all, but instead it depends on the context in which it was done.
We can agree that murder, after all, is morally wrong, but there is nothing immoral about killing, by itself... it depends on the context in which it was done. Killing in self-defense, for example, is not generally seen as wrong, especially when use of such retaliative force was justified. Stealing, one could argue, is a similar amoral act, and the rightness or wrongness of it depends on what, exactly, is being stolen, and the context of the entire thing.
But all of this doesn't mean copyright infringement isn't stealing. And suggesting that it isn't probably only means that someone is trying to rationalize why it's morally acceptable to commit copyright infringement when they think stealing is wrong.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
***APPLE FANBOY DETECTED*** Remember how Windows software source code is constantly stolen, and it doesn't affect them one Iota? They'll just make a new version, problem solved. The nice thing about a sourcecode breach on an established project, is that 1. it can be scoured for bullshit. 2. sometimes people can learn to fix their fuckups 3. helps the community as a whole, because the average consumer doesn't give two sh*ts about source code.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
You don't steal electricity, you steal energy, which is certainly tangible since it cannot be copied, nor created nor destroyed. So that's a shit examble basically.
Really? Let's try that again.
Let's say you're a programmer that contributes code to the BSD project. Steve Jobs got ahold of the entire corpus of years of your work, and relicensed it as their own proprietary work, making it to monetize for themselves.
So when you discover this, you're going to say "OH WELL, Looks like it's out there! I guess I'll just purchase a copy of my own software because I was too stupid to license it otherwise and therefore have no recourse!"
Fucking NOPE. Apple has rolled billions worth of BSD research and development into their source code.
I'm not sure who taught Steve Jobs to believe that he's entitled to other peoples' work for free without their consent, but where I come from that's called SLAVERY, you stupid fuck for using the BSD license.
Apple is completely within their rights to claim your code, and to sue anyone who's been a part of it for everything they're worth, just for ROUNDING the corners on their PHONES.
That wasn't a "cute little mistake". IANAL but I will be shocked if Apple doesn't deploy their own para-military force, and manipulate laws in multiple countries to manipulate IP laws and avoid paying taxes.
This kind of bullshit enrages me (could you tell?), and no, Steve, you're not part of some "enlightened" culture when you fucking steal from others. I hope they throw the legacy that this piece of shit wrought.
To precisely the same degree that copyriright infringement is, which I would argue is the case.
The thing is, I've never alleged that that in the case of copyright infringement, the work itself is being stolen. It's clearly not,. because the original still exists, and looking at the situation as if the copyrighted work is the only thing of value that exists in the scenario can easily mislead a person to believe that copyright infringement and theft are understandably practically opposites of eachother.
But the thing of value that gets stolen by someone who infringes on copyright is a measure of the exclusivity that the copyright holder had over who was allowed to copy their work. That exclusivity of control is the *entire point* of copyright, so it's not something you can just say shouldn't be there. Each infringement dillutes the creator's exclusivity by some amount commensurate with the potential for future distribution from that source, so it's not something that the creator can ever really get back once its lost either. It's not even entirely an artificial form of control either... merely an extension of exclusive control over who can copy the work that would naturally exist if nobody else had access to the work in the first place, and so copyright can be seen in that context as a kind of legal backbone that gives creators assurance they can maintain control over copies of their work even if they distribute it. Obviously, it requires that people respect it to be effective... but that doesn't mean that disrespecting it isn't theft.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I beat he or she voted berine and is a dirty communist-lite while enjoying stupidly high entry level wages. "Computers should run free software!" ..."also pay me lots of money so I can afford San Fransisco and $5 coffee."
Fuck face, you keep missing the actual fucking violation, you're stealing the owner/creators RIGHTS to copy the work, not the work itself. By copying it, the toothpaste can't be put back in and copy right forever "stolen". What part of "copy" or "rights" can't you understand? Ever heard of licensing? Educate yourself, rather than trying to be weasely in justifying theft. You just look fucking juvenile and a crybaby.
How come a 4 year old can understand stealing as "taking something that doesn't belong to you without their permission" but so many adults can't? Is this just shitty parenting?
A few MB of code is NOT extremely small for an embedded device or a bootloader. Do you write some super high level bloated language or something?
Yes, it was an intern in this case, but in reality it could have just as easily been a permanent FTE, a contractor, or whomever with an agenda.
Yeah I get it, but outside of IP rights, there is the whole school of though on that OS code should be open source and free to promote OS development
We already have that and have found the inherent problems that come along with it. NIH syndrome and community infighting causing multiple versions of pretty much every component of an operating system because people can't agree. Then comes the part where it's all being run on closed, proprietary hardware so in the end you can't be sure of what it is doing anyway.
I dispute your twisted view of the world. The intern copied a work. He didn't steal shit. Making a copy of something is the opposite of stealing. It's ensuring you don't have to deprive another of anything to gain the benefit thereof.
Oh ok, so if I make a copy of your private information that's fine then. Or Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc making a copy of your data and selling it onwards, they didn't steal your data or deprive you of it.
Grow up- and figure out a business model that works for you rather than blaming others for your own failures. Business models don't always work and being angry with others who don't support your business model will just turn you into an angry disgruntled person as you clearly already are.
And that's what these companies have done, they copy your private data and monetize it, that is their new business model.
This is not theft. Theft deprives another of a tangible good.
You're being far too literal and that is inhibiting your ability to understand the issue here. What has been taken in this case is an exclusive right. Is it ok if I copy your house keys and just make myself at home there? I'm not depriving you of anything. How about your email and banking credentials? If I don't deprive you of anything there's no harm there. Taking photos of you? Making copies of your photos? ...starting to understand the issue yet or are you still hung up on the definition of "theft"?
So I take it that means you can't steal electricity, cable television, someone else's internet bandwidth, or any number of other things with no physical or tangible component?
Perhaps a better analogy is your bank account details. If I copied your bank account details you would probably quite reasonably use the term 'stolen' (even if that's not strictly the correct word based on a particular dictionary definition) even though it hasn't caused you any harm nor have you been deprived of anything. Of course if I were to then sell/give a copy of those details to some nefarious party who then transferred your money somewhere then you would quite rightly hold me significantly accountable for taking possession of those credentials in the first place.
What you have said is correct and I don't think we need a new term, to redefine existing terms or to explain this in terms of copyright. I'm sure 'steal' or 'theft' is perfectly adequate to describe taking into your possession something that you know you should not have that does not belong to you, be that physical property, access credentials or source code. And most people with any mental capacity that aren't just being intentionally obtuse can understand that. i.e. I doubt the OP would be just fine with somebody taking and distributing his/her banking credentials on the basis that he/she has not been deprived of anything (yet) and I also doubt at that point he/she would be quibbling over the definition of 'stolen' or 'theft'.