You're funny.. but the truth is much much closer to this.
North Korea is all bluff and bluster. I've never seen a more faithful reenactment of The Animal Farm. There is a ruling class there that has all the shiny toys and entertainment from the "evil" imperialist countries. Why would they ever risk losing their own life styles for ideals that are nothing more than lip service?
Blockbuster had bargaining powers that small business just doesn't have. Willing to bet that Red Box is doing a brisk business.
There's also a very big benefit to Blockbuster going tits up. It might free up a whole lot of exclusive bullshit where movies were only available at Blockbuster for a week or so after their release. Redbox and Netflix had to wait.
I see a lot of people thinking Blockbuster was the end all be all. Netflix and Redbox were serious competition to them in the DVD rental space and I don't see DVD rentals dying off anytime soon.
You just can't get the bitrate required for BluRay either. The high quality stuff requires 30-40Mb/s of bandwidth IIRC when looking at what I would need to do streaming over IP in the house. So BluRay rentals should be a good business as well.
Blockbuster can go fuck themselves anyways. I accidentally returned porn once and they announced it over the store. "The dude who returned his porn is here to pick up his porn. Bring the porn to the front please". If that wasn't enough they fucked up their DB years back and said I still had The Land Before Time rented out and wanted like $80 from me.
Seriously though, most DVDs and BluRays are absolute shitty encodes. Combine that with low-end equipment and you have overall poor quality with very visible artifacts like the infamous waterfall effect. I almost have a seizure watching Voyager on Netflix. That damn background in the medical bay is a wonderful example of such limitations.
That's what you get with modern digital video formats. It allows for poorer performance and artifacts with lossy compression and non-perfect display software that has no problems fucking a frame or too or going half ass on the decode. Well mastered DVD/BluRay on appropriate equipment does not have this problem though. Unfortunately for most you are not going to find that at Walmart.
So when you compare a DVD version against a VHS it's easy to see the lack of digital artifacts as an "improvement". Fuck. Compare it to LaserDisc? No competition at all. LaserDisc is still unreal compared to DVD. It took BluRay on high end equipment to finally beat LaserDisc. Stats may say otherwise, but real world performance is the best metric.
Tl;DR : Not all DVD/BluRay masters are the same and the low end makes VHS look good by comparison.
You must have access to some shitty copies. It's not a copy either for that matter and I'm betting you're on a public tracker.
A full DVD-R has the exact same audio as what you would get with an actual DVD rented from Blockbuster. So you can't be talking about a copy. Same goes for BluRay which is very problematic because most may pick and choose what streams to keep, but are still 20-35GB per movie. That's an awful lot. Unless you really can push 40-50Mbs on your connection at home you aren't going to see the movie that night.
So what's left are DVD/BluRay sourced rips. The quality varies, but there absolutely are pirate releases that contain high quality audio. You need to pick and choose carefully by reading the nfo files. Look at bitrates, encode settings, and audio sources.
Just a little effort and a private tracker goes a heck of a long way to mitigating the issues you describe.
That's not possible for most people. The bitrate on BD at the high end can strain a network with commodity equipment as it is. Last time I looked it was upwards of 35-40Mb/s. Real world performance for wireless and low end network cards/switches can have problems with that.
Look to Red Box. Netflix is not the only player in the market. The biggest benefit to Red Box is that it will show you what is in stock for a particular machine. Reserve it and you have no doubt that you can pick up at the store with a package of Oreos and really damn cold milk. Cold.
Plus Blockbuster is just shutting down their retails stores. They may be keeping the on demand services and the DVD by mail services. Until they wen full retard (again) on me I started with their DVD by mail service.
It's you that lives in the fairy tale. IP IS NOT PROPERTY DESPITE ITS NAME.
The only part of it that can be remotely considered property, and is routinely in contracts and the courts, ARE THE LEGAL ENTITLEMENTS THEMSELVES.
How can you steal legal entitlements? You can't dumbass. If I recall correctly the only way that you can try is by hanging a recording artist out the penthouse window and demanding that he sign documents transferring ownership of the IP to somebody else.
What you grossly misconstrue as theft is INFRINGEMENT. I wonder why they choose to use that word? Golly gee willickers Batman... why? Theft and stealing could be used, and has been used in legal language for centuries....so why infringement? Hmmmm. Why, why why?
It's because THERE IS NO FUCKING THEFT. Infringement is a specific word that indicates something legal was broken.
In this case what was broken was specific legal entitlements allowing you control over the IP. Now how can you do that if you don't still possess it? Ohh that's right.... because you are still in possession of it.
For fuck's sake. Just a modicum of logic shows that theft is precluded by the very definitions of IP law itself!!!
I'm not talking about a fairy tale world here asshole. This is the real world. Show me one fucking court case that has been brought where it actually says theft. They don't do that because the judge would laugh his/her ass off. That's why they need to use the CORRECT legal language in the courts, which is infringement upon the legal entitlements of the copyright holder. Not a coincidence.
The dangerous precedent here is for people to be walking around stupid, like yourself, buying into this perverted understanding of IP law. It only hurts yourself, myself, and the entire world when you do it.
Put the asshole in jail for what he did, but don't for one second start thinking passwords are property which can be stolen. They can't. They aren't physical.
If you want to put him jail for "stealing" a password then you better damn well prove he broke into the safe and stole a piece of paper with passwords written down on them....
It's actually the opposite. I always have a contract, and that contract covers exactly what you are talking about.
If I was an independent contractor, and like many having no contract, then you would be correct. It would fall under whatever laws exist. With a contract, I specify hours, rates, confidentiality, overages, intellectual property, arbitration, travel costs, etc. You name it, it's there.
The only thing I need be concerned with is contract law that would prevent me, or make unenforceable, a particular clause in my contract. To my knowledge, I don't have that problem.
At this point in my life I don't touch *anything* without a contract.
This is precisely the danger here. Morons walking around thinking passwords are intellectual property in the first place.
Secondly, thinking you can steal intellectual property at all. It's not possible.
You deserve the kind of world you will get when you let intellectual property become so perverted, that it will become a tool of control.
It was meant to be a tool to encourage contributions towards the Public Domain of all knowledge and expressions to enable us to keep building upon the work of our ancestors.
Thinking for one second that you can exist the way you do without their hard work is hubris. Thinking for one second that you can own your own ideas and pass them down as property is a recipe for fucking disaster. Imagine if you had to pay royalties for the fucking wheel? A car would cost 9 million dollars.
Intellectual Property is nothing more than a temporary set of tools in the form of legal entitlements. Any infringement upon them is for the civil courts. Criminally, if it passes certain tests. Those being mass infringement, and specifically the idea you profited from it.
Keep telling yourself it's theft. One day you will find yourself labeled a thief, without even knowing it.
By definition, this person was authorized to receive security information. Even if they were so massively incompetent they belonged in a Dilbert cartoon.
Your argument that he was in acting to be in compliance with the law is factually false. There was somebody at all times he could turn it over to.
He would be absolutely correct if he had continually refused to give security credentials to someone he knew was not authorized. However, he always had access to someone that met that criteria.
Always.
If, by some sort of strange fucking deal, he never had the opportunity to give over the information to this authorized person, he could have given it to the judge.
That's what the judge is there for. "Your honor, I can't responsibly give this information to them. Only Joe Blow is known to me to be authorized and he is not here. I would prefer to write them down and place them in the custody of the court and you can decide".
Had he done that... his ass would have been covered 7 ways till Sunday.
Childs was in the wrong, but it's extremely important to understand exactly what he was wrong for
If he had written down all of the passwords, and had taken notes (like I do), then he would have that information securely available at all times to his superiors. His superiors should have had a policy in place that sensitive information like that was managed by two people at an appropriate level. Even if they have no fucking clue what a Cisco TFZ9000 was, they would at least be able to tell somebody, "Oh.. yeah... here it is".
They should have never asked after he was fired, and should have had absolutely no legal recourse whatsoever, civilly or criminally.
What Childs did wrong was that he set the passwords with the intention of not informing a single soul. He flat out admitted that his intention was to restrict access to only himself at all times.
He further screwed himself at the point he was terminated. Regardless of how he felt about his superiors and that they would destroy the system, scare children, bruise fruit, etc. he should have had the maturity to hand everything over at that point.
That was always his deal. Everyone else was a moron and a danger to society but him. He refused to give the passwords while employed .
If Childs had written down everything the day he was terminated and turned it in during the exit interview his response in court and to the judge could have been, "Your honor I most certainly did hand over documents with everything they needed to know. I have no idea why they keep asking you to demand this information from me. I don't have it"
The only issue I have here is why he is going to jail. Not that he is going to jail.
As far as disproportionate goes, he might serve 9 months. Considering that the systems he managed were crucial infrastructure to SF, and the damage was extensive, with a lot more damage possible to the tax payers, 9 months is appropriate. Yes, I know that is a long time in jail.
The conversation is not appropriate because it implies that I would be in possession of passwords and that is not right. Also not appropriate because there is always liability. It's amazing how litigious we have become.
The actual conversations were quite a bit more diplomatic, but essentially came down to the same points. No, I don't have your passwords written down anywhere. No, I can't comment on any of that. There was only a single instance in which the relationship ended badly and I had to be curt in my responses. Let's just say there was already plenty of lawsuits going around and I was already being contacted by multiple law firms to be questioned and supply data. Thankfully, I protected myself well.
Do I want to help them? Sure.
What I need though is to cover my ass legally at all times. Especially, when most of my work involves large databases and information systems with access to sensitive information. Too much possibility for damage and for me to get the blame.
It's really sad that I can't just be a nice guy like you would want to.
As for recounting that in an interview, that's a good thing. It shows that I am highly professional and will protect their business data at all times. Some jackass won't have a chance trying some social engineering on me to get access to sensitive data and systems.
It's only good if he's in jail for the right reasons. I also think you are not reading what I said at all.
He is not an IP hero simply because he has absolutely no argument at all. This has nothing to do with IP. Nothing.
Bringing IP into the conversation is what's tragic here. It's actually very tragic that people think he was put in jail over that issue when he could be put in jail for quite a bit else.
Which is why I'm not employed. Employment law does not cover independent contractors in that way. They take me to court they will have a heck of a hard time passing the tests to show that I am in fact an employee.
I simply can't be employed like that. For one, I would have to enjoy the massive suck that is corporate life. No thank you. I would rather repeatedly hit my penis with a rusty hammer.
Also, I work with open source. I make it clear that everything I work on is not owned by them, or me, or anyone really. Since everything I work on is covered by some sort of open source license, it's nearly impossible for them to claim ownership anyways.
With how I work it's just not something that is going to happen with me. Why on Earth would I put myself in that position? How can you reuse code when you are always trying to figure out who the heck owns it?
I could only be sued for negligence if I did not make sure that the owner possessed an updated copy at all times, and that I had not made reasonable attempts to do so.
That is why I always have typed out all the details for whatever I did into a set of notes. I made it a point on temporary projects (even configuring a router for somebody) that I turned it over to them, explained what it was, and that they should change the passwords after I left.
If a contract was involved I turned over all my notes at the end, and have always deleted/shredded anything I had ASAP. It's been a long running policy with me that I learned very early on. If anybody did ever sue me they would have a nightmare of a time cross examining past clients and companies that would attest that is exactly how I acted with them as well.
Although I've been tempted, I never attempted access to a system again, even to see if they did change the password. Not any of my business after the fact.
IMO, that's the biggest mistake some people make. Once a job is done, for good or bad, just walk away completely and let it go. Terry had a God complex and could not let his little empire slip away from him. No empire is worth taking a dick up the ass for in prison.
I think that is a very dangerous precedent for intellectual property though.
It's most assuredly very different than walking out with the physical hardware. It still exists. It's still in the hands of the owners. The challenge is that the device is storing a piece of information that only that single person is aware of. For whatever reason.
Your viewpoint is dangerous because it's easily possible to forget that shared secret between you and the devices. Trust me. Very easy to do. I've done it. I've been asked about passwords long after I stopped working for someone. Since I make it a point to write them down securely and not remember them, it was no surprise that I didn't. I shredded/deleted the documents too, so there was no way to retrieve them.
I don't think forgetting or refusing should ever be criminalized since in many cases you cannot truly tell which one it is. Why should I go to prison because I can't remember something that they were too stupid to have written down by policy while I was working there, and too stupid to ask about it during the exit interview or when the contract was done?
This case was different. He admitted to not only setting it, but doing it for a specific purpose. Focus on that and don't start messing up understanding of intellectual property in such a dangerous way.
Please. You won't like the world that gets created with those ideas. Not one bit.
I still feel the same way I did when I read it the first time.
Passwords are not property. They're information and they protect access to property. That's all they do.
Setting a password to deliberately restrict access and gain leverage is not theft. It's insubordinate and grounds for termination. If damage occurs since personnel are not able to access systems then it is property damage, defamation of character, tortuous interference with contracts, etc. A plethora of other ways to punish someone or seek remediation.
He never had any kind of ownership claim over the devices he was administrating and was at all times operating under the employ of those that do.
He willfully set passwords to restrict access to everyone. Not just below him, but above him as well.
When being terminated he did not hand over everything he knew and had. That goes both ways too. His work should only have had a reasonable time period to ask him everything, and most assuredly should have had policies in place to know it all anyways.
Afterwards, his work should have had ZERO recourse.
However, his biggest mistake, was in letting his ego run rampant and delude him into thinking that the entire network was his to protect and he was the rightful guardian and no one was going to take it away from him.
That was what hung him. He fully admitted that he set the passwords and never even attempted to write them down or hand them over during his exit interview. It was premeditated and willful, which is why he should be punished.
This had nothing to do with intellectual property and everything to do with his behavior before, during, and after termination by the city.
A password is not property and it cannot be "taken" as if it were a physical object. It merely represents a shared secret between one or more parties and a backend system that attempts to authenticate access.
To say theft is wildly inaccurate and illogical.
If the employee is the only one in possession of the shared secret and refuses to divulge that information to a party that does have physical ownership over the devices being protected I have a very hard time understanding how it's theft.
Those responsible parties should have maintained access at all times. In this case, he had established that password while gainfully employed by them, and was perfectly in his rights (work policies outlining what they are) to establish the password. If no policy was in place for him to print it out, hand it to his superiors, and let them secure it, then some accountability rests with the management.
Once he was let go I see no difference between "I don't remember" and "I don't wish to say". I've quit before and was asked on many occasions if I remembered passwords, specifics of certain processes, etc. My answer was simple, "I don't work for you anymore and this conversation is not appropriate". I never set any passwords to restrict access higher up than me. I also made sure that all of the passwords were known by my superior.
Did he specifically set a password in a premeditated fashion to prevent proper operation of the networks? In this case, he did and then admitted that he did . That's what the legal focus should be on. Not theft or some intellectual property mangled interpretation bullshit. Those arguments are quite frankly extremely detrimental to our overall freedom at this point. We need to swing that pendulum over the other way with a more sophisticated understanding of what is actually going on.
I don't have a problem that he is going to prison for about a year. What I have a problem is that he is going to prison for not divulging a shared secret that should have never been set by policy, and one he is not obligated to reveal once terminated.
Put him in prison for willful property damage or some other infraction designed to punish somebody by damaging property past a certain extent. Not theft.
The vast majority of these cases, especially these so called intellectual property cases, need to be decided in civil court, not criminal.
I disagree. It's dangerous to give a blanket statement that all the work belongs to them by default.
What work?
I've been in several situations in which I participated on other projects outside of work which used not a single work resource. It's too damn easy to claim you did it while on site or using work property.
That's why it went all the way to the board one time when I steadfastly refused to sign any agreement with them since the language was so overwhelmingly vague and if I patented a coffee napkin idea at home it was theirs. Nothing happened since I they could not afford to let me go at all.
I would prefer that nothing is decided in anyone's favor by default and must be proved in a court of law (no arbitration).
A non-compete agreement does not work for me as an independent contractor. Unless you pay me extremely well i'm not going to lock myself out of an entire market.
Ohh, and I guess that since I only work in Open Source it's kind of a moot point. It's rather funny when I explain that they don't actually own anything I make for them at all, and I don't either:)
Slashdot Mirror
There was a bit of a tussle between them and Amazon.com
Were they sentenced to death by snu-snu?
You're funny.. but the truth is much much closer to this.
North Korea is all bluff and bluster. I've never seen a more faithful reenactment of The Animal Farm. There is a ruling class there that has all the shiny toys and entertainment from the "evil" imperialist countries. Why would they ever risk losing their own life styles for ideals that are nothing more than lip service?
That only works if Big Entertainment agrees.
Blockbuster had bargaining powers that small business just doesn't have. Willing to bet that Red Box is doing a brisk business.
There's also a very big benefit to Blockbuster going tits up. It might free up a whole lot of exclusive bullshit where movies were only available at Blockbuster for a week or so after their release. Redbox and Netflix had to wait.
I see a lot of people thinking Blockbuster was the end all be all. Netflix and Redbox were serious competition to them in the DVD rental space and I don't see DVD rentals dying off anytime soon.
You just can't get the bitrate required for BluRay either. The high quality stuff requires 30-40Mb/s of bandwidth IIRC when looking at what I would need to do streaming over IP in the house. So BluRay rentals should be a good business as well.
Blockbuster can go fuck themselves anyways. I accidentally returned porn once and they announced it over the store. "The dude who returned his porn is here to pick up his porn. Bring the porn to the front please". If that wasn't enough they fucked up their DB years back and said I still had The Land Before Time rented out and wanted like $80 from me.
I wish I was kidding.
The analog perfection that is VHS. Obviously.
Seriously though, most DVDs and BluRays are absolute shitty encodes. Combine that with low-end equipment and you have overall poor quality with very visible artifacts like the infamous waterfall effect. I almost have a seizure watching Voyager on Netflix. That damn background in the medical bay is a wonderful example of such limitations.
That's what you get with modern digital video formats. It allows for poorer performance and artifacts with lossy compression and non-perfect display software that has no problems fucking a frame or too or going half ass on the decode. Well mastered DVD/BluRay on appropriate equipment does not have this problem though. Unfortunately for most you are not going to find that at Walmart.
So when you compare a DVD version against a VHS it's easy to see the lack of digital artifacts as an "improvement". Fuck. Compare it to LaserDisc? No competition at all. LaserDisc is still unreal compared to DVD. It took BluRay on high end equipment to finally beat LaserDisc. Stats may say otherwise, but real world performance is the best metric.
Tl;DR : Not all DVD/BluRay masters are the same and the low end makes VHS look good by comparison.
You must have access to some shitty copies. It's not a copy either for that matter and I'm betting you're on a public tracker.
A full DVD-R has the exact same audio as what you would get with an actual DVD rented from Blockbuster. So you can't be talking about a copy. Same goes for BluRay which is very problematic because most may pick and choose what streams to keep, but are still 20-35GB per movie. That's an awful lot. Unless you really can push 40-50Mbs on your connection at home you aren't going to see the movie that night.
So what's left are DVD/BluRay sourced rips. The quality varies, but there absolutely are pirate releases that contain high quality audio. You need to pick and choose carefully by reading the nfo files. Look at bitrates, encode settings, and audio sources.
Just a little effort and a private tracker goes a heck of a long way to mitigating the issues you describe.
That's not possible for most people. The bitrate on BD at the high end can strain a network with commodity equipment as it is. Last time I looked it was upwards of 35-40Mb/s. Real world performance for wireless and low end network cards/switches can have problems with that.
Look to Red Box. Netflix is not the only player in the market. The biggest benefit to Red Box is that it will show you what is in stock for a particular machine. Reserve it and you have no doubt that you can pick up at the store with a package of Oreos and really damn cold milk. Cold.
Plus Blockbuster is just shutting down their retails stores. They may be keeping the on demand services and the DVD by mail services. Until they wen full retard (again) on me I started with their DVD by mail service.
It's you that lives in the fairy tale. IP IS NOT PROPERTY DESPITE ITS NAME.
The only part of it that can be remotely considered property, and is routinely in contracts and the courts, ARE THE LEGAL ENTITLEMENTS THEMSELVES.
How can you steal legal entitlements? You can't dumbass. If I recall correctly the only way that you can try is by hanging a recording artist out the penthouse window and demanding that he sign documents transferring ownership of the IP to somebody else.
What you grossly misconstrue as theft is INFRINGEMENT. I wonder why they choose to use that word? Golly gee willickers Batman... why? Theft and stealing could be used, and has been used in legal language for centuries... .so why infringement? Hmmmm. Why, why why?
It's because THERE IS NO FUCKING THEFT. Infringement is a specific word that indicates something legal was broken.
In this case what was broken was specific legal entitlements allowing you control over the IP. Now how can you do that if you don't still possess it? Ohh that's right.... because you are still in possession of it.
For fuck's sake. Just a modicum of logic shows that theft is precluded by the very definitions of IP law itself!!!
I'm not talking about a fairy tale world here asshole. This is the real world. Show me one fucking court case that has been brought where it actually says theft. They don't do that because the judge would laugh his/her ass off. That's why they need to use the CORRECT legal language in the courts, which is infringement upon the legal entitlements of the copyright holder. Not a coincidence.
The dangerous precedent here is for people to be walking around stupid, like yourself, buying into this perverted understanding of IP law. It only hurts yourself, myself, and the entire world when you do it.
Put the asshole in jail for what he did, but don't for one second start thinking passwords are property which can be stolen. They can't. They aren't physical.
If you want to put him jail for "stealing" a password then you better damn well prove he broke into the safe and stole a piece of paper with passwords written down on them....
It's actually the opposite. I always have a contract, and that contract covers exactly what you are talking about.
If I was an independent contractor, and like many having no contract, then you would be correct. It would fall under whatever laws exist. With a contract, I specify hours, rates, confidentiality, overages, intellectual property, arbitration, travel costs, etc. You name it, it's there.
The only thing I need be concerned with is contract law that would prevent me, or make unenforceable, a particular clause in my contract. To my knowledge, I don't have that problem.
At this point in my life I don't touch *anything* without a contract.
This is precisely the danger here. Morons walking around thinking passwords are intellectual property in the first place.
Secondly, thinking you can steal intellectual property at all. It's not possible.
You deserve the kind of world you will get when you let intellectual property become so perverted, that it will become a tool of control.
It was meant to be a tool to encourage contributions towards the Public Domain of all knowledge and expressions to enable us to keep building upon the work of our ancestors.
Thinking for one second that you can exist the way you do without their hard work is hubris. Thinking for one second that you can own your own ideas and pass them down as property is a recipe for fucking disaster. Imagine if you had to pay royalties for the fucking wheel? A car would cost 9 million dollars.
Intellectual Property is nothing more than a temporary set of tools in the form of legal entitlements. Any infringement upon them is for the civil courts. Criminally, if it passes certain tests. Those being mass infringement, and specifically the idea you profited from it.
Keep telling yourself it's theft. One day you will find yourself labeled a thief, without even knowing it.
When he was terminated he had a supervisor.
By definition, this person was authorized to receive security information. Even if they were so massively incompetent they belonged in a Dilbert cartoon.
Your argument that he was in acting to be in compliance with the law is factually false. There was somebody at all times he could turn it over to.
He would be absolutely correct if he had continually refused to give security credentials to someone he knew was not authorized. However, he always had access to someone that met that criteria.
Always.
If, by some sort of strange fucking deal, he never had the opportunity to give over the information to this authorized person, he could have given it to the judge.
That's what the judge is there for. "Your honor, I can't responsibly give this information to them. Only Joe Blow is known to me to be authorized and he is not here. I would prefer to write them down and place them in the custody of the court and you can decide".
Had he done that... his ass would have been covered 7 ways till Sunday.
Childs was in the wrong, but it's extremely important to understand exactly what he was wrong for
If he had written down all of the passwords, and had taken notes (like I do), then he would have that information securely available at all times to his superiors. His superiors should have had a policy in place that sensitive information like that was managed by two people at an appropriate level. Even if they have no fucking clue what a Cisco TFZ9000 was, they would at least be able to tell somebody, "Oh.. yeah... here it is".
They should have never asked after he was fired, and should have had absolutely no legal recourse whatsoever, civilly or criminally.
What Childs did wrong was that he set the passwords with the intention of not informing a single soul. He flat out admitted that his intention was to restrict access to only himself at all times.
He further screwed himself at the point he was terminated. Regardless of how he felt about his superiors and that they would destroy the system, scare children, bruise fruit, etc. he should have had the maturity to hand everything over at that point.
That was always his deal. Everyone else was a moron and a danger to society but him. He refused to give the passwords while employed .
If Childs had written down everything the day he was terminated and turned it in during the exit interview his response in court and to the judge could have been, "Your honor I most certainly did hand over documents with everything they needed to know. I have no idea why they keep asking you to demand this information from me. I don't have it"
The only issue I have here is why he is going to jail. Not that he is going to jail.
As far as disproportionate goes, he might serve 9 months. Considering that the systems he managed were crucial infrastructure to SF, and the damage was extensive, with a lot more damage possible to the tax payers, 9 months is appropriate. Yes, I know that is a long time in jail.
Uhhhh, there were plenty of people above Childs. Plenty.
The citizens - We pay his salary.
The Mayor
Some department head somewhere in San Francisco or California.
I don't exactly know the organizational structure, but there is ALWAYS somebody above you. Even the President of the United States.
If there is truly nobody above you... then there is damn well somebody right next to you.
Unless you are an army of one. Most people don't conduct business like that.
I think you misunderstood me.
The conversation is not appropriate because it implies that I would be in possession of passwords and that is not right. Also not appropriate because there is always liability. It's amazing how litigious we have become.
The actual conversations were quite a bit more diplomatic, but essentially came down to the same points. No, I don't have your passwords written down anywhere. No, I can't comment on any of that. There was only a single instance in which the relationship ended badly and I had to be curt in my responses. Let's just say there was already plenty of lawsuits going around and I was already being contacted by multiple law firms to be questioned and supply data. Thankfully, I protected myself well.
Do I want to help them? Sure.
What I need though is to cover my ass legally at all times. Especially, when most of my work involves large databases and information systems with access to sensitive information. Too much possibility for damage and for me to get the blame.
It's really sad that I can't just be a nice guy like you would want to.
As for recounting that in an interview, that's a good thing. It shows that I am highly professional and will protect their business data at all times. Some jackass won't have a chance trying some social engineering on me to get access to sensitive data and systems.
It's only good if he's in jail for the right reasons. I also think you are not reading what I said at all.
He is not an IP hero simply because he has absolutely no argument at all. This has nothing to do with IP. Nothing.
Bringing IP into the conversation is what's tragic here. It's actually very tragic that people think he was put in jail over that issue when he could be put in jail for quite a bit else.
We don't want this kind of precedent at all.
Which is why I'm not employed. Employment law does not cover independent contractors in that way. They take me to court they will have a heck of a hard time passing the tests to show that I am in fact an employee.
I simply can't be employed like that. For one, I would have to enjoy the massive suck that is corporate life. No thank you. I would rather repeatedly hit my penis with a rusty hammer.
Also, I work with open source. I make it clear that everything I work on is not owned by them, or me, or anyone really. Since everything I work on is covered by some sort of open source license, it's nearly impossible for them to claim ownership anyways.
With how I work it's just not something that is going to happen with me. Why on Earth would I put myself in that position? How can you reuse code when you are always trying to figure out who the heck owns it?
The answer to that is simple:
1) I don't work for you anymore and I don't have access to that information in way at all.
OR
2) I gave all of that information to you during my exit interview.
OR
3) Are you on fucking crack sir?
I could only be sued for negligence if I did not make sure that the owner possessed an updated copy at all times, and that I had not made reasonable attempts to do so.
That is why I always have typed out all the details for whatever I did into a set of notes. I made it a point on temporary projects (even configuring a router for somebody) that I turned it over to them, explained what it was, and that they should change the passwords after I left.
If a contract was involved I turned over all my notes at the end, and have always deleted/shredded anything I had ASAP. It's been a long running policy with me that I learned very early on. If anybody did ever sue me they would have a nightmare of a time cross examining past clients and companies that would attest that is exactly how I acted with them as well.
Although I've been tempted, I never attempted access to a system again, even to see if they did change the password. Not any of my business after the fact.
IMO, that's the biggest mistake some people make. Once a job is done, for good or bad, just walk away completely and let it go. Terry had a God complex and could not let his little empire slip away from him. No empire is worth taking a dick up the ass for in prison.
I think that is a very dangerous precedent for intellectual property though.
It's most assuredly very different than walking out with the physical hardware. It still exists. It's still in the hands of the owners. The challenge is that the device is storing a piece of information that only that single person is aware of. For whatever reason.
Your viewpoint is dangerous because it's easily possible to forget that shared secret between you and the devices. Trust me. Very easy to do. I've done it. I've been asked about passwords long after I stopped working for someone. Since I make it a point to write them down securely and not remember them, it was no surprise that I didn't. I shredded/deleted the documents too, so there was no way to retrieve them.
I don't think forgetting or refusing should ever be criminalized since in many cases you cannot truly tell which one it is. Why should I go to prison because I can't remember something that they were too stupid to have written down by policy while I was working there, and too stupid to ask about it during the exit interview or when the contract was done?
This case was different. He admitted to not only setting it, but doing it for a specific purpose. Focus on that and don't start messing up understanding of intellectual property in such a dangerous way.
Please. You won't like the world that gets created with those ideas. Not one bit.
I still feel the same way I did when I read it the first time.
Passwords are not property. They're information and they protect access to property. That's all they do.
Setting a password to deliberately restrict access and gain leverage is not theft. It's insubordinate and grounds for termination. If damage occurs since personnel are not able to access systems then it is property damage, defamation of character, tortuous interference with contracts, etc. A plethora of other ways to punish someone or seek remediation.
He never had any kind of ownership claim over the devices he was administrating and was at all times operating under the employ of those that do.
He willfully set passwords to restrict access to everyone. Not just below him, but above him as well.
When being terminated he did not hand over everything he knew and had. That goes both ways too. His work should only have had a reasonable time period to ask him everything, and most assuredly should have had policies in place to know it all anyways.
Afterwards, his work should have had ZERO recourse.
However, his biggest mistake, was in letting his ego run rampant and delude him into thinking that the entire network was his to protect and he was the rightful guardian and no one was going to take it away from him.
That was what hung him. He fully admitted that he set the passwords and never even attempted to write them down or hand them over during his exit interview. It was premeditated and willful, which is why he should be punished.
This had nothing to do with intellectual property and everything to do with his behavior before, during, and after termination by the city.
A password is not property and it cannot be "taken" as if it were a physical object. It merely represents a shared secret between one or more parties and a backend system that attempts to authenticate access.
To say theft is wildly inaccurate and illogical.
If the employee is the only one in possession of the shared secret and refuses to divulge that information to a party that does have physical ownership over the devices being protected I have a very hard time understanding how it's theft.
Those responsible parties should have maintained access at all times. In this case, he had established that password while gainfully employed by them, and was perfectly in his rights (work policies outlining what they are) to establish the password. If no policy was in place for him to print it out, hand it to his superiors, and let them secure it, then some accountability rests with the management.
Once he was let go I see no difference between "I don't remember" and "I don't wish to say". I've quit before and was asked on many occasions if I remembered passwords, specifics of certain processes, etc. My answer was simple, "I don't work for you anymore and this conversation is not appropriate". I never set any passwords to restrict access higher up than me. I also made sure that all of the passwords were known by my superior.
Did he specifically set a password in a premeditated fashion to prevent proper operation of the networks? In this case, he did and then admitted that he did . That's what the legal focus should be on. Not theft or some intellectual property mangled interpretation bullshit. Those arguments are quite frankly extremely detrimental to our overall freedom at this point. We need to swing that pendulum over the other way with a more sophisticated understanding of what is actually going on.
I don't have a problem that he is going to prison for about a year. What I have a problem is that he is going to prison for not divulging a shared secret that should have never been set by policy, and one he is not obligated to reveal once terminated.
Put him in prison for willful property damage or some other infraction designed to punish somebody by damaging property past a certain extent. Not theft.
The vast majority of these cases, especially these so called intellectual property cases, need to be decided in civil court, not criminal.
I disagree. It's dangerous to give a blanket statement that all the work belongs to them by default.
What work?
I've been in several situations in which I participated on other projects outside of work which used not a single work resource. It's too damn easy to claim you did it while on site or using work property.
That's why it went all the way to the board one time when I steadfastly refused to sign any agreement with them since the language was so overwhelmingly vague and if I patented a coffee napkin idea at home it was theirs. Nothing happened since I they could not afford to let me go at all.
I would prefer that nothing is decided in anyone's favor by default and must be proved in a court of law (no arbitration).
A non-compete agreement does not work for me as an independent contractor. Unless you pay me extremely well i'm not going to lock myself out of an entire market.
Ohh, and I guess that since I only work in Open Source it's kind of a moot point. It's rather funny when I explain that they don't actually own anything I make for them at all, and I don't either :)
No system can do that. At least not on its own.
Yes. They might be forcing the most intelligent and beautiful humans to pair off and mate thereby giving us a chance at doing it.
I forgot to mess up the domain name before I posted, so for the sarcastically challenged here, don't click the link