Woz, Others Ask Apple To Go Easy On Tiger Leak 521
tabkey12 writes "Drunkenbatman posts this impressive article with a pointed quote from Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak and 24 others from all parts of the Apple Software world, criticising Apple's stance against a 23-year-old pre-med student, desicanuk, who distributed a pre-release Tiger build over a popular Mac Bittorrent site. There's also an interview with desicanuk on drunkenbatman's site. (Original Slashdot article here.)"
Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
He pirated software, he should pay the penalty.
No sympathy here.
What's his defense? (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel sympathy for him too, but how do you stop leaks if not punish the people that perpetrate the leaks?
bt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest the following
penalty? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just it. It's a big public taboo over something which is equivalent to shop lifting. Sigh, People always fear what they don't understand!
The 83 year old dead file swapper, Gertrude, [slashdot.org] would have been laughing her false teeth out at you all if she was alive..
Pre-Med (Score:4, Insightful)
Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line: he should have known better, but Apple shouldn't be giving themselves bad press by continuing. They probably won't now after outcries like this, preferring to show some teeth to discourage potential "innocent" uploaders leaking more stuff, then back off to act as a "Benevolent" corporate entity. Maybe Steve Jobs would do some p.r. by volunteering at the same place as mr. Gentleman Pirate?
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Dilema (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at Apple's software page [apple.com] and tell me how many applications you see there. Most of these are not provided for free, and some [apple.com] are [apple.com] pretty [apple.com] expensive [apple.com].
Timothy Hatcher, lead developer of Colloquy: (Score:1, Insightful)
Actions like this have made me wonder really who is running things, Steve Jobs or bloodthirsty lawyers. It's painful to watch a company grow up like this. From the final days of Woz up until now it has been a bumpy ride."
This sums up my feelings about Apple and the course they are taking pretty well. What has become of this great company that was different and likable?
Small Fries (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Dilema (Score:5, Insightful)
> and they sell fashion
Awesome. Since Microsoft do not really sell hardware at all - they sell software... It must be OK for me to just go take a Microsoft Intellimouse, and a Microsoft keyboard.
Cool.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the real world...
The real problem is that you don't agree with apple's naming conventions.
Call a product Windows 98 and then change it's "upgrade" to Windows Me (please no ME jokes...) and everything is dandy.
Call a product OS X 10.3 and then its "upgrade" OS X 10.4 and people moan and bitch.
The truth of the matter is, $129 ($99 for students) for a new operating system is a steal. If you can't afford it, fine, no reason for you to upgrade. Microsoft will charge you around three times that.
bleh (Score:0, Insightful)
apple is a corporation
google is a corporation
ibm is a corporation
novel is a corporation
amd is a corporation
intel is a corporation
nvidia and ATI are corporations
why do people even bother to be "fan bois" for these legal entities who's sole purpose is to get more profit for their shareholders? How can you be a fan boy of that?
It's pure fking bs, the sooner they all go flaming down to hell the better.
Long live debian, long live gentoo, long live the BSDs... long live people getting together and doing shit without wearing some corporate logo like some fucking first-year uni marketing rep organised beer party.
God some people are dumb.
summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Kid, excited with his "prize", sends it out to his web "buddies" so they can share in the radiant joy. Exceedingly stoopid.
3) A restricted beta of a product Apple intends to make hundreds of millions of $$$ from is released into the wild for free. Entirely predictable.
4) Apple gets justifiably upset, sues all in sight. About all that Apple can do at this point is make an example of them.
5) The Woz feels sorry that the Kid is getting punished for his unthinking brush with Reality, donates $1000 to his defense.
So what can we learn from this?
1) Apple needs to tighten up ability to transfer software assets between classes of ADC members.
2) Kids (or anyone) that act in an unthinking manner can expect to be educated. Think of it as Evolution in Action.
3) People will gawk at a grisly highway accident, whether on concrete or etherial roadways.
Move along folks.
Re:Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see
Let me see here
Re:Stallman was right (Score:5, Insightful)
> piece of software there would have been problem with the guy
> distributing it in this way
And if it rained liquid iron from the sky we'd all be burned. We aren't in a fantasy world where Tiger is a piece of GPL software.
Tiger is licensed to people under licenses decided upon by Apple. People break that license and Apple gets upset. Many slashdotters seem to think Apple shouldn't, and should just turn a blind eye to it.
If they think that, then they should also not get upset when a company breaks the license terms of GPL software, ie by incorporating GPL code into a proprietary closed source app.
So why is it OK to break Apple's license and go all "awwww Apple should turn a blind eye" when if the GPL was being broken by the same guy, most of slashdot would call for his lynching, be posting his home phone number, address, contact details, criminal records or what have you, online.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Penalize him fairly to punish him for his crime, but leave him a chance in hell to come back from all this and be a productive member of society. If he's going to spend the rest of his life flipping burgers to pay off fines, he'll be completely useless to society, and it wouldn't surprise me if he ended up committing suicide.
So yeah, he's an idiot, but does the punishment truly fit the crime? Is this a case where he could have broken into Apple's HQ, slaughtered the entire Tiger OS team with a hatchet and gotten a lighter sentence? (Note I have no clue what the punishment will be, damn work blocks all blog sites.)
Re:Apple's Dilema (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What's his defense? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if you grasp the concept of illegal software distribution (and I'm not agreeing to the concept, just retelling it as it actually is), he has just admitted the "crime". You are dealing with the law and a private company eager to protect its secrets. I suggest you buy a cluestick and hit yourself over the head with it until you realise it is illegal.
Now, unless he pleads insanity; not understanding what you are doing when you are doing a crime is no an excuse. If I spit chewing gum on the streets of Singapore do you think they'll be lenient on me just because I didn't know it was a crime? Nope.
When I went to law school (relax, I'm not a lawyer) a professor had a saying about my Scandinavian country: "People here seem to think they are born with an insurance for screw-ups. As soon as they do something stupid, they expect sympathy and help from the government." The same can be applied to Desicanuk, you screwed up, broke a contract and actually did a crime. Now fess up and be a man.
FTA: "When I signed up for the free ADC account, I didn't read the agreement. I suppose a lot of us don't read word for word every thing you agree to." Yeah, well you should have. It is retarded to sign something without reading and understanding it. EULAs, which I hate with a passion, are a slightly different thing, but the contract with ADC is something you really should read. An unread contract will almost always bite you in the ass, tell it to my GF who signed a contract with a private school and now has paid thousands of dollars because she signed up for the military while having committed to the contract.
You live, you learn.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course Apple has every right to punish him, but what kind of punishment is fair? Ruining his life seems overzealous.
Apple wasn't hurt financially or otherwise from his actions. That doesn't make what he did okay, but it should be considered when determining the fairness of the punishment they want to dish out.
IMHO it would be much more appropriate for Apple to settle this out of court. They could request some form of monetary compensation (an amount that will stretch the finances but not lead to ruin), then have their marketing department portray desicanuk as an example, with a warning that next time they won't be so compassionate. This keeps the community happy, Apple's good-will thriving and doesn't ruin desicanuk's life.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Credibility requires context. Someone unfamiliar with any of those proper nouns will have zero context, so there will be zero credibility. Add context, and things start to fall into place. Not every business needs to have a respectable name like "Federated Usable Computational Devices, Inc." and not every person must be a Smith or a Jones.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very stupid if you ask me.
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:1, Insightful)
People get a untrue view of Tiger becasue of his unlawful acts. They associate Tiger with a beta and decide to not buy it.
Apple looses.
Regarding the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
From the interview (one of the admins of the bittorrent tracker speaking):
You see, all of these are copyrighted unless they're around a hundred years old (depending on jurisdiction). Of course distributing them is not copyright infringement ("piracy") if you have permission by the copyright holders, but I highly doubt this site has permission to distribute those service manuals and -- especially -- games.Just because the company making them is gone doesn't mean there isn't a copyright holder -- there's always some creditor happy to pick them up. They may not sell the game any more (at least currently), but that matters zilch. They may not be suing you because they don't have enough to gain from it, but that doesn't mean they can't and it doesn't mean that this isn't copyright infringement.
Yes, it sucks. You see, that's one reason why some people think copyright law sucks. Especially with the super-long copyright terms of today.
I find people annoying who copy old proprietary games, don't feel that they're doing anything wrong, and then go, "I totally respect copyright law! I would never pirate anything!" If you think copyright is so cool, how come you are so happy to bend it when it's inconvenient?
(NB. I admit that I haven't actually checked the site; the games there may yet be under license terms that permit re-distribution after the company making them has folded. If so, sorry of associating the general rant with this specific case. But I doubt it.)
Re:summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
And it doesn't affect their bottomline a bit. Come on it's a *beta* for a reason and as soon as they start shipping Tiger, shipping millions of *rippable* CDs I might add, you're gonna find ISOs of the release version on every p2p net. I really don't see why they're making such a fuss about a leaked beta
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that he pirated software--Everyone and their mom does that. The problem is that he broke a contract. Period.
He signed something that says "I will not do that"; Then he did "that". It doesn't matter whether "that" is distributing software, selling stock, or hopping on one foot through a crowded subway. He agreed that he wouldn't do it.
damage dollare amount not specified (Score:3, Insightful)
For the record, the supplied document lists Apple's requests as follows:
- Compensatory and examplary damages to be determined at trial
- Injunctions restraining the distribution of the software
- Injunctions restraining the breach of the agreements (not clear what that means)
- An accounting of any profits the defendants have derived from their distribution of the software
- The cost of the suit
- Any other relief the court deems just and proper.
SomeIt really comes down to this... (Score:5, Insightful)
He needs to look up the definition of malicious. He came into posession of a piece of copyrighted software and then made the conscious decision to seed it to others. He was pirating and he was trafficing stolen goods.
Apple has every right to go after him.
Re:Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:4, Insightful)
And who wants to read an NDA? Some people force themselves, just like people who give themselves enemas. It's essentially masochism. If he said "I didn't read the big blinking red sentence that said 'REDISTRIBUTING IS ILLEGAL'", I would buy your theory that he's lying, but who, aside from the afore mentioned masochists, read things that begin "Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Binary Code License Agreement
for the
JAVATM 2 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT (J2SDK), STANDARD
EDITION, VERSION 1.4.2_X
SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. ("SUN") IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE SOFTWARE IDENTIFIED BELOW TO YOU ONLY UPON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN THIS BINARY CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT AND SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS (COLLECTIVELY "AGREEMENT"). PLEASE READ THE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY. BY DOWNLOADING OR INSTALLING THIS SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT. INDICATE ACCEPTANCE BY SELECTING THE "ACCEPT" BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT. IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO BE BOUND BY ALL THE TERMS, SELECT THE "DECLINE" BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT AND THE DOWNLOAD OR INSTALL PROCESS WILL NOT CONTINUE..." (etc etc etc for about 82 thousand goddam pages).
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one. And believe me, there is no way they're going to let him be a doctor without pounding that confidentially crap into his skull.
Marketing justifies theft? (Score:3, Insightful)
We are all incapable of resisting marketing and ad copy? Boo-fricking-hoo. I go to the Detroit Auto Show and I see a Ferrari, I like it, it's a sexy fucking car, I want it. Because Enzo Ferrari is so good at making a street legal F1 car, and he spends so much money on marketing it (F1 team anyone), it is not my fault if I steal the car, it is Ferrari's? Give me a break.
Now I am a liberal, but pulling this socialist crap is ridiculous. If marketing makes products so irresistable to you that you ruin your credit, whore yourself out for $5 a shot in the mouth, or steal, you have nobody to blame but yourself, because you are an idiot who cannot control impulses.
Your logic justifies raping a provocatively dressed woman. She made you want it so much that you just had to take it. Nice.
The kid was stupid, he broke the rules. He didn't just get a gray-market copy, he then set out to distribute a gray-markey copy. The 5 or 6 friends part is bullshit, he had more people in mind, or should have known it wouldn't stay small. It is like telling 1 friend in highschool that your parents are gonna be out of town for the weekend. You either know it is gonna get around or you are so stupid that you derserve what you get.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure if a close family member was raped, you'd be completely blasse-faire about the whole situation and not want to see the perpetrator punished.
Listen, laws do help. If people know they're going to be punished for committing an illegal action, a wide swath of people are far less likely to commit a crime. Others will still go ahead and do it. Those are the people you can't stop. Those are people we call criminals. There's a reason they're prosecuted like this. Because they're criminals.
The remaining people? Those are the ones you want to stop, because if you don't, society as we know it will return to anarchy.
Frankly, if I discovered my doctor had something like this lurking in his past, I sure as hell wouldn't want the slimeball working on me. Poor judgement like this can easily lead to poor judgement in dealing with patient good vs. HMO profitability.
There's a very good reason why lawyers get disbarred after breaking the law. And they're lawyers... I expect my doctors to less scummy than the average lawyer.
Re:Stallman was right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's his defense? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a civil matter, so there's no jail involved. However, why should Apple computer be able to ruin someones life through financial means just because they have multi-billions of dollars and he has.. well probbably almost nothing? I'm sure Apple will trump up millions of dollars worth of "damages" in a miss-guided attempt at "sending a message". In this case Microsoft is actually the better company. How many times have pre-releases of windows been leaked, but yet they've never gone out on the warpath with big lawsuits?
Re:What's his defense? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they slap him with a stupid debt then that's his life ruined. If he'd have shoplifted the 5 or 6 copies he said he distributed, he'd have been a lot better off legally. Heck he'd have been better off if he'd have hijacked a truck full of the stuff at gunpoint! It isn't even release software!
Re:What's his defense? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are either Jobs or Wozniak flipping burgers? (Score:2, Insightful)
How much "theft" did these two engender?
Did they ever go to jail, considering how well known their criminal past is?
And where would the personal computing world be today if they had been arrested and ruined as this guy will be?
Apple is going down the path to corporate hell. Steve! remember where you came from. You might be destroying someone who will implant the first artificial eye, or who will finally bring medical information processing into the twentieth century. The kid didn't hurt you or your company.
Don't be a hypocrite.
Re:Small Fries (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no 'big fish' pirate group breathing down Apple's neck like few notable groups do with Discreet and Steinberg, defeating any elaborate anti-piracy scheme days after it is put into place. 99% of Mac software is either freely installed on multiple machines or can be enabled by a serial key.
The real pirate, in this case, is Joe Sixpack with an ADC account.
If Apple fails to enforce their NDA, it could be damaging to the company. On the other hand, if they sue the shit out of this guy and few of his accomplices, the developer community and "fanatics" would get outraged. It's a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation.
Personally, I'd like to see this guy face the consequences in 10k increments. I do, time to time, download something which is not quite legit, but even I'm not stupid enough to touch an official beta seed assigned to my account.
Having read the interview with desicanuk on drunkenblog, and knowing his medical aspirations, perhaps the world would be better served if he didn't apply such excellent decision-making in the operating room.
Re:Credibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
The wealth of the litigants is completely irrelevant.
It's completely relevant. How can any person defend themselves against a multi-billion dollar corporation with teams of lawyers on salary if said corporation gets a bug up their butt? Trials are supposed to be fair (even civil trials), and this is clearly a case of unfairness. Do you really like a world where corps have the power to do whatever they want to individuals because they can sue you into oblivion?
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Actually it's not a crime, and there is no "time". This is a civil matter.
The Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has a NDA that they require of all developers who receive "pre-release" copies of software in development. If Apple does not pursue litigation then their NDA basically means nothing. They are perfectly within their legal rights to insist that the agreement be kept. So, the poor bastard who's getting sued should have known better.
There are open source packages out there to distribute freely without the wrath of the owner. It seems that there are many slashdot readers who are not mature enough to recognize that the world doesn't work that way. I'm not saying it's right--I'm just saying that just because you think IP laws are rubbish or do not apply to you doesn't change the fact that they the law and they do, in fact, apply. It's naive to think that electronic civil disobedience will not be met with the very sharp teeth and claws of the corporate legal eagles/weasels. Everyone always says, "Oh, that poor grandmother or little kid getting picked on by the corporations."
Fight the law with the law. Vigilante piracy isn't going to magically tip the law in the favor of Utopian RMS world. It's friggin' common sense people--DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN CORPORATIONS. Everyone here knows it's against the law to share copyrighted music, software, or some other IP. If you do it anyway don't bitch if you get caught. Just because we don't like the corporations doesn't make it right to steal from them--that makes us immature miscreant punks. And the legal system will treat you as such.
This world runs on money--corporations are greedy entities that will suck the lives out of every human being. Don't buy corporate. Fight with your power as a "consumer" by not being one. DON'T BE A CONSUMER WHORE but be a law-abiding citizen, too. [PSA brought to you by catdevnull].
One word .. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Woz (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's an honest question. Do you really think your computing experience has improved that greatly on your spiffy new 3.4Ghz P4 compared to back when you had a P2 class machine?
IMO it hasn't. You've gone from Win95 to WinXP.
Look at the Apple scene now. OS 9 to OS X, now that's progress.
Re:Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Steve Jobs is only wealthy because Woz figured out how to create an elegant personal computer.
There are a lot of smart people in the world.
There are a lot of people who are good at selling.
Without Woz, there is no Jobs. Without Jobs, there is no Woz.
There are equally responsible for Apple, along with about 3 other people who you've never heard of.
What's the problem again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but he won't be able to finish med school. Is that what we're so worried about? I'm not sure that I want someone with such poor judgement being a doctor.
Call me a jerk, mod me down, whatever. The guy did something really stupid, something really illegal, and now he's being asked to pay.
By the way, Woz. If you want to help the guy, $1000 isn't going to do much.
One other thing while I'm burning karma. To the guy who wrote that he wonders if the company is being run by Jobs or greedy lawyers: you might want to consider the oh-so-tiny possibility that this is the result of Jobs running the company. I don't blame him, I'd do the same thing.
I just don't find this surprising, except for the people rushing to his defense.
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that while Woz and Jobs were this guy's age, they did the same and a lot worse crap, blueboxing, drugs, etc. Look at where they took the world. Apple, the company that is supposed to be about going against the grain, is not living up to itself. In addition, by them suing this guy, they are holding back somebody that could have done a lot of good for others.
I think Apple is just feeding the fears that, as a result of the success of the iPod, the company is changing from what it used to be.
Re:Greed (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh wait. I believe they do want some money for that. Check into it and report back, would you?
Re:Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:3, Insightful)
(I know you were just exaggerating, I just wanted to use 'kitten slaying' in a sentence today.)
I feel sorry for the guy too. I don't want to see him think this was okay. But I'm certain that this guy is scared out of his mind. They all are. Hell, I was scared out of my mind when I got an underage drinking citation; a 150$ fine had me shitting bricks, so to speak. For 2 weeks I was hoping for death. That was 150$. I can't even imagine what 1,500$ would have been, or 15,000$, or 150,000$, or 1.5$ million dollars. I know that, financially, I would have been right out of college and working at McDonalds for the forseeable future trying to pay that off. 1500$ could be done with a semester off. 15,000$? 5-7 years. 150,000$? Never. Not in my entire life will I have 150,000$ spare money to spend.
Chances are amazingly great that, with 5-7 years off, I would never be going back to college. I'd be flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets. Being overly enthusiastic and extremely shortsighted should not result in the ruination of your entire life. What benefit are you to society if you're making minimum wage and scrubbing a toilet as opposed to making 100,000$+ a year, with about 30,000$ of that going to pay taxes? And how is getting 300$ payments a month from a guy making minimum wage for the rest of his life going to do ANYTHING to help recoup supposed losses resulting from these "damages"? It makes no sense.
Scare the shit out of him. Scare the shit out of the rest of the people who read about how absolutely terrified this kid is. Then let him go. No one is going to benefit by crushing his opportunity to be a relatively beneficial member of society and relegating him to food-stamps poor.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you trust your doctor to keep your medical information confidential when he has no problems breaking written contracts of confidentiality? I'd never want to be a patient of someone like that.
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you have never worked in a technology company. You walk out the door with a prototype, and it shows up out on the street, you are going to get sued. Unless you work for the company. Then you are fired, then sued.
Embezzel the company for a few hundred thousand dollars, steal laptops, get caught buying hookers and drugs with company money, they let you go quietly. They often don't press charges.
But you compromise, or come close to compromising, the crown jewels, they have to tear into you. It's like defending trademarks. The only property they own is what they are willing to defend.
Re:Marketing justifies theft? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be very sad if this lead Apple to stop trusting small developers, and started only giving pre-release software to heavily screened big corporate developers. Adobe and Microsoft would still be able to make sure their software would run on Tiger, and the small developers would be screwed.
Remember, the purpose of ADC seeding isn't to create hype for a new OS release, it's to let developers get their software ready to be working when the new OS comes out. If they wanted to create hype, they wouldn't make everyone who gets the software sign an NDA.
Apple to blame to a major extent (Score:3, Insightful)
- Apple is very much aware of rumor sites and knows their following crave for Apple-news before it is out. This sure keeps people interested in what's comming up from Apple. I for one visit those sites regulary and keep me in touch. (I don't like sites speculating on pricing, because it is too easy to get excited about a product, which may become a disappointment if the product is indeed as good as rumored, but at a higher price. If they'd not speculated it, it would probably still be considered a good price).
- Apple can easily make the Tiger beta's such that they only run on Macs with registered MAC addresses (ethernet addresses, whatever) which are unique for a computer. So, if a beta gets out in the wild nobody can run it.
- Apple makes a fool if itself by writing in the writ that they are in such a competitive business and their IP must be protected blah blah blah. Firstly, if they did really care, they had take proper precautions (see previous point). Secondly, Steve said that companies like Microsoft are busy integrating Tiger's Spotlight technology into Office. For that, you need a Tiger beta. So, the competitor who has 95+% marketshare has a copy of
that intellectual property. Apple can handle the rest: even the current version of Mac OS X is a great product.
Sure, the guy did something wrong. Apple, oet him pay $2500 Tsunami disaster relief and let it go.
Bert
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us do believe in respecting copyright/trademark/patent "property" rights while they exist... even while arguing against them.
Re:Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of excellent valuable ideas, concepts, things being made.
If you don't have someone to sell your idea, concept or thing, you are not going to make any money.
I know. believe me, I know.
The only way The Woz would have made a pile of money off the Apple without Jobs, is if he was lucky enough to have another Jobs-type stumble across him.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's long. Boo-fucking-hoo. If you can't handle spending a couple hours reading and comprehending a contract before signing, get a lawyer to read and comprehend it for you. Just because you may not take a contract all that seriously doesn't mean the other party shares your disinterest.
OTHERWISE, don't go signing legally binding agreements without knowing what you're getting into!
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one.
Not in the eyes of the law, there isn't. If you're going to sign a contract, you'd damn well better understand what you're signing--and don't be surprised when you're expected to live up to your end of the deal. Not bothering to read and understand a legally binding document is every bit as willful as understanding and violating said document--especially when the issue at hand isn't some niggling interpretation of language but an obvious and blatant violation of the core concept of the agreement.
Re:summary... (Score:4, Insightful)
5) The Woz feels sorry that the Kid is getting punished for his unthinking brush with Reality, donates $1000 to his defense.
Of course, this *could* just be Woz having flashbacks . . .
hawk
Ding ding -- Proportionate Justice in civil cases (Score:5, Insightful)
As a nation, the US is struggling with that "proportionate" part.
Think of all the ways in which we're drifting, semi-consciously, toward authoritarian responses to crime. The death penalty, "three strikes" mandatory sentencing rules that take sentencing away from judges in order for politicians to appear "tough on crime," drug sentences that put people away for disproportionate sentences compared with the punishment violent criminals get hit with. Any sense of proportion goes out the window once you've got the public responding to politicians who'll play to that. We've got plenty of /. posters who reacted to the "webcam break-in" story last week by saying "throw away the key" when they found out the guy only got 11 months in prison. Politicians eat that stuff up.
(Or take a look at Martha Stewart; it's completely freaking clear that she didn't do anything other big stock players aren't doing right now. She's being made into an example. Meanwhile Ken Lay? Connected to our President, and I don't notice him doing crime for destroying countless Enron employees' retirements through his quite extreme reckless behavior and that of his entire energy junta. That's not proportionate justice.)
Meanwhile, the corporate influence on government is simultaneously de-fanging potential civil suits against big corporations and giving them those corporate entities the ability to completely ream individuals who can't defend themselves in any real way against the money the big players can array against them.
This guy sounds like a fool -- the "I'm not hiring a lawyer" idiocy that some posters here are backing has partly gotten him into this spot. ("The person who represents himself as a lawyer has a fool for a client.") But he shouldn't be destroyed. He should be made aware that he has to think about what he's doing, and he needs to feel that message.
What needs to happen is that he gets a lawyer, Apple makes a big show of being amiable about this but also bares its teeth for a while, and everybody goes home with the usual "undisclosed settlement" -- equivalent to a month's salary for him, or something like, but never to be disclosed.
How this public letter approach is going to play will be interesting. Apple doesn't want to take bad PR, no -- so they need a way to come out of this as the Good Company.
Re:summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
While you're almost certainly just quoting a crappy science fiction novel in an effort to be cute, everyone ought to think about this for a minute: do you really want a legal system based on Social Darwinism?
Re:It really comes down to this... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think people are really speaking past each other in this argument. Yes, Apple is legally in the right. They'll have a heck of a time proving they suffered significant damages, but still, these guys obviously violated their contract. Apple wins, and now, sports.
That's not really the point. Apple's fucking with these people's lives, in spite of the fact that they didn't cause any real harm. Dragging them into a federal court and forcing them into debt to defend themselves is just bad behavior, particularly in light of the fact that these were supporters of Apple.
It's about the distinction between "morally" and "legally" right, and believing that the punishment should fit the crime. Apple's response here is vastly out of proportion with what was necessary... which seems to sort of appeal to some people's sense of justice, nowadays.
In other news, man bites dog! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's just clear this up now: no one ever said that each and every P2P user is violating copyright (well, except maybe the irrational thinkers at the MPAA / RIAA), but it's pretty safe to say that most P2P users are violating copyright law, or have violated copyright law in the past.
All clear? Mmkay.
Re:Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:3, Insightful)
Formatting. It's a word, look it up.
Re:Woz is too much of an idealist (Score:3, Insightful)
One person has a great technical idea but no clue on selling, another has great business sense but couldn't rewire a plug. They combine, form a team and get rich. Amen.
To paraphrase you: "There are lots and lots and lots and lots of excellent business people able to sell valuable ideas, concepts and things. If they don't have someone to have an idea, concept or thing then they are not going to make any money.
Puh-lease, What do you think Non-Disclosure means? (Score:2, Insightful)
If the EULA, NDA and other agreements he had to read were too much for him to comprehend, he should have taken that as a sign... perhaps something as complex is medicince is out of his league
Re:Stallman was right (Score:2, Insightful)
You are turning things around. This guy is being accused of distributing something. Breaking the GPL would mean not distributing something. You can easily undo the wrong to the GPL by distributing the source.
So from a negative point of view the difference is between wrong you can easily repair and wrong you have no way of repairing. Apple is not asking this guy to straighten his ways, it's asking for a punishment. While I would no go as far as saying that one is about fear and one is about love the contrast is obvious.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is clearly a case of a lone individual illegally distributing the copyrighted material of a massive corporation.
"why should Apple computer be able to ruin someones life through financial means just because they have multi-billions of dollars and he has.. "
So you're saying that if you screw someone with lots of money, they shouldn't be able to sue you in return?
Re:Nausea: The Great Equaliser? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you mitigate the fact that he went and violated the single most central tenet of the contract he signed? This is on par with trying to keep your home by saying that you didn't bother to read the mortgage before you signed it, and thus didn't really understand that you had to make monthly payments on your loan!
Like I said at the end of my post, this isn't a debate over some dubious interpretation of three words nested in sub-paragraph thirteen of section six. This is a willful and blatant violation of the very core of the agreement! Hell, even if he hadn't read anything beyond "Non Disclosure Agreement", he'd know that what he did was in violation of at least the spirit of the agreement.
I'm not arguing that he should be gutted and dried for display. I'm simply saying that there is absolutely no way he should garner sympathy because he didn't even read a contract before signing it.
I am looking at the situation in human terms. What this guy did was an obvious and blatant breach of a legally-binding contract. There is simply no way he didn't know what he was doing was wrong, save for a stunningly high level of stupidity that, frankly, is precluded by the fact that he's smart and saavy enough about filesharing (and the issues surrounding IP) to go about launching a BitTorrent seed. He's looking for sympathy he honestly doesn't deserve. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard, but it's the same kind of sorry I feel for the type of person who gets carted to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning after trying to tune his engine with the garage door closed.
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying that if you screw someone with lots of money, they shouldn't be able to sue you in return?
That's a big load of crap, and you know it. There's no real damage here. This is a beta release of software already given to thousands of people that's going to go public in a few months anyway. This case is about the culture of Apple and likely Steve Jobs going ape-shit every time something "leaks".
Re:What's his defense? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they slap him with a stupid debt then that's his life ruined. If he'd have shoplifted the 5 or 6 copies he said he distributed, he'd have been a lot better off legally.
According to the article there were about 2500 downloads from his seed. That is 2500*$130=$325K. Now add in any damage from leaking the public beta to the public, including bad PR caused by the leaky betas, now include Apple's legal fees to get an injunction + restitution. This theoretically cost Apple a lot of money, and it was something he agreed not to do. I mean if I sign an agreement that says I won't take a dump in the food at a restaurant if they let me into the kitchen, then I do that and lots of people get sick, and sue, and their business goes downhill, I'd damn well expect to be sued for the damage caused. This guy has no excuse. He's supposed to be a med student, which further reduces my faith in the profession. He will probably have a lot of debt to pay off and that is a good thing.
P.S. your comments about hijacking a truck are moronic. He is not going to spend 8-10 years in prison for this, he is going to be in debt until he pays for the damage he caused.
Re:Apple to blame to a major extent (Score:3, Insightful)
Easily? What you're suggesting is to distribute the OS in a crippled form (one that wouldn't actually go to production, and would therefore be different software) so that they can guard against people who have accepted NDAs from leaking the IP.
Of course, one could always distribute the MAC address with it and then you could reprogram the MAC address on your card. Oops. Do I see a loophole?
By your way of thinking, they were fools to expect people to abide by their contractual obligations and therefore get what they deserve. Remind me not to enter into a contract with you.
Missing the point. (Score:3, Insightful)