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Apple Defendants Interviewed 339

Posted by CowboyNeal from the behind-the-case dept.
evands writes "There's an interview with Desicanuk, one of three named defendants in the Apple lawsuit alleging illegal distribution of a Tiger developer build, and Nessence, one of two administrators of MacTKA, the Mac BitTorrent tracker site where the build was initially posted, up at DrunkenBlog. The interview tells the whole story as a press release can not, from how Apple determined the kids to sue, to lawyers knocking on doors on Christmas Eve, and beyond. 'Collateral Damage' is a fascinating read which humanizes the whole messy situation."
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Apple Defendants Interviewed More

Apple Defendants Interviewed

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  • Go figure... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @12:57PM (#11297274) Homepage Journal
    Some companies view a buggy leak as an opportunity to generate free buzz about the final product. Some view it as an opportunity to use the legal system to bludgeon extreme enthusiasts that have allegedly crossed the line.

    Maybe it's time to look at OS marketshare to see how the different strategies work out.

    • Go figure...Respect, be damned. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:01PM (#11297306)
      "Some companies view a buggy leak as an opportunity to generate free buzz about the final product. Some view it as an opportunity to use the legal system to bludgeon extreme enthusiasts that have allegedly crossed the line."

      And maybe some have so little respect for others that they'll violate the rules at every turn. Would it really have killed the Mac community to wait?
      • I don't know. The tiger pre-release is very buggy right now. There are lots of screen issues, fuzzy text, occational scrambling of the windows etc.

        I can certainly understand how apple does not want this released into the public because it will give the product an undeserved bad reputation.

        People (especially BOFHs) will not say "oh it's a pre-release of course it doesn't work perfectly". They will instead say "the next version of mac os x sucks".

        All developers who signed up for the pre-release program had

      • Re:Go figure...Respect, be damned. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Durandal64 ( 658649 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:06PM (#11298195)
        Thank you. I'm a member of Apple's OS X Update Seed program, so I get seeded with updates to 10.3 to test and report back on before released. Most recently, I was testing 10.3.7. But I was invited to that seed by Mike Bombich because of my work with ActiveDirectory in my school's environment. Do I run around leaking information about those seeds or the actual seeds themselves? No. I was cordially invited by Mike Bombich into the program and signed an NDA. If I leaked information on the updates or the software itself, it would reflect badly on Mike. And what would I gain from such a leak? Nothing. I'd have a little closet prestige. Whoop-die-do.

        This guy took advantage of a favor that a friend did for him and distributed the Tiger beta to other people. Whoever he got the beta from probably didn't want him giving it to five or six other people. That's a breach of trust between him and the company a well as him and his friend. Now his buddy could potentially get in trouble for it. He's caused a huge fucking mess because he figured he'd play Robin Hood. Well, now he's getting what came to him. Maybe now he'll take implied trusts and legal documents with his signature on them more seriously.
        • I, too, am a long time Mac developer. I have a premier account at work and I've been getting these seeds since the early 90s.

          At every conference we get the "talking to" from Apple about not doing this. I have never done anything like this and I suspected that real developers would not. This guy was not a developer - he was a power user who had no real need for to have the seed.

          I've got users to think about. I need these seeds prior to the release of the OS to make sure that my products aren't going to bre

    • Re:Go figure... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by computerme ( 655703 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:05PM (#11297360)
      "alleged"

      from the link:

      I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn't a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.

      As to the question, did I do exactly what Apple is accusing me of doing? I did share the file. So in that regard yes. But there was no malicious intent.

      STFU.

      • Re:Go figure... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        After the torrent was disabled, some individual leaked it to an open, non-mac site, something I hadn't expected to be done.

        This guy is a 30 year old pre-med student. Either he is flat out lying or he has an actual smart person doing his med school work for him. NFW someone that stupid and naive is in pre-med.
        • Actually, anyone can be pre-med... it's doing well on the MCAT and having good enough grades that gets you into medical school. But that aside, everyone makes dumb mistakes once in awhile. I thought the article was well-written, and while it pushes the limits of credibility, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

      • Re:Go figure... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No malicious intent? That makes it okay to pirate software? The excuse of "I knew it was wrong but I wasn't doing it maliciously" is a bunch of BS. How exactly do you prove there isn't malicious intent? Hmm? Isn't the fact that you sent it to other people and knew that they didn't have any rights to it an admission of guilt?

        Maybe if you've been on Mars for the last few years you might not understand that piracy = bad but I don't believe I've seen any press releases regarding manned missions to anywher
      • Paraphrase: "I posted a torrent of Tiger, sure, but I had no idea this meant that people other than the anonymous chatroom participants I invited to download it would ever get access to it."

        Sorry, not very convincing.

    • Apple will let him off the hook. What can they gain by suing a med-student accept bad publicity, ecspecially after how the kid has admitted guilt and clearly did not intend for anything bad to happen. He does not have any money. If they let him go with a warning saying 'Just remember not to do it again', they come out looking like the little guys freind and generate a lot of positive PR.

      • Re:Go figure... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Leo McGarry ( 843676 )
        What can they gain? They can put a stop to the leak-like-a-sieve nature of the developer community, for starters. Of course, the community does not really leak like a sieve; the vast majority of developers stick to their NDAs. But because some done, and because really sophisticated technology has been developed to enable piracy on a vast scale, it looks like the developer community leaks like a sieve.

        And as for this "bad publicity" thing of which you speak ...friend, there is no such thing as bad publicity

    • Maybe it's time to look at OS marketshare to see how the different strategies work out.

      As an "Extreme Mac enthusiast" myself, I concede that Apple's strategy of "surprise releases" is problematic. It punishes enthusiasts. It discourages small developers, who unlike the bigger players (MS and Adobe) don't have as much advance notice that they'll be losing APIs that they depend on. It really discourages enterprise level spending, as those customers like to plan their purchasing strategy for a few years

    • Re:Go figure... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Reverberant ( 303566 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @02:52PM (#11298115) Homepage
      Some companies view a buggy leak as an opportunity to generate free buzz about the final product

      Brent Simmons (a well known and respected Mac developer) released a "buggy" version of NetNewsWire 2.0 [ranchero.com], presumably to "generate free buzz about the final product."

      What did he get for his trouble? How about being publically berated [napsterization.org] because a clueless user didn't know the definition of "beta."

      As another poster put it, "you don't get to decide Apple's strategy for them." You're not the one that's going to have to deal with complaints from clueless users that don't understand why the pre-release version of Tiger has borked their mission-critical data.

    • Re:Go figure... (Score:5, Informative)

      by clarkcox3 ( 194009 ) <slashdot@clarkcox.com> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @02:57PM (#11298147) Homepage
      Some companies view a buggy leak as an opportunity to generate free buzz about the final product. Some view it as an opportunity to use the legal system to bludgeon extreme enthusiasts that have allegedly crossed the line.

      This is completely irrelevant. In order to get the pre-release builds, we have to sign a legally-binding agreement that states, among other things, that we will not redistribute the seeds that we get. This has nothing to do with copyright, it has nothing to do with free publicity. This is about contract law, it is about people signing contracts, and entering into agreements that they have no intention of upholding.

  • Tiger (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @12:58PM (#11297284)
    Releasing a Tiger into the wild is never a good idea, even if you're an experienced Safari user.

  • Remain SILENT (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spywarearcata.com ( 841806 ) * on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:00PM (#11297299)
    What an idiot. This interview will become evidence against him.

    When charged with a criminal or civil offense:

    1. remain silent;
    2. talk to an attorney;
    3. if case unresolved, goto 1

    Of course in the United States you do not have the right to an attorney if charged with a civil offense.
    You also do not have the right to be silent at trial, unless your statement may tend to incriminate you.

    Note that in the above program, there is no "grandstand / justify / brag to a blogger" statement.

    • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:03PM (#11297339)
      What an idiot. This interview will become evidence against him.

      When charged with a criminal or civil offense:

      1. remain silent;
      2. talk to an attorney;
      3. if case unresolved, goto 1

      He's only an idiot if he's trying to weasel out of it and plead not guilty. By his account, he's accepting responsibility for his actions and thus not an idiot. Hard concept to grasp, I know....

      • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spywarearcata.com ( 841806 ) * on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:14PM (#11297433)
        Distinguish "accepting responsibility" from "letting yourself be at the mercy of the plaintiffs."

        You don't have to the do the second in order to accomplish the first. A person with more intelligence and experience might realize that during an emotional situation one's judgment might not be the best, and that even though the person was a central player in the situation he might not know the entire relevant facts and law to judge one's own liability or guilt or to make conclusions about the situation.

        THAT is why you remain silent. Not because you are avoiding responsbility for your acts.

        • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Rick Zeman ( 15628 )
          Distinguish "accepting responsibility" from "letting yourself be at the mercy of the plaintiffs."

          This issues aren't whether he did it or not--they have him nailed cold; nothing he's said will dig him in deeper. This is all extenuation and mitigation in advance of the trial.
          He's not putting himself at Apple's mercy--he's trying to get mercy from Apple. There's a difference.
          • And how about wanting to take responsibility for mistakes, and being honest and telling the truth? Everyone assumes this guy is up to something or is just an idiot. Maybe he knows there are downsides to talking about what happened, but maybe he believes he is doing the right thing. We are all so conditioned to believe people are Up To Something that we don't ever look at the fact that there are honest people out there who make honest mistakes.

            And before you say that he's an idiot for not reading everything

        • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:3, Insightful)

          by macdaddy ( 38372 ) *
          Try opening your eyes a bit and remove the blue-tinted shades. This was an excellent PR move by the defense counsel. The more positive publicity the defendants get the less likely Apple will be to string them up by their nuts. This article (and probably correctly so) paints this defendant as a kid who made a harmless mistake, wants to own up to it, but doesn't want to me made an example of. It did so quite delicately. Coming down hard on the kid once this interview gets broader publicity would be a hor

    • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 )

      Note that in the above program, there is no "grandstand / justify / brag to a blogger" statement.

      I don't think they are bragging, it's calculated PR. Their responses are worded to present a "nice boy who did wrong" image of themselves. I think the hope is that people read the blog and feel for them which leads to bad PR for Apple and Apple goes easy on them or drops it altogether.
      • And the "calculated PR" inference will be shown to the jury as evidence of a malicious wrong-doer trying to escape his due.

        Note that for many civil offenses that harken back to the old "chancery" courts, you are not even entitled a trial by jury. A judge is far less likely to be swayed by this kind of "MEA CULPA!"

        Apple will just ask the court the simple question "If this guy really wanted to accept responsibility and not grandstand, why didn't he quietly admit his liability to us and humbly acce
    • What an idiot. This interview will become evidence against him.

      So will all the evidence he provided Apple when they called him up and he "answered all the questions they asked regarding how I got the torrent, how long I had seeded it for etc. I was honest and as helpful as I possibly could be."

      The same traits that got him in trouble in the first place, which causes him to say, "I suppose sometimes, honesty has a way of kicking you in the arse."

    • From TFA:

      Do you think what you did was wrong?

      At the time, no. If I did think what I was doing was wrong, I wouldn't have done it. Looking back on it, realizing that I did break an NDA, and I was part of a scandal involving one of my favourite companies, yes I do think what I did was wrong and I understand why they are suing me. It sucks being the bad guy in a situation, and I honestly do regret what I did. But hindsight as they say is 20/20.

      You did violate your ADC agreement... Do you think what Apple

    • Apple has an airtight case, and there's absoloutely no way he can cover a judgement against him or even the costs of a trial. People do funny things when there's no way out.
      • Well, even in his interview he believes that his avowed lack of malicious intent "mens rea" should mitigate liability.

        Google "strict liability tort."

        That is another reason to talk to an attorney before giving interviews--the law is a three-thousand year coral reef and you are just a polyp. Your intuition and perspective suck.

        • Civil != Criminal (Score:3, Insightful)

          by holt_rpi ( 454352 )
          In a criminal case, the prosecution has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt each of the elements of the criminal offense, which may include intent (mens rea), and various components of criminal acts (actus reus). In the U.S., the criminal defendant has a fundamental right to a jury trial (but can choose to waive that right).

          In a civil case, the plaintiff is the master of her claim. If the plaintiff demands a jury trial on all issues, it's not like the defendant can waive the jury demand that
          • As for intent, he has already admitted that he willfully and with full consciousness of his actions (or some such thing) made the build available to others. Posting the torrent didn't happen by itself.

    • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:4, Informative)

      by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110.anu@edu@au> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:30PM (#11297538) Journal
      yeah, but when you're a legal-naive med student, being told "if you co-operate we're pretty generous" is a good way to get people talking. I hope it gets chucked out, but I suspect it won't.

      Anyway, there's another big lesson to be learned here - for the love of god, BT servers, disable logging. If you have logs enabled then you're only helping out anyone who might sue you.

      -- james
      • "Anyway, there's another big lesson to be learned here - for the love of god, BT servers, disable logging. If you have logs enabled then you're only helping out anyone who might sue you."

        What difference does it make?

        I can log on to a torrent and in mere seconds have a list of people who, by the nature of bittorrent, are all sharing, and thus all guilty of infringement if the torrent happens to be for copyrighted material.

        It would be trivial for a copyright holder to write a script that would spider for

    • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:30PM (#11297539) Homepage Journal
      What an idiot. This interview will become evidence against him.
      Yeah, how dare some kid not know how to respond when a multinational corporation decides to sue him. They really need to start teaching that in Elementary School.

      (Does anyone else remember when that would be considered a joke rather than a realistic suggestion?).

      • You respond in court. That's what adults do. Childish brats whine and throw fits and tantrums, and look at me, I'm such a poor victim.

        But, all this is irrelevant. The moment he said: I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, we have learned he is a liar.
        • But, all this is irrelevant. The moment he said: I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, we have learned he is a liar.

          Right, because you read his mind while he was doing it, and you know with 100% certainty that he thought he was in fact doing wrong. Um, yeah.

          Whether he should have known he was doing something wrong is a different matter than whether he did in fact know he was doing something wrong.

    • There is no "civil" fifth amendment privilege. (Score:5, Informative)

      by holt_rpi ( 454352 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:40PM (#11297619)
      The parent here is somewhat correct, but I feel like I should clarify:

      The fifth amendment prohibition against compelled testimony only applies to criminal liability, and only applies to "persons."

      If an elicited response in a civil case might tend to incriminate you in a criminal action, a witness can invoke the privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to answer that question. Remember, though, that if you waive the privilege, it is lost forever - so if you're not sure, SHUT YOUR MOUTH and find a way to consult with a lawyer. If you're at a loss for how to get an attorney, many state and local bar associations have lawyer referral services that are free to the public, usually with a free or cheap 30-minute interview or something.

      In a civil case, just because a statement may tend to make you more liable for money damages in a civil action doesn't mean that you can make a blanket refusal to testify if called as a witness by the opposing party. To do so would not only nullify your defense and force the court to take your opponent's views at face value, but would also mean that individuals could escape liability in most cases by simply refusing to acknowledge it.

      Also important is that civil liability has varying degrees of standards of proof, with ultimate responsibility generally relying on a preponderance of the evidence - both sides have an obligation to plead their cases, and the factfinder decides what "truth" is. Criminal liability, however, requires that the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The criminal defendant can remain silent and the burden for the prosecution remains unchanged.

      However, even in a criminal case, you can't use the defendant's silence as both a sword and a shield; once the defendant has chosen to take the stand and testify, they can't choose to only answer questions that would tend to prove their innocence.

      I know I went a little overboard, but I always see people confusing the fifth amendment privilege and thinking that they can apply it where they can't. Just wanted to clarify.

      • Bzzt (Score:2, Informative)

        by glrotate ( 300695 )
        The Fifth Amendment 'can be asserted in any proceeding, civil or criminal, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory; and it protects against any disclosures which the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used.' Kastigar v. U.S., 406 U.S. 441, 44-45 ('72).

        A reasonable belief that information concerning income or assets might be used to establish criminal failure to file a tax return can support a claim of Fifth

    • Re:Remain SILENT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tallbill ( 819601 )
      If you deal with people who assume that everyone is a liar then you are correct. That seems to be a lot of lawyers and also police.

      For example if you tell what you really did in an altercation then you do have a problem if the other person lied about what happened and they cops think the truth is in the middle.

      I like what the Book of Proverbs suggests: avoid the courts as much as possible.

      However, when asked to speak the truth and you refuse then the assumption is that you have something to hide and th
    • Of course in the United States you do not have the right to an attorney if charged with a civil offense.

      Huh? I think the difference is just that the state won't pay for your attorney in a civil case. There is some logic to that.
    • You know what? Just because you have a *right* to remain silent doesn't mean you should always do so!

      Perhaps there is sometimes far greater value in getting things "off your chest" and publicly clarifying a situation before the rumor-mongers go wild, twisting it into something completely different than it is?

      When you're just a student with limited finances and limited personal property, you already *know* there's not too much financial damage a corporation can do to you. (Can't get blood from a turnip,

  • What's Messy? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:07PM (#11297373)
    The guy lied, violated his NDA and posted valuable copyrighted material which he did not own to a public site. Let him twist in the wind.
    • The guy lied, violated his NDA and posted valuable copyrighted material which he did not own to a public site. Let him twist in the wind.
      Yeah, he really deserves to be receive more punishment than most rapists do.

      IP law is fucked up. It is punishing children for doing what they are told to do on Sesame Street.

  • How did THAT happen? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saxerman ( 253676 ) * on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:11PM (#11297412) Homepage
    What stood out for me was:

    When I mentioned it to a few people in various IRC chat rooms, they had asked if they could get a copy too. I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn't a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.

    And then he's surprised when it escapes out in the wild. Don't they teach kids the safe sex warnings anymore? You're not just sharing with all your friends, you're sharing with all their friends too.

    • He says he didn't think it illegal to redistribute it?

      Um... hello? Look at the channels you had to go through to get the software! Apple doesn't have a link to it on their home page for everyone to download!

      And he's a frequent reader of Mac rumor sites... come on, those sites are always talking about people being sued for leaking software.

      If his story is true, he needs to get out of college because he's too stupid to be a doctor.
    • You know something, though? Most people, when they do decide to have sex with someone, don't spend an awful lot of time concerning themselves with obtaining a complete, accurate list of everyone else their partner has slept with, and who those people slept with, etc. (If this really was a big concern, most people would probably end up never having sex at all....)

      The fact is, most things in life that are in any way, shape or form "rewarding" involve a certain level of risk. A risk-free life is a pretty d
  • This is like people who share music. Isn't it amazing to be in a business where people want your product so much they risk going to jail to get it?
  • When asked why he leaked the build, he replies "I assumed it wouldn't be a big deal if I shared this with like minded mac fans"...rather a weak defence, because it's kind of like saying "I didn't think it would matter if I uploaded this film / mp3 before the release date as long as I only shared it with fans of said film/music"... ...although he doesn't mention it in the article, I'm sure at least a very small part of it was to do with his ego - "I have 10.4, I'm special" etc. etc. I'm not saying that was h
    • He may not care a bit about defending on the issue of liability. He may only care about defending on the issue of calculating damages (how much loss did he really cause Apple?) or about appearing sweet and naive in front of a jury. Go back, re-read the interview for instances where he talks about how nice he is, and then ask yourself how a jury might react to that.

      IANAL.

  • I have the Legal Documents (Score:3, Informative)

    by ramdac ( 302865 ) <ramdac [at] ramdac.org> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:16PM (#11297446) Homepage Journal
    here: http://www.ramdac.org/article/id/256.html [ramdac.org] I remember 3 weeks ago when Nessence told me Apple called him on his cell, that this would get nasty. He sent me the legal documents Apple had sent before he came over last night to talk about it.
  • Whence came this sense of entitlement?

  • The dev is at fault (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The one who is really responsible for this incident is the developer who released the seed-key!

    You can't release those to people outside the company. He should be the one targetted in this suit, not some poor college student. He should face disciplinary action (and hopefully fired!). Keeping this guy around will just mean it will happen again! He has no problems handing out seed-keys, as mentioned in the article.

    Apple really should fire the dev.

    Well, for all we know, maybe they already have. But rea

  • Proceed with caution (Score:3, Informative)

    by Leo McGarry ( 843676 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:21PM (#11297479)
    I don't want to get accused of shooting the messenger here, but it's worth noting that the author of "Drunken Blog" has, in the recent past, been caught posting lengthy tracts of stuff that just isn't true.

    He wrote a lengthy rant about interface scalability in Mac OS X, bemoaning the fact that Tiger doesn't do Thing X that he thinks is really incredibly important, and explaining why everybody at Apple who disagrees with him is obviously an idiot.

    Then along came the commenters who, probably by bending their NDAs, explained to him that Tiger does, in fact, do X, and that the author doesn't have the first idea what he's talking about.

    Is this relevant to the subject at hand? Almost certainly not. But I'm a big believer in context, so I felt like maybe somebody would appreciate it if I shared what I knew of it.
    • I don't want to get accused of shooting the messenger here, but it's worth noting that the author of "Drunken Blog" has, in the recent past, been caught posting lengthy tracts of stuff that just isn't true.

      This seems to be about High PPI problem, a blog post I put up about increasing pixel density and resolution independence and the problems faced with moving to the new models. There was one part that I considered to be wrong: which was that Apple didn't seem to be working on it going by what had been rel

  • he probably knew what he was doing is wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:26PM (#11297507)
    >After about 3 hours of seeding, a Mod for the site disabled the torrent. I assumed that there must have been something wrong with the file I uploaded, so I stopped my seed and deleted the file. I didn't even get a chance to install it.

    so he goes through all the trouble of finding out about ADC to get the seed, but as soon as the torrent is disabled by a mod, he "assumes" that the file is messed up and deletes it? sounds more like he deleted it because he got fearful in getting an indirect confirmation that leaking it was wrong...

  • Amazing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It always amazes me how Apple gets treated on /.

    Let me play devils advocate here for a minute.
    We have a company here that's suing 21 year old mac fans for participating in the illegal sharing of a beta build of their OS.

    We have a company here that's extracting information from someone they are about to sue under false pretence.

    We have a company here that's suing a side aimed at their fans because the site spreads some rumors about new products.

    We have a company that refuses to use an open standard, or e

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)

      by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@g3.1415926mail.com minus pi> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:46PM (#11297652) Homepage Journal
      We have a company here that is taking open source technology for their new browser, but then refuse to give the changes they make back in a way that might be useful to the original open source developers.

      Well that one's just a lie [apple.com].

    • It makes awesome products (Dual G5, iPods, iLife, PowerBooks), some smart licensing movies (HP iPod, HP Tunes, Motorola iPhone), has a good open source policy (Darwin, KHTML, ZeroConf, Darwin Streaming Server) and STILL people bitch when Apple acts to defend itself!

      Let me refute your inaccurate points:

      >We have a company here that's suing 21 year old mac fans for participating in the illegal sharing of a beta build of their OS.

      No, we have a company here that's suing a 21 year old and others for violati

  • Tiger screenshot leak controversy (Score:3, Informative)

    by britneys 9th husband ( 741556 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:34PM (#11297574) Homepage Journal
    I'm wondering -- does this have anything to do with the screenshots [macrumors.com] of Tiger that were released on Macrumors a few months back? Some of you may remember this; I think Slashdot even ran a story about it (although unfortunately I can't find it at the moment).

    What happened was this: Someone sent what they claimed to be Tiger screenshots to Macrumors.com. However, the article said "courtesy of Gary Niger from GNAA" or some such, so everyone assumed they were fake. But then they turned out to be real. The GNAA has been bragging [www.gnaa.us] ever since.

    I guess what I'm really wondering is, are the defendants in this case GNAA members who got caught obtaining and posting these screenshots? Or is this something else, completely unrelated?

  • ADC Security (Score:5, Informative)

    by toonerh ( 518351 ) * on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:39PM (#11297613)
    For $500 per year anyone who agrees to follow Apple's ADC NDA agreement has access to 5 "Software Seed Keys". Anyone can join can and obtain an ADC account for free and what are called "assets" can be passed to other ADC account holders in the same company. That way a company can have 5 developers directly downloading prerelease software with only 1 membership.

    There are other, less secretive assets such as the right to buy a Mac system at a discount, albeit for development purposes and not for resale.

    Apple also has much more tightly controlled seeds to key developers, these exist but the procedures and those who are involved are a tightly guarded secret. They used to be only distributed on physical media by private carrier.

    The lawsuit involved the regular seeded software only, not the uber-secret stuff. To my knowledge that has rarely, if ever, made it into the wild.

  • it's interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @01:55PM (#11297709)
    i'm a member of the site, and have been for a while. it's interesting that apple didn't try to shut down the site at all. they merely wanted to make sure that tiger betas didn't appear on the site.

    we have all their software well seeded with people downloading, and they didn't give a damn. it was just the prerelease software.

    it seems apple doesn't care too much about piracy and "lost sales"- they just don't want people judging them by prerelease software and getting the wrong impression.

  • From the news page [torrentskickass.com] of the site in question:

    In light of what has recently taken place, we are going to be making some major changes. We are first going to be migrating to and creating a new forum for all the users. The tracker will keep running but we will make some changes. We will disable the ability to integrate torrent information in the forum. However, we will also enable RSS accessibility. There will be other major changes - possibly even moving to a new tracker system. The system we have now is ver

  • How it should have gone down (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hammock ( 247755 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @02:26PM (#11297936) Homepage
    Maybe it would not have turned out differently the following way, but at least you cost them more time and resources doing so:

    Before I found out I was being sued, they(lawyers) called me up to let me know they were doing an investigation. To be perfectly honest, the individuals who contacted me were polite and respectful. When I asked them if they were suing me, they let me know that if I cooperate, that Apple has a history of being a generous company.

    I answered all the questions they asked regarding how I got the torrent, how long I had seeded it for etc. I was honest and as helpful as I possibly could be.

    Wrong. Lawyers are not your friend. Their job is to help prosecute you.

    We were given 'Door #1': "If you don't co-operate we'll sue you". We replied and upon replying received 'Door #2': "We understand it's P2P, but if you don't co-operate we'll sue you" or 'Door #3': "We are all adults here, cooperate and we assure you we won't sue all your users but we can't tell you what might happen to the uploaders".

    How about the front door? You don't have to answer anybody's questions for any reason. In order for you to "co-operate" they need 2 other things:
    1. An officer of the law holding a warrant
    2. Your lawyer present.

    This is a classic case of citizens giving up thier rights guaranteed under the Constitution. Even the Canadian has rights on foreign American soil. These guys just gave up all those rights, did the Apple lawyers and police officers jobs for them, and now they are getting sued!

  • Setting a Precedent for Click-Through Licencing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:12PM (#11298232) Homepage
    From the interview:

    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.

    I never read agreements that I signed when I install other software or when I sign up for things like Hotmail, etc.

    Not that I'm endorsing what he's done, but he's wasting a golden opportunity to turn this into a question of the validity of click-through licencing.

    p
  • Gizmodo is now linking to (possibly fake) leaked pictures [gizmodo.com] of the headless iMac.

  • Unsympathetic (Score:3)

    by xihr ( 556141 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @09:23PM (#11300873) Homepage

    It's hard to be sympathetic for this guy. He signed an NDA, didn't read it, then did something incredibly stupid, and is getting sued for it. He even admits it -- but seems to think it's unfair that he should have to face the consequences of his actions. Why should we care, exactly?

    This isn't Big Brother, this isn't Evil Corporate America, this is someone explicitly and knowingly entering into a contract and then flagrantly violating it. That he didn't read the NDA, or apply the tinyiest inkling of common sense, makes that his fault, and no one elses.

    What does he think the appropriate resolution should be, exactly? Getting a cookie?

  • Ethics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Refrag ( 145266 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @02:50AM (#11302378) Homepage
    I don't know about you guys, but I'm not very sympathetic to a pre-med student without any ethics. It makes you wonder what kind of physician he'll become.

  • We'll Just See... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord Flipper ( 627481 ) * on Sunday January 09, 2005 @12:07PM (#11304077)

    ...how Apple plays this one.

    Was the kid a bit naive? Sure. I'm occasionally on invitation-only torrents in the Mac, and multi-platform, scenes, and the trackers are adamant about people NOT distributing the torrent files, themselves, on other trackers. Always lots of warnings regarding "Don't share torrents, outside." So, I give the kid the benefit of the doubt regarding his belief that the buggy beta would stay 'inside' somewhat. He made, as Nixon put it, 'an error in judgment', no question of that.

    I also believe that the real asshole in this situation was the 'paid-up' ADC Member who had the 'seed' of Tiger, in the first place, and 'gave' it to the kid with the freebie ADC account. (Trust me, the 'free' ADC accounts never see 'seeds' of an OS. Period.) He's the one who should be taken to the cleaners, not the kids.

    Apple Computer is also made up of 'smart' people, with history and experience. And they should know, (as well as most of us here) that 'good' people do 'bad' things, and smart people are capable of doing the stupidest things.

    I did some freelance work in the Securities industry (as an investment analyst for a small group of fellows), and one of the truisms in Markets and market interventions is this: The mechanisms put in place after a crisis, stock crash, etc, are never sufficient to prevent the next shock, and what is more, the mechanisms, themselves, almost invariably guarantee that the next 'event' will be far worse than the one that precipitated the intervention, and its so-called 'protection'. We'll just see... the ball is in Apple's court... for the time being.

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