In Second Trial, Ex-Goldman Sachs Programmer Convicted of Code Theft 84
Ars Technica reports that
A former Goldman Sachs programmer—featured in the book Flash Boys—was convicted on Friday for stealing high-speed trading code from the bank.
Sergey Aleynikov, 45, was also acquitted on one count of unlawful duplication, according to Reuters. The New York state jury could not come to a verdict on another count of unlawful use of secret scientific material.
Sergey Aleynikov was also acquitted of unlawful duplication. This was the second trial for Aleynikov in five years. He could face up to four years in prison.
Unlawful duplication (Score:5, Funny)
Sergey Aleynikov, 45, was also acquitted on one count of unlawful duplication, according to Reuters. [...]. Sergey Aleynikov was also acquitted of unlawful duplication.
Meanwhile, timothy is still at large....
Re:It's not really about the code... (Score:4, Insightful)
lets stop high frequency trading.
stock investments that are fleeting, are not investments only gambling.
People hold investments for days,weeks,months, years.
Gamblers change their mind moment to moment.
Speculators & gamblers gaming our financial systems are making a mess of the world.
This includes the US government and the printing of money without any backing value.
The doom and gloom market boys are predicting a real mess if our leadership doesn't make a real change in regard to our debit & deficit.
got your gold, guns, ammo & prepper supplies ?
Re:It's not really about the code... (Score:5, Informative)
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Now, if i could write a software, that took 1 cent of each transaction and put it on my back account...
You mean fractions of a cent, kinda like in Superman 3.
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Re:It's not really about the code... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this verdict sends a great message: do not steal from the leaches of society that have enough money to get other leaches elected.
From the comments on this article I get the feeling I'm the only one would read Flash boys. He was developing code, part of it proprietary and part of it open source, which he modified. His intent was to someday separate and release the modified open source code; he didn't have any plans to do anything with the proprietary code. He checked the code into a subversion repository based in Germany, apparently the first free code repository his search engine ranked.
So when the police got hold of this, they heard subversion" repository and concluded obviously this guy is a "subversive". Oh, it's hosted in Germany? Even worse.
When they investigated further, they made a big deal out of the fact that he deleted his bash history. What's he trying to hide? Sounds like a cover up.
That's the level of stupidity and ignorance and we've come to expect of police regarding technical matters. And for what it's worth, I use subversion, (or cvs, git, whatever the project uses) and my .bash_history links to /dev/null. I don't use the feature, so I don't waste the disk space. I guess that makes me a criminal.
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Open source isn't the issue. The issue is that, as a programmer for hire, the code he produced during his employment period was not under his own copyright. Any working computer programmer knows this, or if not, should.
He had no right to copy the code he wrote, submit patches, or otherwise contribute back to any open source projects. He needed permission from the company's officers to do any of this.
In particular, he probab
it's all code (Score:2)
Open source isn't the issue. The issue is that, as a programmer for hire, the code he produced during his employment period was not under his own copyright. Any working computer programmer knows this, or if not, should.
that is the issue, i'm glad at least a few people are talking about it
it's not as simple as you make it out to be at all, however
if i have a modified version of a standard codebase that i use as a template on many jobs, if someone used then modified that template for a client, by your logic that template itself would be the company's copyright, because it was used
it's the "modified" part that is causing the problem...it's virtually impossible to do not modify code when...um...coding...
there has to be a rati
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if i have a modified version of a standard codebase that i use as a template on many jobs, if someone used then modified that template for a client, by your logic that template itself would be the company's copyright, because it was used
If someone used then modified the template then either their changes become your property, or they contravene the licence terms, or they get to keep their changes but not the template or the template is already the company's property.
There's no single answer, until or unless we know the terms of the licence or commercial agreement under which the company are using the code in your template.
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Is the standard codebase yours? (ie, have you got the copyright for all of it?)
If the codebase is yours, and you've written the template yourself, then the terms of your contract with the client specify if they own the code or not. It's up to you to be careful what you
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I'm having trouble understanding how this wasn't double jeopardy. He was convicted in federal court, served a bit of time, then that conviction was overturned, then the New York D.A. brought state charges against him for the same act.
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just write a program to slightly underbid and slightly overprice from your company's stream of bid and ask prices
yeah, that's what caused the "flash crash"...to many people doing exactly what you suggest
it became a tech war...who can have the fastest shortcut?
on other /. threads some commenters examined the code that Goldman-Sachs used as reported in the lawsuit and it was deemed "spaghetti"
it was all a hacked together mess...**at one of the top places**
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If Goldman Sachs were gambling, that wouldn't be so bad. They could and often do lose. What high-frequency trading is all about is arbitrage, buying low in one market and simultaneously selling higher in another. Traditional arbitrage is basically a good thing: it's the natural mechanism by which prices in two widely separated trading markets are pulled into line. HFT is arbitraging the tiny price differentials that develop in close-by markets when any small differential between the price of a Microsoft sha
'Stealing' (Score:4, Informative)
Stealing? So he REMOVED it from them with intent to deny them the use of it? Surely you mean copying? "Unlawful use of secret scientific material." wow, America is full of comedy laws.
Goldman Sacs secret sauce is that when it can't sell bad assets, the ex Goldman Sacs execs in Federal Reserve banks, print money to bail it out. Setting up shell companies that buy the bankrupt assets at high value prices, lending those shell companies printed money, then closing *those* shell companies as bankrupt slowly over time and putting that on the banks books as a loss. Basically handing wealth from real dollar asset companies to Goldmans. Stock trading by its nature is a zero sum game and can't generate wealth without this kind of trickery.
NOW THAT *IS* STEALING. Because it takes wealth away from dollar savers and gives the underlying value to Goldman Sachs.
give it up (Score:2)
Stealing/theft is a word with multiple meanings. This is one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
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Re:give it up (Score:4, Insightful)
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For those not wanting to watch a video to read a quote:
Thomas Jefferson (to Isaac McPherson, 1813-08-13):
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Full text is easy to find via your favorite search engine.
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You're playing word games. "Theft of service" has a specific meaning, in much the same way that infringement does. But you want snip out the "theft" part and treat as a stand-alone word, so that you can then equate it to stealing. Then you want to tie that back to infringement.. It's a
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"Stealing is taking things from other people."
"Popular dictionaries and encyclopedias say that intellectual property theft is also stealing."
"Well, yes, but that's not a *true* Scotsman."
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And here we see a perfect example of multiple fallacies.
The most obvious one would be the strawman. Applying the Scotsman without the parent first taking this step.
The other one would be appeal to authority. Through corruption the law has been changed to treat ideas as if they could be truly stolen, why should dictionaries be held as a higher authority than the law?
And the last and least obvious, the fallacy fallacy. Finding a fallacy can invalidate the argument, it doesn't need to, and even if the argument
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Face, the target should be thankful, that a major corporate political player is not claiming the defendant murdered the data and should be executed. Clearly they feel infringed upon and are using their control of the US department of in-Justice to persecute the individual. I am surprised they did not go the espionage route if the code just appears in another country.
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I suppose it could always be argued that the Greek government didn't have to follow their advice, and that "sharp practice" is the American way that they should have been wary of - but it isn't what is supposed to be the American way is it?
It's the same with proposing to jail a copyright infringer for longer than a rapist or armed robber - something to be ashamed of. Just because Goldman Sachs execs like
The Greek Government (re:give it up) (Score:2)
Perhaps this is getting off-topic, but the Greek government hired Goldman Sachs precisely because it wanted to adopt 'sharp practices' in hiding its growing economic crisis.
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Re:give it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Theft is a word with a single meaning which various business interests like to use in cases which don't involve it to set up an appeal to emotion. Such attempts should be resisted, not excused.
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I think you'll find that "intent to deprive" is not part of all people's intuitive definitions of theft, even if it is involved in many legal statutes. I know it took me a while to be convinced that there were people for whom the intuitive definition did require intent to deprive.
"He stole my idea!" is a common phrase, for instance, and widely understood. That's usually stated by the person who is *not* the entrenched business.
I think this semantic argument about "stealing" and "theft" is a weird bleed-th
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You are not the only person here to make a case against the conviction on the basis of the meaning of 'stealing', but such arguments don't get anywhere, as the law contains precise definition of what the word is intended to mean in this case (if it actually says 'stealing', which I doubt.) A more pertinent question might be how a matter that should fall under civil / contract law has been turned into a criminal offense.
On the other hand, your characterization of Goldman Sachs' behavior is spot-on.
Actually may be stealing in the deprived sense too (Score:2)
Stealing? So he REMOVED it from them with intent to deny them the use of it? Surely you mean copying? "Unlawful use of secret scientific material." wow, America is full of comedy laws.
It may actually be stealing in the sense of depriving someone too. The code supposedly included trade secrets. Trade secrets are no longer valid once disclosed. The disclosure does not have to be intentional, my understanding is that accidental, negligent, etc disclosure counts too. So if the trade secrets were lost through the source code being copied then the owner was deprived of their trade secrets and theft would have occurred.
"secret scientific material" is probably a pseudonym for trade secrets. S
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The owner was not deprived of the trade secrets. The owner still has all the information. It's just not secret anymore.
Let's say I buy a Ford F series truck. It's "America's best selling car". Now lets say a Toyota model gains the title. Was an "America's best selling car" stolen from me? I used to have one, and now I don't. I still have the same car I always had. It's just not the most popular anymore
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The owner was not deprived of the trade secrets. The owner still has all the information. It's just not secret anymore.
Its not that simple. The legal and property protections offered by a trade secret, a legally recognized type of intellectual property, is lost. The owner deprived of its benefits.
Let's say I buy a Ford F series truck. It's "America's best selling car". Now lets say a Toyota model gains the title. Was an "America's best selling car" stolen from me?
That is a title not a trade secret. Again a trade secret is a legally defined type of intellectual property that offers the owner specific legal rights and privileges. For example something in the process that Ford uses to manufacture those trucks. A Ford employee could not take that process to Toyota.
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Its not that simple. The legal and property protections offered by a trade secret, a legally recognized type of intellectual property, is lost. The owner deprived of its benefits.
Obviously the owner is deprived of the benefits of a trade secret once it is no longer secret. All I am saying is that this benefit was not stolen.
That is a title not a trade secret. Again a trade secret is a legally defined type of intellectual property that offers the owner specific legal rights and privileges. For example something in the process that Ford uses to manufacture those trucks. A Ford employee could not take that process to Toyota.
I am not arguing that the title of "America's best selling car" and a trade secret are legally equivalent. I am saying that they are logically analogous. A person may derive great pleasure form owning "America's best selling car", and if it ceases to be so, that person is deprived of that benefit. Whether that person is legally entitled to those benefits or n
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The overturned Federal verdict was on charges of theft, but the state charges did not involve the word.
How it works (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody gets to steal from Wall Street
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That's why Aleynikov has been hounded for the past several years and no banking executives have been criminally prosecuted for their role in causing the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. [billmoyers.com]
That's why a single trader is being held for causing the flash crash, doing things that the big companies do [newsweek.com], but making the mistake of not having political connections.
This is not about fair market competition. This is about winning at all costs, with the referees (politicians) are paid off by the wealt
Double jeopardy ? (Score:3)
Isn't there a law that forbids being trialed more than once for the same events ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Would someone be informative enough to explain why he couldn't benefit from it ?
Re:Double jeopardy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't there a law that forbids being trialed more than once for the same events ?
Yes, there is. In fact, his lawyer is going to appeal invoking double jeopardy.
That being said, it looks like that law may not favor him because:
Once again, however, the law is not as simple as it first appears because the statute has an important exception if the earlier case was “terminated by a court order expressly founded upon insufficiency of evidence to establish some element of such offense which is not an element of the other offense, defined by the laws of this state.” Roughly translated, that means Mr. Aleynikov probably can be prosecuted again because the federal case focused on tangible property, while the New York charges cover computer programs.
There is a good chance the latest charges will move forward, which makes Mr. Aleynikov’s demand that Goldman pay his legal fees all the more important because the earlier case essentially bankrupted him. According to a complaint filed in the United States District Court in New Jersey, he claims that the legal fees for the federal case were approximately $2.4 million, and the state case is likely to run up a similar bill.
source [nytimes.com]
By the way, here is another weird tidbit about the case:
It seems a bit odd that someone accused of stealing from his employer can demand that it pay for his lawyer, but that is how the law operates for public companies like Goldman that agree to indemnify their employees for legal fees and make advance payments of those costs.
Goldman’s bylaws require it to indemnify an officer for all costs in any proceeding, including a criminal prosecution. As a vice president at Goldman, Mr. Aleynikov appears to come within the scope of the bylaws that entitle him to seek payment of his fees.
The bylaws commit Goldman to pay Mr. Aleynikov’s fees in advance of a resolution of the case as long as he agrees to repay the money if it is determined he is not entitled to it, which he has done.
Fabrice Tourre, who is on leave as a vice president, is having many of his legal expenses covered by Goldman as he faces a securities fraud lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Goldman also paid a portion of the legal fees of its former director, Rajat Gupta, to defend him against insider trading charges, even though he was accused (and later convicted) of passing confidential information received from the firm.
Even better for Mr. Aleynikov is a provision of Delaware law, the state in which Goldman is incorporated, that requires a company to pay the legal fees of an officer who “has been successful on the merits or otherwise in defense of any action, suit or proceeding.”
When the appeals court reversed the conviction and ordered a dismissal of the charges, he was successful, even though the court also noted at one point that “Aleynikov stole purely intangible property embodied in a purely intangible format.”
That does not mean Goldman will pay the $2.4 million or advance additional money anytime soon, however. Companies loathe this type of claim because it makes them responsible for costs when they consider themselves the victim of a crime, and so there is an incentive to litigate the claim. Given Mr. Aleynikov’s dire financial condition, the firm could try to stall the case in the hope that he will settle for a smaller payment.
source [nytimes.com]
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Thank you for your highly informative comment about Goldman Sachs indemnifying its employees for legal fees.
It seems that Goldman Sachs may be hoist by its own petard here, if the intent behind this provision was, at least in part, to enable 'aggressive' behavior by its officers and employees (i.e. to flirt with arguably illegal behavior).
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Apparently, Mr. Aleynikov's real mistake is that his behavior wasn't profitably illegal...
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It seems that Goldman Sachs may be hoist by its own petard here, if the intent behind this provision was, at least in part, to enable 'aggressive' behavior by its officers and employees (i.e. to flirt with arguably illegal behavior).
Plus it also means that if one day you're accused of doing something illegal on behalf of Goldman Sachs, it means you better select the lawyer Goldman Sachs chooses for you, and you better not name any co-conspirator, or make your employer look bad in any way, because they will most likely stop paying for your legal bills if you do.
High frequency scam artists. (Score:1)
I find it incredible that the people doing high frequency trading, allowing it, getting kickbacks for allowing it, feeding the output of their crappy algorithms back into the market are not all in prison. If some people of insider knowledge of trades before every one else and trade on that knowledge surely it is a crime. The regulators, the bodies that run the exchanges and the banks are all participating in this mad scam.
Goldman Sachs and possible GPL Violations? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Serge quickly discovered, to his surprise, that Goldman had a one-way relationship with open source. They took huge amounts of free software off the Web, but they did not return it after he had modified it, even when his modifications were very slight and of general rather than financial use." ref [abovethelaw.com]
Lawyer for Ex-Goldman Programmer Criticizes Prosecutors and Firm [nytimes.com]
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Why would the EFF be involved? They're not "the protectors of all technology", there has to be someone whose rights they'd be defending. That would be the owner of the open source, or possibly free software, copyrights. And given that the first case the EFF ever helped litigate was against the US Secret Service, and that the lawyer involved is still there, I think they'd be willing to take on Goldman Sachs if needed.
Unfortunately, none of the copyrights or of open source or 'copylefts' of "free as in speec
Re:Goldman Sachs and possible GPL Violations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering the guy has been convicted of "unlawful duplication", it sounds like Goldman Sachs did not distribute the software in question. They are therefore entitled to incorporate GPL'd code into their software without making the rest of their code public.
Re: Goldman Sachs and possible GPL Violations? (Score:2)
The distribution clause in the GPL has not been upheld in court.
Re:Goldman Sachs and possible GPL Violations? (Score:4, Informative)
Goldman in this case are an end-user. As an end-user, they have certain rights to run the code, and modify it as they wish for their own purposes.
The GPL philosophy has always been to skew the copy rights towards users and away from distributors. If you're purely a user, there are practically no restrictions for you. If you're also a distributor, then some restrictions apply to you.
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Stuff minutes. Make it hours or even a whole day. Anything less is speculation.
The stock market should be promoting real investment - i.e you do some research and have an educated opinion that a company will do well. You buy shares, wait for the returns and then sell when things have stabilised. That process takes time - months or years even.