Love the racial inclusion for no reason.
Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
71–80 of 142 posts
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#72It's very clear that Goldman is trying to punish him for leaving, while sending a message to their other programmers that if they leave, their lives will be ruined. Even if this guy ultimately wins the state trial, he will never get back the years he has spent fighting it. Goldman has already won, and in this case that is appalling.
No, it's very clear what he did was wrong. He works in an industry that does not allow you to email code home or copy it off of company computers. Goldman might be a little different, but where I've worked, this was definitely a no, no, and you could easily be fired for doing it.
>No, it's very clear what he did was wrong.
That might be clear to rubes who believe everything that they see on television.
What's clear to me is that Goldman Sachs wants to ruin this guy's life. Which, to some people, makes him a stand-up guy.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#73It's very clear that Goldman is trying to punish him for leaving, while sending a message to their other programmers that if they leave, their lives will be ruined. Even if this guy ultimately wins the state trial, he will never get back the years he has spent fighting it. Goldman has already won, and in this case that is appalling.
Things always appear clear to conspiracy theorists. Do you have facts to back this up? People join and leave jobs in the financial industry every day. Is Goldman Sachs special in this regard?
Those people wearing the tinfoil hats were right.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a really well-written feature on the case. As I recall, he used and modified open source code in his system. He tried to push his changes upstream, but ran into political pressure from inside of Goldman, so he tried to make a personal copy of the libraries he modified. You can certainly make the case that Goldman paid for that code, and if they didn't want it pushed upstream that's their prerogative, but it…
If all the changes were only his idea, this may be a reasonable assertion, but at large firms like goldman, the modifications he was making to code very, very likely came from insight from other team members. If he incorporated other's insight in to his open source code by adding more code, I would view his actions in an extremely negative light.
Of course. At an investment bank such as GS, no code or algorithm is written that isn't checked by traders and managers...
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you begin a statement with "It's very clear" then I expect you to back that statement up with facts so that the rest of us can see why it's so clear. Does it seem reasonable that Goldman Sachs want to send a message to their own programmers? Is that going to work well for them in recruiting? If anything, the NSA revelations have given conspiracy theorists carte blanche to go full steam on their theories. You'll ha…
Another important aspect is whether or not the belief in these theories is justified , regardless of whether or not they turn out to be true. This kind of relates to the Gettier problem in epistemology, where one may "know" something completely by accident, and we wouldn't really consider that "knowledge." Were conspiracy theorists justified in believing their theories prior to the NSA leaks? Maybe, maybe not. But we…
Yep. This is the same question as people who always believe there is a bubble. Really great comment.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#76Aleynikov has lived in the US for twenty years and owns a house in Chicago. It sounds to me like he is an American programmer, not a Russian programmer. I don't see why his ancestry is relevant.
My parents owned a home and lived in USA for over 30 years... but they are, and will always be, Nigerian. Home is where the heart is. I wonder what Aleynikov would say if we asked him "Are you American or Russian? Or both?"
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's very clear what he did was wrong. He works in an industry that does not allow you to email code home or copy it off of company computers. Goldman might be a little different, but where I've worked, this was definitely a no, no, and you could easily be fired for doing it.
Fired is one thing, but malicious prosecution is completely out of proportion to a rules violation.
[deleted]
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think an internal user could easily be persuaded not to demand the source code.
In the typical case, probably, but if you have a large organization you could easily wind up with one exception. What rights these people do and don't have still seems important.
One exception who invited legal trouble for the organization as a matter of some kind of principle would likely find himself no longer a member of the organization. In the best-case scenario, this person gets to see the source code for an internal tool. Who exactly is going to fund this legal battle?
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#79If anyone's interested, I found the appeals court ruling finding him not guilty of violating federal law, and leading to his release, on PACER, uploaded to the Internet Archive so you can access it without a paywall via RECAP:
https://ia700209.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.35...
The basic argument hinges on the three counts, related to three laws he was alleged to have broken: the Economic Espionage Act, the National Stolen Property Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. The third charge was dismissed by the district court because it rested on the fact that he had either accessed systems he was not authorized to or exceeded authorized access. However, he was authorized to access the source code in question, and what he did with it afterwards has no bearing on whether he exceeded his authorization, so it doesn't fall under the CFAA.
The district court did convict him on the first two counts, but the Appeals Court reversed. Their argument is that the National Stolen Property Act doesn't apply because it applies only to actual physical goods, not mere intangible ideas. Had he photocopied the source and walked out with it, or loaded it onto a thumb drive at the office and taken that with him, it would have counted as stealing a physical good, but merely uploading it to a server and downloading it onto a thumb drive later does not count.
The court further argues that he did not violate the Economic Espionage Act because the clause in question he was prosecuted under specifically requires that the "trade secret ... is related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce". Since Goldman Sachs' HFT trading system entirely proprietary and internal and not produced for or placed in interstate commerce, that particular law does not apply. Apparently Congress specifically intended this restriction, because earlier drafts of the statute had broader language that merely included "proprietary economic information having a value of not less than $100,000". The fact that Goldman Sachs uses the product for interstate commerce is not compelling, it had to itself be produced for or placed in interstate commerce.
That last part is interesting. It implies that if you run proprietary, internal code that is not sold or intended to be sold in the future, you appear to lose federal criminal trade secret protections. It's interesting that they tried to prosecute him on theft, trade secret infringement, and exceeding authorized access, but not copyright infringement. From my reading even unpublished work is subject to copyright.
Neither the original conviction nor the appeals court opinion ever addressed the copyright issue. In order for him to have stolen something, it would have had to be something of value; so why wasn't he further prosecuted for copyright violation? From the documents I read (not all are available on PACER), the copyright question never even came up.
More documents from the case:
Motion to dismiss the original case in district court: https://ia600209.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.35...
Government's response to the motion: http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.nysd.358303/gov...
Affadavit of the investigating officer: http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.nysd.358303/gov...
District court's opinion dismissing the third count but refusing to dismiss the first two: https://ia600209.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.35...
List of files requested in discovery, to demonstrate that what he took was insubstantial and not proprietary: http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.nysd.358303/gov...
A few of the things he had downloaded were their version of the Erlang platform, which is available under the Erlang Public License, a derivative of the Mozilla Public License. So it would be more fruitful to debate the merits of that license, not the GPL.
All of the currently uploaded items in the docket: https://ia600209.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.35...
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's very clear what he did was wrong. He works in an industry that does not allow you to email code home or copy it off of company computers. Goldman might be a little different, but where I've worked, this was definitely a no, no, and you could easily be fired for doing it.
According to the original article, Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it. Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about…
> Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about either Goldman's conduct or the intentions of the programmer.
I don't think this is at all what happened. I think a judge ruled that he was a director at the company and therefor the company had to cover any legal costs he incured due to being a director of the company.
As far as I can tell, Goldman's actions had nothing to do with them paying his legal bills.