Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round • Hacker News Board

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#101

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

msandford wrote: post #61

eddie_the_head wrote: post #46

How is this not double jeopardy?

Double jeopardy is to conceptually prevent a person from going free, but then being tried again and convicted. The idea is "once you're acquitted, you're acquitted" That wouldn't be the case here since he was already convicted so additional trials could only benefit him. But really it's a judge ruling that the original trial was all effed up and that a new trial would need to take place in order to do justice.

This is right in general but wrong on the specifics of this case. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the original, federal trial. That court threw overturned the conviction entirely; it did not order a retrial.

The state prosecution was an entirely different matter, which is why they had to strain to pretend it wasn't double jeopardy. The "acts" were the same but they had decided to classify them as different, lesser crimes. In fact he had already served more time than he could have been sentenced under those, rendering the whole proceeding nothing more than a farcical publicity stunt.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#102

Post by tsaoutourpants » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:02 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #99

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he on trial again after an appeals court already found him not guilty? The article is a little unclear on that point. First it says he's suing Goldman to recoup losses, and then at the end it says: Aleynikov has pleaded not guilty and is waiting for his trial in New York State Court. Does "not guilty" refer to the trial in which he's suing them? Or is there another trial even though he's already been found not gui…

United States recognizes a legal doctrine of dual sovereignity, so a state can try what the federal government already tried.

...also known as "we carved yet another exception into the clearly worded text of the Constitution"

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#103

Post by msandford » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:06 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #101

msandford wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double jeopardy is to conceptually prevent a person from going free, but then being tried again and convicted. The idea is "once you're acquitted, you're acquitted" That wouldn't be the case here since he was already convicted so additional trials could only benefit him. But really it's a judge ruling that the original trial was all effed up and that a new trial would need to take place in order to do justice.

This is right in general but wrong on the specifics of this case. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the original, federal trial. That court threw overturned the conviction entirely; it did not order a retrial. The state prosecution was an entirely different matter, which is why they had to strain to pretend it wasn't double jeopardy. The "acts" were the same but they had decided to classify them as differe…

Good thing I'm only friends with lawyers from grad school rather than one myself.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#104

Post by auctiontheory » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:11 AM UTC

jamesjporter wrote: post #92

auctiontheory wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to it, everything he copied was non-proprietary. Almost all of it was open source stuff. That doesn't make any sense. If the code truly were FOSS, why on earth would he copy it from his employer when he could eliminate legal risk by downloading it off the open internet? We know he's not stupid.

The story I read about it claimed the following: He had made changes/improvements to various FOSS projects he was using at Goldman that he wanted to submit as patches upstream but his bosses wouldn't let him. He figured that since he was leaving he might as well take the FOSS code he had modified with him so he could submit patches later. The legality of this maneuver is tenuous at best, as others in this thread have…

Okay. That's interesting. I guess it could be true. Or it could also be a very creative and barely plausible explanation that happens to fit the provable facts of the case. It certainly requires us to accept an astonishing degree of naïveté in an otherwise very smart guy.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#105

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:18 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #94

lambda wrote: post #79

If 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, t…

IANAL, but if I understand correctly, to claim copyright infringement, they would have had to register the work with the library of congress, and essentially make it publicly viewable - which I assume they didn't want. Copyright in this kind of case is usable almost exclusively by GPL style licenses, where the code is already available.

Registration is not required.

Registering allows you to sue for more money than if you don't register, but any creative work is automatically protected by copyright law (including full rights to control and prevent reproduction/distribution) automatically as of the moment the work is first fixed into a "tangible form of expression".

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#106

Post by sseveran » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:43 AM UTC

melling wrote: post #17

downandout wrote: post #5

It'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.

Well its a bit of both. Goldman claimed at trial that the code uploaded could be used to manipulate the markets. If a python erlang bridge can be used to do that it is certainly a new one on me. So what he did was wrong. And Goldman was trying to send a message to people leaving. At the time people were leaving their HFT group and they wanted to do anything possible to stem that.

At best this should have been a civil lawsuit. The public almost certainly has no interest in what happened.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#107

Post by damian2000 » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:45 AM UTC

oofabz wrote: post #41

Aleynikov 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.

Its probably a form of flattery, given that Russian Programmers who have emigrated to the west often have a high skill level.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#108

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:48 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #105

beagle3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but if I understand correctly, to claim copyright infringement, they would have had to register the work with the library of congress, and essentially make it publicly viewable - which I assume they didn't want. Copyright in this kind of case is usable almost exclusively by GPL style licenses, where the code is already available.

Registration is not required. Registering allows you to sue for more money than if you don't register, but any creative work is automatically protected by copyright law (including full rights to control and prevent reproduction/distribution) automatically as of the moment the work is first fixed into a "tangible form of expression".

Thanks. But wouldn't they still need to make a copy available e.g. In the court documents? That would definitely be an angle they would want to avoid

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#109

Post by Zarel » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 4:01 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #79

If 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, t…

I may be understanding the laws wrong, but I believe that he wasn't prosecuted for copyright law because copyright law mainly deals with redistribution, not personal use. Even the DMCA in its worst interpretation only disallows circumventing DRM to make a copy for personal use; making a copy for personal use by itself has never been covered by copyright law. Since he wasn't planning to redistribute the code he copied, he wasn't affected by copyright law.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#110

Post by xerophtye » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 4:53 AM UTC

Umm.... let me get this straight, GS is required to pay the legal fees because he was an employee at GS? So if the company sues one of its employees, it has to pay for both sides? Really?

PS: If i remember correctly, hadn't Sergey resigned from GS by then? I thought he was just hanging around an extra week or two to train his successors.