SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the so-I-guess-he-will-never-work-there dept.
A former Apple intern has been blamed for a leak of iOS source code. The intern reportedly distributed it to five friends in the iOS jailbreaking community, and the code eventually spread out of this group:
Earlier this week, a portion of iOS source code was posted online to GitHub, and in an interesting twist, a new report from Motherboard reveals that the code was originally leaked by a former Apple intern.
According to Motherboard, the intern who stole the code took it and distributed it to a small group of five friends in the iOS jailbreaking community in order to help them with their ongoing efforts to circumvent Apple's locked down mobile operating system. The former employee apparently took "all sorts of Apple internal tools and whatnot," according to one of the individuals who had originally received the code, including additional source code that was apparently not included in the initial leak.
The DMCA notice GitHub received from Apple that resulted in the takedown of the ZioShiba/iBoot repository.
Related:
Leak of iBoot Code to GitHub Could Potentially Help iPhone Jailbreakers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday February 11 2018, @05:18PM (12 children)
During the time that you use the car, I do not have access to it, so it still falls under the same definition of "stealing" that copyright violation does not: by taking the item, you deprive me of having it. The act of returning it later does not magically make the item available during the time it was stolen. Did the intern delete Apple's copies after distributing it to others? If not, it's not theft.
Unless you physically take the house away from its current location, then no, it's not stealing. Trespassing, maybe breaking and entering, but not stealing. There are already other laws that cover this, so why should we start trying to claim it's theft when it's not? Likewise for copyright violation: it's not theft, so quit diluting the term to include things that don't apply.
What amazes me is the logic jumps people make to conflate an illegal activity with another activity in a lame attempt to make it sound worse than it is. "Theft" has an immediate negative connotation that's easier to sensationalise, whereas "copyright violation" sounds mundane and lacks the emotion and romanticism. Robin Hood stories wouldn't be nearly as interesting if he only copied from the rich and gave to the poor.
It's also an attempt to conflate a civil issue (copyright violation) with outright illegal activity (theft). I'll agree that taking someone's code and distributing it without permission is wrong, a violation of copyright, and most likely (but not necessarily) unethical, but I will not agree that it's theft. Diluting existing terms to make something else sound more severe than it is that way is how we ended up with the current batshit insane situation of "nazi", "racist", and "misogynist" basically meaning "somebody said a thing I disagree with" to many people. We all need to stop this shit, use the correct terms, and quit trying to sensationalise everything, because all it's doing is trivialising serious things until the words to describe them are effectively meaningless.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:37PM (7 children)
Why would you agree with such a thing? Proprietary software is unethical since it doesn't respect users' freedoms. If someone copies code and distributes it, and that weakens the proprietary software company's position or control in some way, then I consider that a good thing. The real problem is not that code was copied and distributed without permission, but that people shouldn't be buying devices which don't respect their freedoms to begin with.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday February 11 2018, @10:08PM (6 children)
Because the alternative is effectively taking a stance of "I think your position is wrong, therefor I will disregard your rights and opinions". If someone wants to release proprietary software, that's their choice to make, and I have no right to ignore that and release the code against their will. If you think it's valid to ignore someone else's rights and wishes for their own creations, then you're also effectively condoning that behaviour from others, which means it would be equally fair for someone that disagrees with free software to take GPL code and put it in proprietary products without releasing the source.
It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that doing bad things for good reasons is always justified because it's for some "greater good", but it's not always true. That sort of "the end always justifies the means" thinking is dangerous.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Arik on Monday February 12 2018, @12:47AM (3 children)
I will, when necessary, ignore your opinions. Not your rights. Very different things.
You don't have a right to supervise what I do with my equipment, nor to allow or disallow me from using it as a I feel fit.
If I bought it from you, you should have taken that into account before selling it.
There is no right to retain ownership in things after you sold them - quite the opposite!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Marand on Monday February 12 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)
While I agree with you on this, it's entirely off-topic. This is a discussion about copyright violation and you're shoehorning in a rant about product ownership and what rights (if any) the seller has after the product is sold.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Arik on Monday February 12 2018, @01:54AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Marand on Monday February 12 2018, @06:47PM
No, that's just more "ends justify the means" bullshit. There's no requirement to violate Apple's copyright to maintain your property rights as buyer, as evidenced by every other jailbreak that's been done without someone handing over the source. You don't have to, and shouldn't, disregard someone else's legal rights (whatever you may think of copyright, it's still legally recognised*) just because you don't like what they create with them. If you care about the right to do what you wish with what you purchase, this is the wrong way to go about doing it. (Of course, if you actually care about property rights you probably shouldn't be buying Apple products in the first place...)
It's also still off topic to this comment thread, which was about whether copyright violation is theft or not. You can keep modding me troll for saying it, but it won't make your comments be on-topic. This entire tangent belongs in a different comment chain, not tacked onto this one to address your pet peeve. What you did is basically the same as whenever someone interjects "ahem, it's really GNU/Linux" into random Linux discussions: even if people agree, it's not the topic at hand and doesn't belong.
* Of course, copyright durations are completely out of whack and the laws need changing to reduce copyright length and take back the public domain, but that's a different argument and a different fight that isn't applicable here.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @07:52AM (1 child)
Rights? This isn't as if someone's right to life or physical property is at stake here. A copy of data was made and distributed, and the data wasn't even personally identifying information. Rather than chastising people who fight against proprietary software companies, you should chastise the proprietary software companies for abusing users.
Proprietary software is a moral abomination and I feel that weakening a proprietary software developer's hold on their users even slightly is good. Once again, the only issue here is that people shouldn't be buying from Apple to begin with.
Not really. For a Free Software activist, those are two different things with different implications. One weakens proprietary software and the other doesn't. Proprietary software should not exist, period.
I don't think it's a bad thing to begin with, so you fail already. The ends can indeed justify the means, especially when the means aren't even bad, like here.
Stop trying to paint this with some broad dystopian brush and consider what's actually at stake here: Apple's ability to abuse and control their users. If they lost some of that power, it would be a good thing. Once again, treating this as if someone's right to life or property is being violated is absolutely asinine and disingenuous. That's copyright thug propaganda right there.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday February 12 2018, @07:03PM
False dichotomy; I can chastise both for different reasons. The world is not black-and-white, and it's possible to disagree with someone's actions despite said actions being taken against someone I dislike, even when the action is beneficial to a cause I agree with.
My point was that, once you completely disregard someone else's rights, there's no reason to expect anyone else to have any regard for yours. If you feel you can do whatever you like because the end goal of harming proprietary software justifies it, then you're also implicitly condoning bad behaviour from the "other side" as well, because once you stop respecting someone else's rights, they have no reason to respect yours.
So you have a "no bad tactics, only bad targets" mindset. That's the mantra of a zealot, and something we will not agree on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:19PM (3 children)
He took the copy. The copy did not belong to him. He stole the copy.
(Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)
What *is* it with you people that every wrong or harmful thing, whether or not it involves a theft, has to be called "stealing?"
He manufactured the copy. It belonged and indeed still belongs to him. He just didn't have permission to make it.
There are three entire fields of law dedicated to this, copyright law, trademark law, and patent law. They do not overlap with the parts of criminal law that involve larceny, except that the people guilty of doing them are guilty of abridging some law somewhere (they are not all four the same thing).
If someone punches you in the nose, they did not *steal* you--that's called assault.
If they said something mean about you that hurt your ability to do business, they didn't *steal your reputation*--that's libel, slander, or somewhere in between (even though you may be deprived of your previous reputation, *they don't have it*--not stealing. Something different.)
If they went around breaking streetlights by throwing rocks at them, they are not *light stealers*, except possibly in your unique world. Again, the world may be deprived of the light, but the vandal didn't carry the light off with him somehow. We use that word vandal because that crime isn't called stealing either, it's called vandalism.
If someone drinks a large amount of intoxicating beverages, decides to drive, slides into a school bus, and injures 20 children, they did not *steal a bus*. Like the other things above, this is also its own thing, with its own name, in this case variously DUI, DWI, DFU, Drunk Driving, Drink Driving, etc.
If a factory (probably in China) decides on their own to make fake "Rolex" watches and sell them online, they didn't (the pattern should start becoming clear) STEAL THE ROLEX COMPANY, didn't STEAL WATCHES, and didn't even STEAL THE DESIGN*, instead copying it from what's known about it. They counterfeited some watches, again up there with patents and trademarks. It is a thing, with a name, and that name is not "stealing."
Words *mean* things.
There are many things someone can do that are wrong, unethical, mean, bad, etc. Not everything wrong is called "stealing." This is seriously not that difficult, and you have *no* shortage of people pointing this out to you, in this thread alone.
---------------------------------------------
* Ok, it's possible that they broke into the Rolex headquarters at 2 in the morning and STOLE THE PLANS, but I highly doubt it. If they did that, we would say THEY STOLE THE PLANS. If they did not do that, and instead did something different, we don't say they did that; we say they did something different.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Monday February 12 2018, @12:09AM (1 child)
Poor Vandals [wikipedia.org], everyone has been stealing their good name from them...
(Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Monday February 12 2018, @02:55AM
Sshhh! There are people here who I would swear would
stealvandalize that article just to say that the people are now to be known as the STEALERS instead of the VANDALS.The following sentence is in special danger...
With "vandalism" being replaced by "stealing", "senseless destruction" being replaced by "anything at all, nothing in particular", and "defacing of artwork" being changed to "looking at something, or perhaps making an additional copy of it without asking first."