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"Computer criminals" doesn't get us anywhere conceptually in this instance. When people bring up Gates, Jobs and Woz, it's nearly always because they're huge s

"Computer criminals" doesn't get us anywhere conceptually in this instance. When people bring up Gates, Jobs and Woz, it's nearly always because they're huge successes, financially or otherwise. Gates and Jobs were both pro-copyright, pro-intellectual property. They built incredible businesses and were very successful. Far more successful than Woz, who was himself more successful than Swartz. If you want to relate these four people in a useful way, rank them in terms of how far left their ideas were on IP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobby...

adventured 14y ago
Rank them by how far left their ideas were on IP? That makes absolutely no sense. The biggest copyright trolls are on the left. Unless you mean "left" to represent the ideology root of the copyright trolls today.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "The biggest copyright trolls are on the left" [citation needed]
- dllthomas 14y ago
  The entertainment industry backs predominately Democratic candidates, but this is more or less orthogonal to the notion that strict or lax copyright is ideologically leftist. The parties certainly lean one direction or another overall, but they are conglomerations of agendas by convenience and happenstance not carefully constructed to reflect an ideological framework.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
When Jobs represented himself as an engineer but really got Wozniak to do work for him and then didn't even share the bonus earned by his work, where on your IP scale does that lie? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) "The original deadline was met after Wozniak did not sleep for four days straight. This equated to a bonus, which Jobs kept secret from Wozniak, instead only paying him $375"
- maxharris 14y ago
  Obviously that was a rotten thing to do, and it hurt their relationship in a major way. However, that incident was an exception, not the rule. You literally can't become fabulously wealthy and keep it long-term by cheating people. (Bernie Madoff is penniless, and in jail.) For evidence, I submit the wider context. Without Jobs, Woz would now be a retired HP engineer. No Apple, no IPO, no hundreds of millions. (And of course the reverse is true: no Woz, no Apple.) None of those original Apple IPO millionaires, nor any of the people that made it big the second time around, are complaining of "exploitation."
  - bitwize 14y ago
    You literally can't become fabulously wealthy and keep it long-term by cheating people. L. Ron Hubbard?
  - scarmig 14y ago
    There was a bit more cheating going on in the financial crisis than Bernie. Where are they? I agree with the spirit of your comment, but it's certainly possible to become fabulously wealthy, cheat people, and keep it.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    I wasn't talking about exploitation. I was talking about respect for intellectual property, a topic you brought up.
jivatmanx 14y ago
Xerox didn't seem to think that Jobs was pro-IP. Jobs didn't seem to think that Gates was pro-IP
- cma 14y ago
  Xerox made an IP deal with Jobs. Gates didn't do the same with Jobs/Apple until later after a settlement (not that I think he needed to).
  - jivatmanx 14y ago
    They made a deal that allowed Jobs to inspect a PARC for one day, but didn't include anything like patent licensing.
    - vor_ 14y ago
      The deal was that Apple would buy a million in pre-IPO stock if Xerox "opened its kimono".
    - cma 14y ago
      Trade secrets were the IP I was referring to in that example; software patents didn't exist at that point in time.
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      Not only did Apple staff visit PARC more than once, some had actually worked there prior to Jobs' visit. The idea of getting Jobs to PARC was to help him understand the importance of technologies that others were already pushing at Apple. Of course the way Steve Jobs told it, his one-day visit to PARC was the Eureka Moment of the Macintosh. It should surprise no one that his version of the story places him at the center of the resulting innovation. That doesn't mean it's the whole truth.
felipe 14y ago
You make an excellent point regarding IP, and in fact BG's letter likely set the foundation for the entire software industry as we know today. However, I believe the point of the article was that Jobs, Woz and BG did something contrarian to the establishment, or an act of disobedience if you will. That is pretty much in line with Swartz's actions which were done as a dissent defending a belief, and not for profit like a pro-IP argument for example.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > You make an excellent point regarding IP, and in fact BG's letter likely set the foundation for the entire software industry as we know today. Indeed, the BSA was aggressively going after copyright infringement a decade before the RIAA ever thought to get in on the action. Our modern copyright enforcement regime, where the authorities go after infringers like they're hardened criminals, doesn't have its roots in RIAA lobbying, but rather the BSA's response to large-scale pirating of Windows, Photoshop, etc. Microsoft did and still does have what amounts to private police that bust into warehouses with copied Windows CD's, etc. If you want to know why the DOJ considers copying a few million copyrighted documents to be a crime worthy of jail time and enforcement as if you're mixed up with organized crime, you have to look no further than the tech industry itself.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >If you want to know why the DOJ considers copying a few million copyrighted documents to be a crime worthy of jail time and enforcement as if you're mixed up with organized crime, you have to look no further than the tech industry itself. To be more precise, the specific subset that sells proprietary software. I don't imagine Amazon or Canonical or Facebook are big BSA supporters.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      To be fair, that specific subset basically was the tech industry until relatively recently. The BSA was founded about 16 years before Canonical or Facebook. Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, etc, are the giants on whose shoulders Facebook, etc, are now standing. They built this industry. Also, given that Amazon sells books, movies, music, and other IP products, I think their interests are aligned much more closely with those of the BSA member companies than with those of companies like Google, Facebook, etc, who make their money disseminating other peoples' content.
OldSchool 14y ago
I wouldn't call Gates and Jobs more successful than Woz so quickly. Woz, being more hacker than businessman, probably found himself with what is still an infinite supply of money so he threw a big party (the Us Festival c. 1982) and then moved on and kept doing what he loves. That doesn't have to involve increasing his financial position at all costs: autonomy, personal life, family life, happiness, etc.
mindslight 14y ago
I assume you're just making a pragmatic argument, not a myopic moral fallacy - right? In that case, I'll agree. In general, charging others for your work is a necessary part of creating a business. Torvalds wasn't very strong on copyright, which was actually necessary for his kernel to become very successful. He just didn't end up with a vault full of money to swim in.

adventured 14y ago

Rank them by how far left their ideas were on IP? That makes absolutely no sense. The biggest copyright trolls are on the left. Unless you mean "left" to represent the ideology root of the copyright trolls today.

betterunix 14y ago
"The biggest copyright trolls are on the left" [citation needed]
dllthomas 14y ago
The entertainment industry backs predominately Democratic candidates, but this is more or less orthogonal to the notion that strict or lax copyright is ideologically leftist. The parties certainly lean one direction or another overall, but they are conglomerations of agendas by convenience and happenstance not carefully constructed to reflect an ideological framework.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

When Jobs represented himself as an engineer but really got Wozniak to do work for him and then didn't even share the bonus earned by his work, where on your IP scale does that lie? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) "The original deadline was met after Wozniak did not sleep for four days straight. This equated to a bonus, which Jobs kept secret from Wozniak, instead only paying him $375"

maxharris 14y ago
Obviously that was a rotten thing to do, and it hurt their relationship in a major way. However, that incident was an exception, not the rule. You literally can't become fabulously wealthy and keep it long-term by cheating people. (Bernie Madoff is penniless, and in jail.) For evidence, I submit the wider context. Without Jobs, Woz would now be a retired HP engineer. No Apple, no IPO, no hundreds of millions. (And of course the reverse is true: no Woz, no Apple.) None of those original Apple IPO millionaires, nor any of the people that made it big the second time around, are complaining of "exploitation."
- bitwize 14y ago
  You literally can't become fabulously wealthy and keep it long-term by cheating people. L. Ron Hubbard?
- scarmig 14y ago
  There was a bit more cheating going on in the financial crisis than Bernie. Where are they? I agree with the spirit of your comment, but it's certainly possible to become fabulously wealthy, cheat people, and keep it.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  I wasn't talking about exploitation. I was talking about respect for intellectual property, a topic you brought up.

jivatmanx 14y ago

Xerox didn't seem to think that Jobs was pro-IP. Jobs didn't seem to think that Gates was pro-IP

cma 14y ago
Xerox made an IP deal with Jobs. Gates didn't do the same with Jobs/Apple until later after a settlement (not that I think he needed to).
- jivatmanx 14y ago
  They made a deal that allowed Jobs to inspect a PARC for one day, but didn't include anything like patent licensing.
  - vor_ 14y ago
    The deal was that Apple would buy a million in pre-IPO stock if Xerox "opened its kimono".
  - cma 14y ago
    Trade secrets were the IP I was referring to in that example; software patents didn't exist at that point in time.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    Not only did Apple staff visit PARC more than once, some had actually worked there prior to Jobs' visit. The idea of getting Jobs to PARC was to help him understand the importance of technologies that others were already pushing at Apple. Of course the way Steve Jobs told it, his one-day visit to PARC was the Eureka Moment of the Macintosh. It should surprise no one that his version of the story places him at the center of the resulting innovation. That doesn't mean it's the whole truth.

felipe 14y ago

You make an excellent point regarding IP, and in fact BG's letter likely set the foundation for the entire software industry as we know today. However, I believe the point of the article was that Jobs, Woz and BG did something contrarian to the establishment, or an act of disobedience if you will. That is pretty much in line with Swartz's actions which were done as a dissent defending a belief, and not for profit like a pro-IP argument for example.

rayiner 14y ago
> You make an excellent point regarding IP, and in fact BG's letter likely set the foundation for the entire software industry as we know today. Indeed, the BSA was aggressively going after copyright infringement a decade before the RIAA ever thought to get in on the action. Our modern copyright enforcement regime, where the authorities go after infringers like they're hardened criminals, doesn't have its roots in RIAA lobbying, but rather the BSA's response to large-scale pirating of Windows, Photoshop, etc. Microsoft did and still does have what amounts to private police that bust into warehouses with copied Windows CD's, etc. If you want to know why the DOJ considers copying a few million copyrighted documents to be a crime worthy of jail time and enforcement as if you're mixed up with organized crime, you have to look no further than the tech industry itself.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >If you want to know why the DOJ considers copying a few million copyrighted documents to be a crime worthy of jail time and enforcement as if you're mixed up with organized crime, you have to look no further than the tech industry itself. To be more precise, the specific subset that sells proprietary software. I don't imagine Amazon or Canonical or Facebook are big BSA supporters.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    To be fair, that specific subset basically was the tech industry until relatively recently. The BSA was founded about 16 years before Canonical or Facebook. Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, etc, are the giants on whose shoulders Facebook, etc, are now standing. They built this industry. Also, given that Amazon sells books, movies, music, and other IP products, I think their interests are aligned much more closely with those of the BSA member companies than with those of companies like Google, Facebook, etc, who make their money disseminating other peoples' content.

OldSchool 14y ago

I wouldn't call Gates and Jobs more successful than Woz so quickly. Woz, being more hacker than businessman, probably found himself with what is still an infinite supply of money so he threw a big party (the Us Festival c. 1982) and then moved on and kept doing what he loves. That doesn't have to involve increasing his financial position at all costs: autonomy, personal life, family life, happiness, etc.

mindslight 14y ago

I assume you're just making a pragmatic argument, not a myopic moral fallacy - right? In that case, I'll agree. In general, charging others for your work is a necessary part of creating a business. Torvalds wasn't very strong on copyright, which was actually necessary for his kernel to become very successful. He just didn't end up with a vault full of money to swim in.