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I was disappointed in that previous discussion. Take away the off-topic stuff and it seemed like most reactions varied from "Good, throw the book at him" to "Go
by gruseom 13y ago
I was disappointed in that previous discussion. Take away the off-topic stuff and it seemed like most reactions varied from "Good, throw the book at him" to "God that guy was dumb".
If Lewis' portrayal is accurate, then Aleynikov is pretty clearly an otherworldly technical type. That doesn't mean he should be exempt from laws, but it's not irrelevant either. For one thing, to anyone who knows the type, it says something about intent: his intent was likely not to exploit someone else's secrets, but to work on interesting things. A programmer like that wouldn't download code because it contained secrets; he'd download it because it contained library routines that he didn't want to have to rewrite someday. Why would he steal secrets? Anything important, he could just derive later. He probably thought that Goldman's technical designs were all wrong and would make a point of not copying them anyway.
There are countless stories of otherworldly technical types, including many heroes to people here, running afoul of laws or regulations and having to be rescued by the more worldly members of their scientific/technical community. I expected this technical community to recognize that pattern in Aleynikov and react with some empathy, because we all know someone like that or have a little of the type in ourselves. Instead we got a bit of a Colonel Blimp chorus. I hope that was just sample bias.
I wish we could see that source code. After reading Lewis' article, I would be shocked if it contained anything of nontrivial value to Goldman.
- ig1 13y agoAccording to the indictment the source code included Goldman's propriety stock option pricing algos.
- tankenmate 13y agoBut the Vanity article explicitly states that the "Jury" asked him whether he took the strats (the trading strategies) and he said "No."; the response from the "Jury" was telling, they said "Why not take the valuable stuff?"
- ig1 13y agoPricing algorithms are different from trading strategies (although they're obviously related). In any case that's purely a matter of evidence, he either copied a piece of code or he didn't.
- tankenmate 13y agoBut breach of contract and copyright are civil issues, not criminal (modulo the insane copyright criminality laws of late). Besides, no damages have ever been postulated, let alone proved.
- ig1 13y agoTrade secret violations can be prosecuted under criminal law, any company can request a criminal investigation in such a case. In the last decade there have been around 100 criminal convictions for theft of trade secrets.
- gruseom 13y agoWas that mentioned in the article? If it was, I missed it. If he did copy such algorithms with the intention to use them at the new job, that would contradict both my comment and Lewis' portrayal.
- walshemj 13y agoBut playing the autistic spectrum (otherworldly technical types) card is an obvious legal ploy to try and mitigate the offense. And you are only hearing Aleynikovs side of the story obviously he and his lawyers going to portray himself as doing nothing wrong.
- gruseom 13y agoOnly his side of the story? Rather the opposite. As far as I know his side has been told just this once. I don't care about the "autistic spectrum", but I know this type of programmer, and if Lewis' portrayal is accurate (note the if, here and in what I said above), then this really is a mitigating factor. As a "legal ploy", it's far from obvious. Do you think Fabulous Fab could have used it?