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The case was so perfectly reasonable the prosecutor failed to find relevant statute and instead offered up no relevance and caused an innocent man to suffer gre

The case was so perfectly reasonable the prosecutor failed to find relevant statute and instead offered up no relevance and caused an innocent man to suffer greatly?

tedunangst 11y ago
The fact that the statutes were quickly changed to make his actions illegal could be considered evidence it was generally thought that the previous statutes did apply.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  To add to that, the name of the passed act is the "Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act of 2012". (Emphasis mine.) My personal opinion is that Aleynikov violated the intent of the law, but not the wording. He basically got off on a technicality, a "bug" in the law that was quickly patched afterwards.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  I would call it evidence that GS lives in a representative democracy.
rhino369 11y ago
It's not like the prosecutor missed or misread an unambiguous statute. There was essentially a loophole in one of the statutes that if read narrowly suggested the trade secret had to be about a product put into commerce. The court found that the code was for an internal goldman sachs service, not a product. And the other statute on which the prosecutor lost was because the court didn't believe code on a usb was a "good." But if it had printed on paper it would have counted. A sort of stupid distinction. The prosecutors lost on two narrow statutory interpretations. It happens and it isn't some sort of negligence. Had he stolen the code from Windows division of Microsoft or had he printed it on paper he'd be guilty.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  So Goldman got Federal prosecutors to prosecute a person for violations of commerce law where Goldman was performing no commerce? Sounds like trumped up bullshit, actually. According to Wikipedia, this guy was also pursued by the State of New York after being released from jail (since he did nothing wrong) on the same conduct and lost his double jeopardy appeal because a State judge claimed New York was a sovereign entity from the US Federal government and so his constitutional right to not be tried multiple times for the same behavior does not exist. The State of New York also ultimately lost by failing to show actual violation of claimed statute.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > So Goldman got Federal prosecutors to prosecute a person for violations of commerce law where Goldman was performing no commerce? Goldman was performing commerce: trading securities and commodities. And the software in question was used to perform that commerce. Before it was amended, 18 USC 1832 applied to a "product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce." The issue was what "produced for" meant. Was it enough that the product be "produced for" the purpose of effecting commerce, which the software was, or did the product itself need to be sold in commerce?
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      Which commerce did the code effect?
      - tedunangst 11y ago
        Trading securities and commodities.
        jsprogrammer 11y ago
        So, the court just disagreed?

The case was so perfectly reasonable the prosecutor failed to find relevant statute and instead offered up no relevance and caused an innocent man to suffer greatly?

tedunangst 11y ago

The fact that the statutes were quickly changed to make his actions illegal could be considered evidence it was generally thought that the previous statutes did apply.

jdmichal 11y ago
To add to that, the name of the passed act is the "Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act of 2012". (Emphasis mine.) My personal opinion is that Aleynikov violated the intent of the law, but not the wording. He basically got off on a technicality, a "bug" in the law that was quickly patched afterwards.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
I would call it evidence that GS lives in a representative democracy.

rhino369 11y ago

It's not like the prosecutor missed or misread an unambiguous statute. There was essentially a loophole in one of the statutes that if read narrowly suggested the trade secret had to be about a product put into commerce. The court found that the code was for an internal goldman sachs service, not a product. And the other statute on which the prosecutor lost was because the court didn't believe code on a usb was a "good." But if it had printed on paper it would have counted. A sort of stupid distinction. The prosecutors lost on two narrow statutory interpretations. It happens and it isn't some sort of negligence. Had he stolen the code from Windows division of Microsoft or had he printed it on paper he'd be guilty.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
So Goldman got Federal prosecutors to prosecute a person for violations of commerce law where Goldman was performing no commerce? Sounds like trumped up bullshit, actually. According to Wikipedia, this guy was also pursued by the State of New York after being released from jail (since he did nothing wrong) on the same conduct and lost his double jeopardy appeal because a State judge claimed New York was a sovereign entity from the US Federal government and so his constitutional right to not be tried multiple times for the same behavior does not exist. The State of New York also ultimately lost by failing to show actual violation of claimed statute.
- rayiner 11y ago
  > So Goldman got Federal prosecutors to prosecute a person for violations of commerce law where Goldman was performing no commerce? Goldman was performing commerce: trading securities and commodities. And the software in question was used to perform that commerce. Before it was amended, 18 USC 1832 applied to a "product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce." The issue was what "produced for" meant. Was it enough that the product be "produced for" the purpose of effecting commerce, which the software was, or did the product itself need to be sold in commerce?
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Which commerce did the code effect?
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Trading securities and commodities.
      - jsprogrammer 11y ago
        So, the court just disagreed?