But not for 30k. I doubt a court would award this much in damages if he was sued. Even before that, I don't think CERN is justified in releasing his identity (edit: I mean, the identity of the student to the software vendor for them to sue).
1) CERN also did a grown-up negotiation to have the person work for them, and therefore carry out his function as the legal entity "CERN", not as himself. Any action he did in his function, is legally executed by CERN, not by the employee. That of course includes installing software he needs for his job, and certainly covers installing any software CERN directed him to install.
This works both ways : if he invents/builds/... something and CERN sells the fruits of his labor (or otherwise profits from it), he doesn't have a claim to single cent of that profit. If he does something as part of his job that damages CERN, the most he can lose is his job. If he unintentionally blows up CERN headquarters, CERN quite literally has to pay him his wages for doing so, medical expenses, ... the company would even have to replace his cell phone if it broke during the explosion and pay to have his pants cleaned afterwards. The unintentional part is only required because, if intentional, it would be a criminal act (and this intent needs to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, not merely indicated). Even if he failed to follow safety procedures while doing so, it was the company's responsibility to correct him, and the consequences for failing to do so are theirs.
2) stealing is a criminal act, and governed by an ENTIRELY different part of the law. The two cannot be compared. This case would be governed by employment law and commercial law, stealing is covered by criminal law.
But your example has another flaw: if you can even vaguely reasonably claim you took the item by accident, yes you should be able to pay the $5 and be even. No criminal court judge is going to convict anyone who non-violently took a $5 item, and offered to pay the damage in full the second he was confronted. This would not be reasonable.
IANAL but your company is not shielding you from legal responsibility of the illegal actions you take, even if you are required by your employee to engage in those activities.
That is a warning to be careful I heard was given to sysadmin. Even if their boss require them to steal personal information or "find" software, they are legally responsible for doing it.
There is a point area somewhere between murder and failure to protect confidential information at which the company takes over responsibility, but that's not a blanket protection as financial obligations.
Depends what you mean by "illegal", there are over two dozen main kinds of illegal. As a massive simplification anything not found in the "criminal law" or "employment law" books your employer covers while you're working (and in some states while you're doing things you're only doing because you work, e.g. drive to work).
So, very generally speaking, anything you can't get arrested for is covered by your employer.
Nope. He/she did not negotiate it. The company is speculatively invoicing CERN. CERN are attempting (with dubious legality) to pass it to a University who are attempting (with extremely dubious legality) to pass it to a student. The student should call his/her lawyer asap and should certainly not pay this demand without forcing all the parties to actually undergo some due process.
I think it is safe to assume that HE knowingly and wilfully breached his contract with CERN. again TFA states that, and I quote, "Understandably, the student was shocked when we investigated the case and he was forced to acknowledge the facts."
The student has wilfully broken the law. Due process has clearly been undertaken. Again, RTFA.
She should never have acknowledged the 'facts'. She should have called her lawyer. She should also point out that she was under pressure to get stuff done and was under the impression that she had a licence to use the product.
Due process implies a legal process not a random invoice and several large organisations charging an individual an arbitrary amount.
No. You are wrong and getting very tedious. This individual, a male by the account of a person that has first hand knowledge (something you, or indeed I, do not have) of the situation, did wilfully obtain software for use outside of the agreed license scope. HE didn't get it from an authorised reseller or from CERN, an innocent party in all of this. HE obtained this from an illicit site. The ramifications of this action could have been considerably worse; someone has already mentioned confliker.
Let's examine your quoting the word "facts". Are you disputing that HE acted unethically? By using unlawfully procured software? Are you really arguing that these actions should go entirely unpunished?
There is only 1 organisation charging an individual, who has used said company's product unlawfully (this is the bit you seem incapable of acknowledging). The other 2 were implicated by HIS unlawful and unethical and merely met their legal obligations in identifying the guilty party.
Whichever way you look at this, however militantly anti-capitalist you are, failing to accept the individual acted unethically and with impunity is a ridiculous position to take. Should HE pay the money? No. HE should negotiate. HIS career in the very small field that is academic particle physics is over as HE has acted unethically.
He used it only under the scope of his work and the company contracting the work had the necessary seat in pool to cover for the student license.
So the student is only technically at fault in the same way as you are technically trespassing when you sneaked behind your colleague that day your forgot your badge.
The reason the company was able to extort ( I think that's the only appropriate term here ) 30K is because of the enormous B2B corporate administration will process this issue routinely rather than using common sense.
As a European tax payer that is not the behavior of a company I want my tax money to fund.
FTFA; But our student failed to download AllSIM from DFS onto his office PC, since that wasn’t where he wanted to use it. He wanted to install it on his laptop so that he could work on his simulation while travelling. However, the CERN AllSIM installation would not allow for this, as roaming usage is not covered by CERN's AllSIM licence. The student had a need and was not willing to compromise i.e. by using the Windows Terminal Service. Instead, he used Google and quickly found AllSIM for free on a dubious website. Three clicks later, he was ready to go.
For convenience, the student essentially stole the license.
The student didn't steal the license. He misused the license.
The license for his usage existed in the pool - it is only a combination of CERN security policies and the company licensing check limitation of their product that prevented proper identification and therefore infringement.
Sure there is violation, but the elephant in the room here is that a license was available and paid for so the company producing the software had been compensated. We are not in the grey area "but I would not have bought it anyway" where "stealing" could somewhat apply.
No, he stole it. He went to a website, not under CERNs jurisdiction and downloaded a cracked copy of the software thereby circumventing the license and using the software unlawfully. No pachyderms present anywhere. It really is that simple.
If you want to be pedantic - then no it is not that simple.
The student is in license infringement, copyright violation, contract with CERN violation, ... but has not stolen anything.
But yes, he need to pay for those "crimes". That's what the 30K fine is for ?
Nope the 30K is just an agreed payment between the CERN and the Company for the discovery of his infringement. That money will charged back to the University thanks to another agreement and only then is going to be charged to him. The "theft" will go unpunished in the eye of the law.
The student fucked up - that part is simple. Everything else that leads to him having to pay 30K is anything but simple. Considering the context described in the blog it involves a lot of bad faith from the company and the CERN.
Just because the company and CERN say the student has to pay doesn't mean that he/she has to... The student would be well advised to call their lawyer at this juncture.
Only if you know nothing about copyrights and intellectual property laws.
First, there was NO theft. Copyright isn't about theft, no matter how the media likes to portray it, what matters is the law. License violation. Not theft. Not stealing. Violating license.
Further,
> He went to a website, not under CERNs jurisdiction and downloaded a cracked copy of the software
Has absolutely no bearing on the license violation. None whatsoever. No theft, no "illegal downloading" (whatever that means), especially in the world's saner jurisdictions where reverse engineering and/or cracked software by itself is NOT illegal.
It doesn't matter where he got the copy, because a copyright license has nothing to do with obtaining or possession. So it can't be theft. Copyright license only covers WHAT you can do with a piece of intellectual property.
CERN has a site-license. If the student had downloaded the cracked software, from anywhere, but used it only on-site: No problem. Covered under the license. Bonus: no dongle required.
> It really is that simple.
It's not actually that complicated to stick to the legal facts either.
Legally stealing includes the concept "taking with the intention to permanently deprive". The concept of stealing revolves around physical goods not intellectual property. What he did is not stealing (and if you attempted to charge him with theft you would lose in court). The crime is copyright violation not theft. Please be accurate when you are being patronising.
By taking the license without paying for it, he has permanently deprived AllSIM from the license revenue, ergo it was stolen. And drop the ad hominem. You are attacking me and the manner that you interpreted my statement, it has no bearing on the discussion.
The student didn't "take" a license, if he could have, and did, there would not even have been a case because he would have had a license!
For clarity, not attacking you, just pointing out your completely inaccurate view of intellectual property law, with the intention that other people may not get any ideas this is actually how copyright works.
But don't worry, I won't call you out for being patronizing, not when you're the one being taught.
You are assuming that there would have license revenue, that is, that there would have been a sale. In this case that's possible; in many cases that's completely false (maybe even in the majority of cases).
So the "stolen" word is a strange word for an act which leaves the owner with the goods, and does not cost the owner a sale that they otherwise would have had.
What it is, though, is taking the owner's software in violation of the owner's terms. That's immoral (arguably), and definitely illegal. What it isn't, though, is stealing in the historic meaning of the term. (Though that may not be a valid argument, as uses of words change with time and new circumstances...)
Further to this. Theft has a clear legal meaning. For example in the UK stealing a car is technically difficult to prove since proving intent to permanently deprive is not very easy. This does not stop a law against taking a car without the owners consent which is then punished appropriately.
Well a few minutes with google and wikipedia will set you straight on this. Actually that your legally wrong insistence that copyright infringement is theft actually damages your copyright maximalist stance in the eyes of both legal precedent and public opinion. NB I don't argue that copyright infringement should be legal -- merely that is is a different class of crime than theft.
I have first hand experience of your car theft analogy, my car was stolen and, luckily enough for me, recovered along with the thieves. They were successfully prosecuted. You are, yet again, wrong.
You are quite slow to grasp simple concepts aren't you.
The car theft example is not an analogy it is a fact. I never said that taking a car is legal. However, the crime is "taking without permission" not "theft" (although it is I admit often referred to as theft in common parlance). This is because theft has a clear long standing meaning which for various reasons is often difficult to establish for cars. Therefore a new type of crime (which happens to have the same punishment) was created.
The point about how stupid you copyright maximalists sound to the general public when about software 'theft' stands. You weaken you position when you do so and make yourselves subject to ridicule.
Your comment ought to be flagged, but for some reason cannot be done by me. You have gone too far. Not only are you wrong, you are being obnoxious, rude and cowardly. I guarantee that you wouldn't dare speak like that to anyone you were in front of. Just another cowardly nerd hiding behind a screen.
You're right that what that user did was not ok. Unfortunately comments like this one just compound the problem. When you can't flag a comment, someone else probably will. Or you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com. But please resist getting into a personal spat.
Everyone in this thread was at fault. You can't post things like "Did it blow your mind when you understood something for a change" here. HN's rules hold regardless of how provocative someone else may have been.
We all lose it on the internet sometimes. On HN the thing to do is recognize that you broke the rules, stop blaming the other person for it, and move on.
The I-merely defense ("I was merely X-ing, but they were Y-ing") doesn't work. You can, and people do, justify anything that way.
Please re-read my comments on this thread and others on this article you will find that I've actually been very patiently trying to explain some simple concepts -- to someone that repeatedly swore, accused me of criminal activity, wilfully misinterpreted me and raged at me. I said nothing that I would not have said IRL even when I did eventually descend to sarcasm in respond to the personal attacks.
Because the software license was restricted to use only in the lab. The student wanted to use it while he was travelling - not an unheard of use of software, and a reasonable expectation.
This was OP's point. If I'm paying for a boatload of expensive licenses, why should I be limited to how and where I use the software?
CERN licensed the software exactly that way. They aren't Joe Random User. They have a purchasing department that can negotiate back with the vendor.[1] Then the student wanted to override CERN's negotiation with the vendor.
Not the university, CERN. As the article notes CERN's license pool is only for fixed computers (not roaming), the student wanted the software on their laptop so they went and downloaded a cracked version.
