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Comment by efdee

8 years ago

Theft of copyrighted material, if bfirsh's claim of having the tool upload _all of the source code on his computer_ without asking about it.

Maybe even corporate espionage.

15 comments

efdee

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jonathanstrange  8 years ago

> Theft of copyrighted material

Copyright infringement is not theft. These are two completely different issues. When data is copied it is not taken away from the owner like when physical goods are stolen. Secondary damages may or may not occur, but they are not the same as depriving someone of a good. As an analogy, I wouldn't steal a car, but I surely would copy a car if I could do so by simply pressing a button...

  • mort96  8 years ago

    This isn't necessarily only about copyright infringement (though it's definitely that too). If some of the source code on your machine contain sensitive information, like API keys, database passwords, etc.

    Legally, the word "theft" isn't only used when one party loses anything; a victim of identity theft doesn't lose their identity, yet we don't call it "identity infringement". I'm not familiar enough with US law to know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if the word "theft" is used somewhere for obtaining sensitive information without permission.

  • raverbashing  8 years ago

    Nuh huh

    It's one thing to infringe on the copyright of a public work

    Another, very different thing is to copy something that's not public and might be considered IP or a trade secret

  • xg15  8 years ago

    Both are punishable crimes though, so I don't see what difference the point makes

    • Spoom  8 years ago

      The primary difference is that copyright infringement is a civil offense, not a criminal one, so nobody would be "going to prison".

      6 replies →

  • sloppycee  8 years ago

    No, but if that copyright material contained trade secrets then it is criminal.

    • matt4077  8 years ago

      And if it contained gold, it's actual theft.

      But that's about as unlikely as the code containing trade secrets.

      Plus:

      - For copyright infringement, they'd need to actually redistribute the code. Using it for machine learning and distributing short snippets wouldn't be copyright infringement.

      - For that trade secret stuff you'd need to prove intent.

      2 replies →