Apple fires employees for Leopard downloads
According to Think Secret, Apple has fired at least five retail Apple Store employees for downloading leaked copies of Leopard. The employees were overheard discussing Leopard--and how they obtained it--with co-workers. Word got back to Cupertino, an investigation was launched, and the employees were fired. "Dozens more" may be getting pink slips soon. Based on TS's interview with one of the ex-employees it sounds like there may be more to the story, though. The person they chatted with mentioned violating the terms of an NDA, and it's not clear to me how, exactly, downloading software violates anyone's NDA. The NDA is violated by the people who post pirated software, not the people who download it. How can Apple claim these people violated an NDA unless Apple itself gave them the software on the condition of an NDA? Either there's more to the story, or something got lost in translation.This is an interesting situation for Apple to be in, though. You want your employees to have a certain amount of obsession, or at least zeal, for your product. But where do you draw the line, and what do you do when people cross it? In this case, fire them, but I suspect this is a problem Apple and other companies are going to have to wrestle with more and more as their marketing departments keep starting the buzz about new products farther and farther in advance of release dates. It will be interesting to see how many people eventually get fired, and on what grounds. I would think a reasonable policy would be this: discipline employees who possess pirated software, terminate ones who help distribute pre-release software or tell others where to get it, which it seems like these five may have been doing.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
kevin said 4:03PM on 8-23-2006
i love lost in translation, great movie
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John from Buffalo said 4:08PM on 8-23-2006
WTF is Tuaw like a day behind the news?! I think the crew reporting needs to catch up with the Engadget guys, or just simply quit. I thought you guys were THE source?! Things are really slowing down on the blog side here, guys.
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Brian Stuckey said 4:20PM on 8-23-2006
I could see this violating an NDA if the employee was discussing features with customers or within hearing of customers. In those cases, it would simply be an Apple employee talking about unreleased products with the public.
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Jon said 4:20PM on 8-23-2006
I think they should be glad that Apple didn't take legal action a la the RIAA.
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Douglas F Shearer said 4:38PM on 8-23-2006
I bet those Apple employees feel a bit silly now! If I was them I would have denied having a copy if I was asked, and made sure I wasn't part of any discussions, especially regarding sources. These people KNEW they were in the wrong doing this, and have paid the price of being indiscrete!
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Mitch said 4:40PM on 8-23-2006
I'm gonna have to agree with John here, Engadget is the first place I've been turning to lately because they always have the big scoop first, and then I read about it here a day later. Maybe you guys should hire an inside man at Engadget.
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David said 4:41PM on 8-23-2006
News update -- (in 'right to work' states) an employer can fire you at any time for any reason. Proving you were unlawfully terminated is tough unless you're a "person of color", over 40 years old, female, or disabled. Don't know where the fired employees worked (CA is not a full-on right to work" state . . . go figure . . . California, really?), but they likely wouldn't have much recourse.
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Matt said 4:43PM on 8-23-2006
Employers do not need "grounds" in order to fire at-will employees. Unless they have an employment contract that states otherwise (I doubt this is the case), Apple Store employees can be fired for any reason or no reason.
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Zachery Bir said 4:46PM on 8-23-2006
Uh, using your employer's unlicensed software would be enough. "Hey, boss, I just ripped you off, wanna hear all about it?" Morons.
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Michael said 4:52PM on 8-23-2006
About the NDA issue: When you consider the most likely means of allocating the "downloaded" version of Leopard, one must 1st and foremost think of Torrents. If this is the case then by the very nature of torrents, they helped others acquire the software as well. This by itself would break any typical NDA an employee signs with a Software company.
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Jon H said 5:01PM on 8-23-2006
" How can Apple claim these people violated an NDA unless Apple itself gave them the software on the condition of an NDA?"
Catch-all NDA's are often signed when you take a job. Apple doesn't need to give its employees NDAs for everything they might be exposed to.
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Brian said 5:08PM on 8-23-2006
I can tell you that Apple has a ZERO tolerance policy towards anything remotely resembling anything like that...I shouldn't even be posting on this website and I haven't worked for them in a year.
Apple is super duper strict with their employees. You aren't even supposed to TALK about products, new or old, outside the store. Let alone download unauthorized copies of the new OS. The NDA is more strict than working for the CIA. I exaggerate, but you get my drift.
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Kevin Wells said 5:26PM on 8-23-2006
The reason that this is violating an NDA is that they are using the original license on the software in order to make an end-run around the "First Sale Doctrine" of copyright. After a copyrightable work's owner sells it, they no longer have control over what is done. (For example, I buy a book, the copyright holder can't tell me to whom I can sell it, and I could rip it up or do whatever I want with it after I purchase it.)
By licensing the software, they are not "giving" you a copy of Leopard, but rather allowing you to use a copy of it. You can't give away more than the ownership interest you have (none, in this case).
The practical effect of this is that the person downloading a copy of the software does not have more rights than the person who originally had it, and the NDA would go with it, binding all the people after the first who had a copy.
Thus the employees would be covered by the NDA, and could be fired for it.
Additionally, the comments about "right to work" states are true, but slightly off. "Right to work" means that you can't have closed-shop unions. You are confusing that concept with "at-will employment," which means that the employer can fire you at any time for any reason, or you can quit at any time with no notice.
You're right, though. It's incredibly difficult to prove that you were fired for discriminatory reasons.
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Tim said 5:34PM on 8-23-2006
Something like this happened to a friend of mine who worked at an Apple Store. The idiot downloaded a copy of Mac OS X Server to use at home for "testing" and then came in a week later and bragged about it. He was fired within hours.
Anyway.. Ok Apple Retail Employee's
#1. NEVER ADMIT ANYTHING.
#2. Get a good lawyer
#3. Realize you really don't work for Apple. You're retail... I know... I know... you get your cool Apple badge, you spend a few weeks in CA. for training.. etc.. but trust me, you're not really an Apple employee. You're an Apple RETAIL employee.
I am a recovering Mac Genius. Fortunately I left before I did anything stupid to get me fired.
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microdot said 5:37PM on 8-23-2006
employee: guess what i did lat night boss!?!?!?!
apple store manager: whats that employee?
employee: stole from the company!! WOOT!!
and its surprising to anyone that they are being fired? can them for incompetence if nothing else.
apple does need to tone down the full frontal assault a wee bit however.
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Gordon Werner said 5:49PM on 8-23-2006
umm ... downloading pirated software is illegal and is stealing. Most people get fired for stealing. What's so difficult to understand?
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Piracy!=Stealing said 6:57PM on 8-23-2006
Stealing and copyright infringement are not the same thing under the law. They're not the same morally, either, unless your soul belongs to The Corporation.
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m1k3k said 7:35PM on 8-23-2006
apparantly, this has happened before. i know of a couple of people that were supposedly fired because of downloading software after their store manager gave them the verbal OK, but denied it later on. and that was from an internal server that hosted the applications for anyone to download without any authorization or authentication protocols in place.
i also know of similar situations like the above one that occured, but the "investigation" was dropped.
is huge now and everyone wants everything before it is out. maybe if made it available for their employees to try before it comes out, they would actually know about the product before the day it came out.
i know this from 4 years of experience with the company
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Hammo said 8:56PM on 8-23-2006
Employees will be given access to the product when the time is right. They company will ensure that they will be able to hype it to customers with a sensible, controlled approach.
These idiots clearly did something wrong, and got caught out. No sympathy for idiots.
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okto said 11:19PM on 8-23-2006
No sympathy either. Our NDA would apply here because they probably used BitTorrent, right? So they were uploading as well as downloading. Discussing as-yet-unreleased software in a public place (the Store) also violates the terms of the NDA.
If you work at Apple and pirate their software, you're a jerk in the first place (it's stealing from the company you work for, after all) , but if you're indiscreet enough to talk about it, you don't deserve to work there.
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