Read this.
It’s interesting. There aren’t many topics that split the Mac community, but this is one of them. In a nutshell, there are those folks who think [Mac rumors site] PBZone was unprofessional in conduct and that Adam deserves a second chance on one side, and on the other there are those who think PBZone has nothing to do with the issue — that Adam was negligent, and he got what he deserved.
Personally, I’m part of the first group. Yes, Adam was negligent. But PBZone’s actions were sensational, demonstrating an utter lack of concern for both Apple and Adam.
One poster said this:
Where’s the grey?
As I see it this is the real issue. PBZone actually has nothing to do with it:
1) The guy takes screen shots of internal Apple info (thus violating his NDA)
No problem as long as no one finds out.
2) He copies them to some kind of removable media and brings them home.
A little problem, as I’m sure Apple does not allow you to take info of site
3) He goes through the trouble of converting these to jpegs and bluring sensitive info.
Why would he do this if they were for his own personal use?
4) He puts them on a publicly accessible web server and posts a link to that server on slashdot!
OK he may actually not have meant to have this directory publicly accessible, if so, then it should have been password protected, or at least the ownership of the files should have been limited to him. The fact that they were there and anyone could open them makes him guilty of violating his NDA.
Now to follow the analogy of someone breaking into your house. It’s actually more like someone walked past your front window, saw a box stating “Property of xyz corp, do not remove from xyz headquarters”. So they call xyz and tell them that they saw some of their property at this address.
If a CIA agent leaves a top secret briefcase in a cab, and the cab driver reads the documents, who has broken the law? It depends. If the case is locked and says top secret etc… then the cab driver. if it’s open with no identification, then the agent is at fault.
This guy was 100% wrong. Wether through ignorance, naivety, stupidity or maliciousness I can’t say, but he was wrong and if nothing else deserved to lose his job.
Interesting post. Yeah, exactly why were those files blurred? My guess is it probably wasn’t to show off his mad Photoshop skills. A few comments, though.
- The guy takes screen shots of internal Apple info (thus violating his NDA)
I highly doubt this violated his NDA.
- He copies them to some kind of removable media and brings them home
This is most likely fine, too.
- Now to follow the analogy of someone breaking into your house. It’s actually more like someone walked past your front window, saw a box stating “Property of xyz corp, do not remove from xyz headquarters”. So they call xyz and tell them that they saw some of their property at this address.
This falls over pretty quickly. It’s more like someone walked past your front window, saw the box, and then ran billboards around the city advertising the fact that said box was in your window, and xyz found out that way.
- If a CIA agent leaves a top secret briefcase in a cab, and the cab driver reads the documents, who has broken the law? It depends. If the case is locked and says top secret etc… then the cab driver. if it’s open with no identification, then the agent is at fault.
In this case, the files were labelled “Apple_Internal”. I don’t think that leaves much doubt.
Added, 7:53pm:
Here’s part of another post I found particularly salient:
I think if pbzone would have downloaded the screenshots, notified the man of his publicly available sensitive information and told them they were going to release the images to the public, he would have had a chance to remove them from his site (and maybe saved the guy).
pbzone woud have been able to release cropped pictures of the apps and they STILL would have gotten a scoop, but no heads would have rolled.
[PBZone’s] cover story that Apple already found out is not logical.
What do you think?