It's one thing to own your own brain, it's another take 14K files, including circuit board designs and lidar designs. It's yet another to start using them at new-co that is a direct competitor to old-co. I'm by no means an IP fanatic, but that really does cross over to theft in my mind. But, on balance, the very specific details really matter here, so we'll see...
I am not a Google employee but my understanding is that the biggest fear is not that Anthony Levandowski stole all the stuff but that Uber or another unscrupulous company would race ahead with inadequate self-driving causing a backlash that would bring down a legislative ban hammer on everyone, including Waymo. I think that is the real danger here.
Personally, I don't want Anthony Levandowski in prison. I just want him or people like him to not be able to work on self-driving cars.
I want self-driving cars to arrive and will gladly campaign to ban humans from being able to drive on public road when that day arrives.
What is the line between "short cut" and "working smarter"?
It's not related to this post. Stealing is wrong. It just seems to me the line between being efficient and taking short cuts is really murky.
Bribing a foreign government bureaucrat is a "short cut", but it crosses many lines, that are not ok.
Spamming users after buying their email address, cross fewer such boundaries, cause much less harm, and could be argued as "working smarter".
Jobs and Musk are walking shortcuts. Anthony's biggest mistake is that he got caught by a corporation motivated to pursue.
I use to feel bad for Google and wanted this thief to face justice. But umm he's just doing what he witnessed and was taught(told) to do while working for the big G.
They usually turn out to have an underlying wonky or absent moral compass, and abusive personality traits.
The outward image is a confidence trick, and that's how they got where they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5d9BrLN5K4
There's more to say, but I'm not sure it's worth sharing on HN.
Didn't these ended up where they are by taking all kinds of shortcuts?
Anthony should have known that files are easily tracked in a place like Google and that he'd put a giant spotlight on himself by competing with Google's future golden goose.
If anything, Musk's undoing will be how he has handled Tesla, such as his nepotist SolarCity acquisition.
I'm not saying Musk hasn't created some impressive companies or that he is bound to fail - but he is not without controversy.
So far the worst thing that has happened to Musk legally is some dropped SEC charges and new controls for one of his companies. The Solarcity deal isn't being investigated by authorities and was approved by 85% of shareholders in 2016, where its connection to his cousins was well known. Otherwise none of what you listed is illegal or in the same ballpark as what Anthony did.
I thought we were talking about questionable characteristics of these people and how it might lead to their downfall. I could easily see Elon Musk get sued for unsafe working conditions from years ago, or a fraudulent claim about Autopilot's capability, or for libel by attacking people unnecessarily on twitter (accusing a diver of being a pedophile is pretty fucking weird).
I remember talking to extremely well-paid lawyers in the industry before the Alphabet vs. Uber case saying there was nothing they could do to Levandowski. Let's circle back in 5 years and see how Musk is doing then.