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The problem here isn't so much with the facts, it's with the prosecutors and polices eagerness in pursuing it.

They only mention it in passing, but the reason he got all that evidence thrown out was essentially that the police were acting on very little else than Goldmans assertion.

Then he got acquitted on what was if you want to a "legal loophole", but still (and even that only happened a few steps up on the jurisdictional ladder, even though the law clearly didn't apply to him).

And then they charged him again, with essentially the same crime. So the same people that can't manage to put a single Goldman dude behind bars are all too happy to destroy lives on Goldmans words.

I'm not sure I follow. Your comment starts by saying the problem isn't with the facts --- tacitly agreeing with 'chollida1 that wrongdoing was established --- but ends with the assertion that Aleynikov was convicted "on Goldman's words". Can you help me understand how both of those things can be true?

Not the OP, but I read his comment as frustration with "One law for rich, another for the poor". One can agree that Aleynikov should be convicted, but hope that the law should pursue people who play fast and lose with public money with the same zeal they shown here.

Sure. But perhaps some of that frustration should be directed at legislatures that are too afraid of disrupting the economy and being blamed for job loss to criminalize the shady stuff giant banks do? Because one reason there's "one law" for people like Aleynikov and another for bank execs is that theft is black-letter illegal, and whatever-it-is we want to blame GS for might not be, yet.

One bias prosecutors definitely have is taking cases they think they can win.

Fraud is definitely illegal.

> the police were acting on very little else than Goldmans assertion

That's a fair statement by the OP. The external criticism has always been there was a lack of a full investigation from a neutral position by the state, as investigators depended on Goldman Sachs people to determine the crime.

Outside neutral parties weren't consulted AFAIK. Which is typically the case when sophisticated crimes take place - such as bringing in private industry experts.

Whether or not that would have resulted in different charges or handling by the police is up for debate. But it is certain that the worst of the original charges were found to be baseless, prosecutors were over-aggressive, and most of the evidence was thrown out because they didn't have a proper basis to conduct search warrants.

Criminal proceedings are adversarial. The defense brings in experts specifically to rebut the charges. The prosecution brings in experts to support them. Where do "neutral experts" fit into this process?

Neutral in that the police and prosecutors verify that the claims by the victim are actually true otherwise anyone could use the police/prosecutors for destroy someone that they didn't like.

Much in the same way that ICE has acted like the enforcement arm of the RIAA/MPAA when taking down domains. Barely (or not at all) verifying that the domains were being used for infringement (instead just taking a list given to them by the RIAA/MPAA and acting on it blindly).

To the extent that's true, it's not really material to this case, right? His own lawyer stipulated to the facts. The dispute was a matter of law, not of fact.

I agree with the prevailing sentiment on HN that (a) it's too easy to get an indictment (the grand jury is supposed to be adversarial against the prosecutors and isn't) and (b) prosecutors bias --- my belief is: primarily bias towards cases they can win easily --- has subverted the goal of prosecutorial discretion.

But the facts of this case suggest a theft that could reasonably be valued at extremely high numbers. For it to be heard in court doesn't sound like a miscarriage of justice.

I agree. I'm just stating that I feel like people are unsettled by how it seemed like the victim supplied all of the evidence to the police/prosecutors and there was a general, "oh well, if you say so," feeling to the relationship between them.

Doesn't that describe basically every theft case ever? Someone breaks into my house and steals my TV, the same thing's going to happen. You don't think maybe people are just reacting knee-jerk to the name "Goldman Sachs"?

If someone breaks into my house, the police come into the house to investigate. I don't gather all of the evidence for them while preventing them from entering the premises. When has a theft occurred where the police just accepted all of the evidence from the victim, but didn't really do any evidence-gathering themselves?

It's one thing to commit a crime, and another to be put on trial* for it. The crime is his own, but I'm pretty sure the two trials are of Goldmans making. You don't get two trials and a law to boot from a single fervorous prosecutor.

They would have probably already dropped this case the moment most of the evidence was ruled out and called it a day.

* was sentenced

He hasn't been sentenced for this conviction yet, right?

So I guess the take away is on your last day of work, don't just zip up and ftp any code from your company, it's just not worth it.

Not just "not worth it" but actually illegal.

The only question of debate here is whether jail time was warranted here.

Sometimes illegal can be worth it.

I was actually shocked to find out that there are actually a few programmers that does this. I don't know what is the reason but it is tantamount to stealing.

Sorry but no matter how good he was, it's ridiculous to say he was the entire talent. I'm in a good position to know: I worked for several years within the group he was a part of (right after he left) and there were tons of terrific people there.

It's far more ridiculous to threaten and abuse our abject criminal system to reign in (that is if we assume the theft and not OSS happened) a talented employee who decided to jump the boat and join competition. Make no mistake, the people (wish their names were commonplace!) spearheading the legal pursuit on behalf of Goldman Sachs are evil - of the Hollywood/MPAA kind. Be wary of joining such Corporations, especially if you're a creative developer.

What do you have to say to that?

He wasn't convicted for violating a noncompete. He was convicted for taking Goldman property on his way out the door. His own lawyer stipulated to that in his summation.

Thank you for pointing this out. I wasn't aware that his original narrative was inaccurate, him having taken proprietary source code that he developed makes this outcome substantially more tolerable.

I don't think it is well established that we he took was an algorithm or any such thing.

Michael Lewis wrote a big article in Vanity Fair which I suggest you look at. He gathered a number of experts who looked at the evidence presented at his federal trial and concluded that what he took was modified open source code to run the queues, do messaging, etc. Boiler plate code to create the infrastructure.

This is what GS is calling "proprietary source code", since he made the changes on GS dime therefore it is proprietary to them.

That's a common misunderstanding. According to the Second Circuit:

In addition to proprietary source code, Aleynikov also transferred some open source software licensed for use by the public that was mixed in with Goldman’s proprietary code. However, a substantially greater number of the uploaded files contained proprietary code than had open source software.

The Second Circuit is not an expert on software. It is an expert in law and modified open source code becomes proprietary code in eyes of the law for the purposes of GS employment agreement. They're not parsing how GPL or some other license might have applied.

I encourage you to look at Michael Lewis's article[1]. This passage is relevant: "As Goldman hadn’t permitted him to release his debugged or improved code back to the public—possibly in violation of the original free licenses, which often stated that improvements must be publicly shared—the only way to get his hands on these was to take the Goldman code. That he had taken, in the bargain, some code that wasn’t open source, which happened to be contained in the same files as the open-source code, surprised no one. Grabbing a bunch of files that contained both open-source and non-open-source code was an efficient, quick, and dirty way to collect the open-source code, even if the open-source code was the only part that interested him."

[1] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...

Once again: his own lawyer stipulated these facts in his criminal summation. It's not in dispute; it is undisputed. He did not simply taken open-source software. You can add this to the list of things Lewis got wrong; it's a large and growing one.

As Aleynikov concedes in his motion papers, the code he took from Goldman Sachs included a "purposefully designed" portion of the Goldman Sachs "proprietary, custom-built trading system." Indeed, the evidence showed that Aleynikov took a significant percentage of the proprietary source code for that system. While Aleynikov attempted to show that there was open source code embedded within the proprietary code and to identify the files in which that might be true, his expert witness was only able to identify one file among those taken by Aleynikov that both bore a Goldman Sachs copyright banner and appeared to contain open source code.

This does not contradict what Lewis writes or what I mentioned on my first post. The "proprietary, custom-built trading system." has a lot of infrastructure code to handle the incoming volume, ensure nothing gets dropped, and trades get evaluated. He doesn't seem to have taken the "decision making" part which would have been their secret sauce.

Sure, the modified open-source code might have been protected by GS employment agreement but that doesn't mean that it was their secret sauce. It was infrastructure/boiler plate code.

Additionally the fact that a code has a GS copyright banner doesn't mean that it was all brand-spanking-new GS-unique code. Even Lewis's article talks about the fact that a single file had open-source code and modified open-source code, aka proprietary code. This subtle language difference is exactly how a lawyer confuses the jury and it is difficult to counteract. Remember the SCO Unix v Novell fiasco!?

Lewis brought together experts who reviewed the evidence on record, i.e. the actual source codes submitted at evidence at his first trial and they reviewed it and found it to be derivative open-source code to run queues, and run infrastructure.

Have you read any of the court filings? Can you point to the one where it's established that Goldman's proprietary code is merely modified open source code? Even Aleynikov doesn't appear to be arguing that. Both sides in the trial had expert witnesses --- the Second Circuit didn't merely conclude on its own that the code was proprietary (in fact, they can't do that: appeals courts resolve disputes of law, not of fact).

Your source, by the way, does not support your assertion about Lewis contracting experts reviewing the source code presented as evidence during the trial. Which makes sense: what would make you think Lewis would have access to it in the first place?

Can you point to one instance where GS argues that it was the secret algorithm? They merely say code related to the trading platform. Lewis had access to the source code because it is presented as evidence in a trial and therefore matter of public record.

No one from GS has said that what he has taken was an algorithm or anything related to decision making. Not one person.

I never said the Second Circuit resolved a dispute about it being proprietary code. The defendant's own lawyer doesn't dispute that it was proprietary. But merely being proprietary is not sufficient for a trade secret violation. If you modify a config file for Apache that modified config file becomes proprietary but it is most likely not an essential trade secret that is the core of your business that someone else couldn't have come up with something similar to solve your problem.

GS lawyer's say that proprietary code WAS trade secret and essential, whereas defendant says no it was modified open source code used for queueing etc. The jury is not sophisticated enough to differentiate between the two. See any patent case where a BS software invention is held up as unique.

To address his lawyer's admission... as I said modified open-source code becomes proprietary so the lawyer isn't wrong. That is why he said that he violated the confidentiality agreement but that isn't the same as stealing trade secret. A company's trade secret isn't the same thing as proprietary code.

One of the legal qualification of trade secrets is that it is a method, process, etc. that isn't known or reasonably known by others for gaining advantage over competitors. It is their secret sauce.

I don't see anything here that suggests he took the ALGORITHM or DECISION MAKING process, or any such thing.

Can you point to the specific things you're relying on to determine what ALGORITHMS and DECISION MAKING processes may or may not have been taken? I'm not sure why I'm meant to be too concerned about which parts of the evidence you personally have or haven't seen.

Besides, you're reasoning about this on a faulty premise. This is a common misconception that people outside the industry have regarding HFT. Let me assure you, often the decision making is trivial, the answer to the question of what to do can be quite obvious. Then it's more about who can do it faster, and that's all about the plumbing. Which he stole.