I agree that the it laws in this country are a joke - the only thing we ever get any progress on is censorship or privacy invasion. However I must admit that usually the contracts I'ev signed in the past have covered this sort of thing. They all have to do with taking company property home - including data etc, and stipulate I can never disclose - or cause to be disclosed - anything I learn / find / create while employed there. And there's usually something in the contract that says if I have anything of theirs in my possession when/after I leave their employ, whether created by me or not, that i must destroy or return it.
That kind of clause is certainly actionable - however only civily I believe, which means the onus is still on the employer to pay for legals and prove loss. One wonders when we'll ever get anyone in parliamen who understands / gives a monkeys about this kind of thing. Toby Tuesday, March 4, 2003, 1:27:38 PM, you wrote: stc> MessageIts not. Thats why it doesnt relate to IT law at all. stc> On the otherhand, we're dealing with information. Have you got any of your email from former jobs? Was it company related? That'd be data theft. The fact it was personally addressed to you is stc> very difficult to distinguish in law. stc> In the US individuals have been prosecuted for taking data from the server, to their workstation, to work on their assigned task (successfully). One of the speakers at sage a while back was a stc> convicted triple felon due to microsoft's lawyers going to work on him when he left under less then positive circumstances. stc> The three felonies he went to jail for all involved doing his job in line with company guidelines and with the cooperation of systems administrators who granted him access and approved his stc> methods. Microsoft simply chose not to pursue charges with them. stc> How do you define that while employed you can act as an employee performing technical duties that involve being in possession of intangible information, without making sending the developer to stc> jail over half the payment disputes that arrise, but prevents your employee from screwing you WHILE employed. stc> The answer is generally restraint of trade, and confidentiallity clauses in employment contracts, IE when you quit, you shall not work for my competitor for <X> months and you shall not under stc> any circumstances reveal information you obtain during the course of your duties to anybody,ever, except as required by relevant law's. stc> Then the guy would have been screwed, he would have been twice in breach of contract, and depending on the nature of the contract/etc - screwed financially, or by a large black man named Bubba stc> in a very uncomfortable place (Not the back of a volkswagon either). stc> The fact that the IT industry is run like a collection of hedge wizards bartering for arcane rites and services doesnt justify making life impossible for those of us who do treat our jobs as stc> jobs, or expect to deal with businesses instead of slightly progressed propellorheads who are still trying to work out what commercial liability means. stc> ----- Original Message ----- stc> From: Blake Foss stc> To: CFAussie Mailing List stc> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 12:05 PM stc> Subject: [cfaussie] RE: OT: A lesson learned stc> Maybe I just see it as being a little more black and white than that. The guy in the article stole files and used them for his benefit. These were not back-up files or reference files used stc> during the development of the project. The files were released to a 3rd party. stc> How is this different from an employee working in a retail store stealing furniture and passing them over to another person. Lines of code should come under the same laws as a piece of stc> furniture. stc> IT laws need to be addressed. I have some applications I have spent a lot of time developing and working on, it would crush me if an employee took them and used them for their own benefit, I stc> consider this stealing, the law sees this as being ok since they work for me at the time. stc> Blake stc> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stc> Blake Foss stc> Web Foot Forward stc> p: 61 2 9340 4401 stc> f: 61 2 8080 8190 stc> m: 0410 747 620 stc> e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> -----Original Message----- stc> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> Sent: Tuesday, 4 March 2003 12:40 PM stc> To: CFAussie Mailing List stc> Subject: [cfaussie] RE: OT: A lesson learned stc> Why is that scary? stc> Its not a violation of IT law, its should be a violation of contract law or employment law. You can't sue an employee for fucking up, wilfully or otherwise. He was STILL an employee with stc> authorization at the time of the incident. stc> Miller said that the employee had given formal notice of his intention to resign from the company but still had "about 10" days to go. The relationship had been amicable, with the company stc> having no reason to suspect a breach was likely to be committed. stc> If he could be prosecuted for data theft, so could and DBA who took a backup copy onto his development laptop to workon, or anybody who accesssed the work DB. US types HAVE been prosecuted stc> for accessing the database that its there job to maintain, treating the transferance of data between their workstation and the server as data theft. stc> I'd suggest that our laws are significantly better. Next time I have an argument with a client over payment, I don't want to be faced with the counter charge of having 'stolen' their data stc> when I downloaded a copy of their access database to work on with their full consent. stc> ----- Original Message ----- stc> From: Blake Foss stc> To: CFAussie Mailing List stc> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 11:27 AM stc> Subject: [cfaussie] RE: OT: A lesson learned stc> This was an old posting, but I remembered it as seeming like something really stupid in IT laws and shows how under funded and lazy the Police are relating to electronic crime. stc> Check out this article: stc> http://www.itnews.com.au/storycontent.cfm?ID=9&Art_ID=11612 stc> Very scary and as they say in TV land, "Trust No-One". stc> Blake stc> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stc> Blake Foss stc> Web Foot Forward stc> p: 61 2 9340 4401 stc> f: 61 2 8080 8190 stc> m: 0410 747 620 stc> e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> -----Original Message----- stc> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Soars stc> Sent: Tuesday, 25 February 2003 12:49 PM stc> To: CFAussie Mailing List stc> Subject: [cfaussie] OT: A lesson learned stc> Over the weekend a former employee of ours got into our servers, copied files and made some small modifications, nothing major just nuisance stuff - but enough to piss me off. stc> Today after gathering all the log file data i decided to ring the police. stc> What the Computer Crimes Section told me was a bit of an eye opener; stc> Former staff members are allowed back inside your servers and are able to copy and modify information at will - because they were once allowed to. stc> The only way they can be charged criminally is if they gain access to your system via another means other than a known username and password (it doesnt even matter if it wasnt their stc> username and password - any will do). stc> The only way other than changing every password on your system is to have a watertight employment contract, advising them that they have no access rights to your system after their stc> period of employment ends, this contract must also outline the ownership of the intellectual property they create whilst employed - this must be signed by both parties. If they gain access to stc> the system outside of their employment then its a criminal act. stc> We didnt have this in place, and our contract was full of wholes when dealing with the ownership of the code he created for us. stc> We can of course go after him via civil action - but he hasnt got anything, so it would be a waste of time - i would have much preffered a criminal conviction. stc> A bitter lesson learned stc> Does anyone have a contract of this nature that they would like to share? stc> Steve Soars stc> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ stc> www.i-redlands.net stc> Interactive Redlands stc> Shop 2 Cleveland Town Square stc> Cnr Queen & Bloomfield Sts stc> Cleveland QLD 4163 stc> [p] 07 3821-5800 stc> [f] 07 3821-5811 stc> "what we do in life stc> echoes an eternity" stc> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ stc> --- stc> You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ stc> --- stc> You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ stc> --- stc> You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ stc> --- stc> You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ stc> --- stc> You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] stc> MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ --------------------------------------- Life is poetry - write it in your own words. --------------------------------------- Toby Tremayne Technical Team Lead Code Poet and Zen Master of the Heavy Sleep Toll Solutions 154 Moray St Sth Melbourne VIC 3205 +61 3 9697 2317 0416 048 090 ICQ: 13107913 --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/
