Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets(reuters.com) |
Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets(reuters.com) |
Things I learned from that article that aren't apparent in this one:
- Uber was forced to pay more than $244 million to Waymo in the separate lawsuit between them.
- The $179 million that Levandowski owes to Google comes from a third lawsuit between him and Google over poaching engineers from Waymo.
Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633861 suggests that the article is being shadow edited. It now contains information on those two points, but I don't think it did when many of the comments on here were written.
The legal nightmare which resulted a loss in 0.34% of equity and combined with having to throw away whatever they had[0] before as part of the deal with Google is not cheap at all.
Anecdotally, I have engineering friends on the Uber self driving team and they talk about how they are just starting over again and how far behind they are as a result of it.
This is definitely a path Uber would not choose to go down again in hind sight. All to say, Uber did pay a significant price for "30 months of someone else's life".
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-lawsuit-settlement/
Say you believe that there's a 25% chance that this Google guy can get you to the front of the self-driving car race, and there's a 50% chance you'll get caught. Based on those 3 assumptions at the top, this is a worthwhile risk.
Sure, he wouldn't do it again with hindsight, both because it didn't work out and because his board fired him for creating a culture of sexual harassment, but the risk was probably worth it, strategically if not ethically.
"Uber indemnifies workers under its employment agreements. But Uber has said in financial filings that it expects to challenge paying the big judgment against Levandowski, who was fired from the company in 2017."
https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-files-ba...
Note that Uber paid out $9.7M to Google on behalf of Lior Ron, one of Levandowski's Otto employees. So they already established the pattern.
Update: The article has just been shortened, and the paragraphs on that issue have been removed...
Update 2: they are back again, apparently slightly reworded, IIRC the original...
I thought I was going crazy. I could swear it mentioned it but now it's gone.
> Update 2: they are back again, apparently slightly reworded, IIRC the original...
Not for me? It's gone still.
It's easy to write him off as an extremely greedy sociopath, but I wonder if he was walking along some precarious line or "loop-hole" that eventually too many attempts to cross bit him in the butt.
To be clear, I think both should be punished, but the large corp stealing ideas NEVER will.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals-...
Think of it this way, people are currently SIP and going stir crazy with all the modern stuff.
It’s interesting that we accept electronic money as real, but IP always feels like a stretch.
To be sure, there are many hellholes in the US, but he's not going there.
For example, if you can get 12 years for shoplifting $40 [1] or life in prison for stealing $153 of video tapes [2] that stands in stark contrast to starting a company with stolen IP and selling it for $680M and getting 2.5 years.
Some people see this as part of a pattern where the justice system, run by upper-middle-class types, is unduly lenient on other upper-middle-class types, or unduly harsh on poor people. They would also point to the likes of Brock Turner who had gone to the same college as the judge sentencing him; and controversial presidential pardons [3] of friends and major donors.
It's not a completely hard-and-fast pattern, of course; Bernie Madoff got a 150 year sentence.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop... [2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r... [3] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/prob...
What happens if someone commits a crime in a prison town? Double secret prison?
In this case, no one's life was the slightest bit injured. Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat. Waymo has undoubtedly advanced far from the versions of everything that he copied illegally. It won't damage them at all. If anything, the lawsuit and criminal case were probably more damaging to their progress due to the distraction.
This is pretty similar to copying software or movies illegally. In almost all cases, there is no injured party. It's simply illegal by virtue of the powerful corporations demanding laws that they can use as a bludgeon.
Startups and other small companies don't get any of this "protection", but when someone copies code illegally from Google or Goldman Sachs, the FBI gets involved and makes them pay dearly. Prosecutors use the cases to make their bones.
I'm not suggesting that what this guy did was ethically or legally correct, just that it didn't actually harm any human life. It should probably be illegal but the punishment/fines should be capped at a very low level. The laws should primarily be designed to stop someone from continuing to use illegally copied data.
I don't necessarily disagree with all of your comment, but I feel like incompetence should not be a factor in determining punishment severity. Being unprofitable should not be a valid defense for illegal behavior.
Not only is he a thief, by his own admission, but it probably wasn’t the first time he did this. The way he stole the designs he wasn’t worried about getting caught. This is not something someone does for the first time. It’s a pattern of behavior built up over a long time.
I’m seriously worried about the lack of basic morals in technology where behavior like this, like Andy Rubin’s, etc.... goes unpunished because these people are “brilliant.”
He might be good at the self-driving car stuff or he might not, I have no idea, but I wouldn't trust him with a ham sandwich.
I think he'll end up somewhere and just fine. Someone will be willing to take a chance on him.
Personally I'm not smart enough / likely to end up working with him. But just for the sake of argument if I was I would be wary.
He took all that stuff with him... that no doubt included the work of people around him, and that showed a lot of disregard not just for his employer, but his peers. I could 'understand' if someone had a problem with their employer (still a bad choice!), but the disregard for his coworkers to me signals something else as far as his moral / ethical choices / standards... if there are any.
Do you trust that guy not just to walk off with your work, but to even represent it accurately to others? Have your back when you need it? Not sure I would.
I'd also be more willing to work for him, than have him work for me. Sounds weird, but it's easier to ensure I'm doing nothing illegal than checking that an employee of mine isn't.
This is the absurd assumption
This white-collar punishment is going to hurt him badly. Is fairness best achieved by hurting him even more? Or is it best achieved by "only" hurting non-white-collar crimes with a punishment similar to this? It's important because the real question here is "are you complaining about his sentence, or the sentence of others?"
Personally I'm pro-reform. Would really like to see lighter sentences for a lot of things. So I'm not going to complain about this white-collar sentence at all. I'm going to complain about the harsh sentence for "people not like us."
Stealing the golden eggs is not the same as stealing the golden goose.
The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll.
In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage.
It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it should be proportionate to the damage, which was minimal.
I understand Google made many claims but apparently the evidence was only strong enough for this one minor article to make through the plea negotiations.
Now put yourself in this "fucking 40 year old"'s position and think about what it means for a corporation like Google to make these claims. Even if they're false you can't afford to fight them.
The guy was steamrolled.
* The files that Levandowski is alleged to have stolen contain drawings and schematics pertaining to circuitry and LIDAR laser-sensors that were used in Google’s self-driving cars. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine, plus restitution, for every count.*
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/27/20835368/google-uber-engi...
> agreed to plead guilty on Thursday to taking sensitive documents
> Prosecutors accused Levandowski of stealing materials in late 2015 and early 2016 after deciding to leave Google and form his own company
> I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for that purpose
That's the material in the article. Any hints of said thief's brilliance must be elsewhere, if they exist, and the burden to produce them is on those who would claim they should be given weight.
The onus is on him to demonstrate why his reputation in the industry should be restored.
The problem is that at the level that he was operating at, he would need to reenter industry in a leadership position of some sort, and most people would not trust him as a leader after this.
The ex-cons you worked with didn't have this issue because they probably didn't commit their felonies in food service, but rather in some other criminal situation or enterprise.
Also, fair or not, most people have less sympathy for those who commit felonies after they're already wealthy or powerful, versus people who commit felonies when they are largely poor or powerless. The criminal justice system, however, could be argued to have the exact opposite bias.
In the criminal trial yes.
> I understand Google made many claims but apparently the evidence was only strong enough for this one minor article to make through the plea negotiations.
Google isn't (officially anyway) involved in this plea deal. It's between levandowski and the DA who is charging him with a crime. Google won 170 million in damages in the civil suit/arbitration.
To demonstrate:
Insider Trading - Base Offense Level: 8
Monetary Loss | Points Added | Total Points | Total Sentence Length | Dollars/month
> $6,500 2 10 6-12 months $812
> $15,000 4 12 10-16 months $1,153
> $40,000 6 14 15-21 months $2,222
~~~~
> $250,000 12 20 33-41 months $6,756
> $550,000 14 22 41-51 months $11,957
> $1,500,000 16 24 51-63 months $26,315
> $3,500,000 18 26 63-78 months $49,296
> $9,500,000 20 28 78-97 months $109,195
> $25,000,000 22 30 97-121 months $229,358
> $65,000,000 24 32 121-151 months $477,941
>$150,000,000 26 34 151-188 months $887,573
>$250,000,000 28 36 188-235 months $1,182,033
>$550,000,000 30 38 235-293 months $2,083,333
https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2018-guidelines-manual/2018-...
Edit: This isn't meant to encourage anyone to commit a crime of any magnitude. Doing that would likely violate the terms of my probation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/garrett-grimsley-north-carolina...
Autonomous vehicle IP is enormously more valuable if Google is the sole supplier. The value to Google is significantly less if Google plus multiple competitors have it.
Your claim basically devolves to no harm, no foul, and that's not how our legal system generally works. The attempted theft was of great value.
Obtaining autonomous vehicle IP is not equivalent to having autonomous vehicle product in the market.
As an example: Boeing could almost certainly publish all of the IP for the 787 jet and not risk spawning a single legitimate competitor. Very few organizations in the world could do anything with it.
What's truly valuable to a Google or Boeing is their financial, engineering, manufacturing, and operations resources. And other less tangible things.
Which is why severe punishment for illegally copying IP doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, it should be illegal and should be stopped, but it's not that big a deal in most cases.
It just seems like a big deal because "tHey StolE tHe SeCreT cOdEs!" as if it's a James Bond movie.
It's a case of confusing the golden goose with the golden eggs.