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[SalmonGod]

The original point was actually that the government thinks it's ok for employers to require employees give up their internet passwords as a condition of employment

It was a pretty severe tangent

[Descan]

Oh damn, really?

Well...

I still say my point stands, because the "on your own time, WE OWN YOUR BRAIN" was apparently being done and talked about, while "On OUR time, we own your brain!" makes sense so I don't see why it needs to be discussed like a "OH NOES" style thingy doodad whatsit hoo-hah.

[palsch]

The original point was actually that the government thinks it's ok for employers to require employees give up their internet passwords as a condition of employment

And yeah, to come back to this, I don't have much of a problem with them passing on that particular amendment for three reasons;

1) It was attaching something to an unrelated (or marginally related I guess) bill which is rarely good government.

2) It's not like US law authorises such practices. I'm pretty sure you can make a legal case against it although I'm not aware of any cases going through the courts yet. It would be nice to see Congress making a stand for employee privacy, but in some senses thinking that such obvious privacy violations are protected by default would be better.

3) The bill in question isn't going to be law anyway. It may have passed the House but Senate cybersecurity debates are going to be where the actual content is decided. Odds are without a drastic change in the Senate Obama would veto the House's version of CISPA, so what was passed last week is extremely unlikely to become law.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Note that Facebook has been throwing their extensive legal team around to..."inform" employers that asking for Facebook passwords is a violation of Facebook's TOS and a legal offense. Ironically, CISPA as it stands would give Facebook even more standing to sue people asking for passwords.

Don't worry too much. This password thing is not at all going to go anywhere, and if an employer asks you for your password you can freely inform them that they are asking you to help them break the law and your contract with the site in question. Whomever handles the litigation of the people who try to get employee's passwords would be throttling them if they knew.

[palsch]

Ironically, CISPA as it stands would give Facebook even more standing to sue people asking for passwords.

I may not have read the entire bill as passed, but I don't quite get where this is coming from?

[Reelya]

Hmm, yeah. I wrote that over the twenty minutes it took for me to finish breakfast, go inside, take a dump and then finally crash into my couch. I guess I lost track of the premise over that time.

Regardless, the first and nonbolded part still applies. You need to understand that when a company pays you to do things for them, they are in fact buying the results of your time. If the results are naught, they can fire you. If you try to keep the results from them, they can sue you. Just like I own the results of the Carpenter's time when I pay him to add a room, the company own the result when they pay you to create stuff.

If the carpenter makes a cabinet during time he's meant to be working for you, that's not your cabinet. It's not what you ordered in the contract, so it's not yours. He owes you a refund, not the cabinet.

[Reelya]

Yeah, we seem to be getting off on a tangent. The original point was that contracts say "ANYTHING YOU HAVE DONE BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 1998 AND OCTOBER 2005 WE OWN"

24/7, 365 days a year.

And someone said going back to this was moving the goalposts? :I

That's not what i was replying to, read my post and the posts i was replying to. The "moving the goalposts" comment was in response to Sheb. Scriver was the guy who had the "back on topic" comment. Both names begin with an "S" (like all philosophers) other than that, there's no connection. My comment to Scriver was to point out that he really shouldn't be criticizing me personally for diverting the conversation, when i was only replying to the diversion, myself.

What I referred to as "moving the goalposts" was that Sheb first brought up the hypothetical idea of someone doing their own work during the job, which is one thing, and then seemed to say "what i really meant was the worker was working on a company project then ran off and claimed it as their own IP", which is something else entirely. Maybe he didn't intend it that way, but he seemed to be shifting from "doing your own work during work hours" to "stealing IP" as I presented counter-arguments to the first scenario, without actually addressing any of the points I rose. Which seemed awfully like moving goalposts.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ironically, CISPA as it stands would give Facebook even more standing to sue people asking for passwords.

I may not have read the entire bill as passed, but I don't quite get where this is coming from?

CISPA gives ToS agreements increased legal standing. Giving out your password to anybody violates most ToS agreements, and it definitely violates Facebook's.

[palsch]

CISPA gives ToS agreements increased legal standing.

No it doesn't. The only way it in any way effects ToS agreements is an exemption to privacy agreements, allowing companies to share your private information in certain situations (specifically to pursue cyber or national security threats or child porn).

I think you are confusing the overly broad reading of the CFAA, which is an existing law. In the Aaron Swartz case the prosecution was accused of basing their case on his breaking a ToS agreement rather than any actual fraud or theft. Note that this wasn't actually part of the charges, just one of the popular memes surrounding the case. That said, the DoJ has pushed that angle in the past, so it's not a totally unreasonable fear. Congress, in proposing a revised CFAA, did put forwards explicit exemptions for breaking ToS agreements, but in doing so paradoxically made more ToS violations into crimes.

I'd recommend skimming this post. It outlines the three main prongs of cybersecurity legislation. The first - information sharing - is what CISPA is about. The second - infrastructure regulation - is mostly the concern of the Senate bill CISPA will be effectively replaced with, or at least merged with somehow. The third - criminality - is the domain of the CFAA and dealt with entirely independently of the actual CISPA/cybersecurity debate.

[Sheb]

Sorry Reelya, I always meant the second one, and wasn't clear enough at first, so it does indeed looked like I was moving the goalposts. There is of course no reason for a company to own some IP made by an employee if said employee wasn't developing it for the company.

[i2amroy]

Sorry Reelya, I always meant the second one, and wasn't clear enough at first, so it does indeed looked like I was moving the goalposts. There is of course no reason for a company to own some IP made by an employee if said employee wasn't developing it for the company.

If, however, the IP made by the employee utilizes or is based on information or processes that the company owns/created (say you worked for a company making jets and you created a rocket car based on the engine designs for the jets) then the company could probably make a claim that your rocket car stole from them. It's the same reason why people who work in R&D aren't usually allowed to publish IP in the same field they work in for the company while they work for them and a certain amount of time afterwards, nor are R&D people allowed to work in a similar field for X many years after they leave the company (these are usually placed in the contracts for R&D people).

[ChairmanPoo]

...this came up during a chat concerning a goverment-sponsored biotech foundation in here. The workers at the institution retain IP rights, but the institution has the explotation rights. At least that was the short version. I expect there's a long legalese text somewhere specifying the details of every relationship of that sort.

[freeformschooler]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It all makes sense now. Thanks Twitter.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Who needs oil, I'll ride the bus"?

Oh for fuck's sake. Last time I checked most buses need oil-derivatives to work.

[freeformschooler]

Oh for fuck's sake. Last time I checked most buses need oil-derivatives to work.

Whoosh.