Final Ethics project part 2

For my ethical hacking philosophy project I will explore the subject of the ethics of the case against Aleynikov. In this case, Aleynikov was arrested two days after Goldman Sachs contacted the FBI with evidence that he had downloaded proprietary code. Aleynikov acknowledged taking the code but told FBI agents he only intended to collect “open source” software files on which he had worked, and that his collection of proprietary files on his last day of work had been inadvertent. He never gave the proprietary files to anyone else and that the portion of proprietary code he took inadvertently was miniscule just 32 of about 1,224 megabytes of code and barely constituted the company’s entire platform. It was found that “Because Aleynikov did not assume physical control over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby ‘deprive [Goldman] of its use, Aleynikov did not violate the National Stolen Property Act”. The quotes that I will be using:

“Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide what is right and wrong, but conscience?...  Must citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be man first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right… If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go…” 

Civil Disobedience
By Henry David Thoreau 

https://books.google.com/books?id=9rTCN-IuLTAC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false

   “Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something’s getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.”  

Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160 Anarchy, State and Utopia By Robert Nozick 

https://joseywales1965.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/0001_anarchy_state_and_utopia.pdf

Nozick would argue that since Aleynikov worked on the software while he working there and that he wrote partial on the code that he is entitled to it. The content in question is part of the trading software that Aleynikov wrote the code for. Which he took before leaving the company to go work for a competitor which would have paid him three times the amount of money.

Thoreau argues that it is much more important for people to develop a respect for and understanding of what is right than to uncritically adhere to laws which may be unjust. The only thing that people are really obligated to do is what they think is right, not what the law says is right. He is basically assuming that people understand ethics, and can distinguish it from cultural norms and values. But in a way what he his saying he that it wrong that he was to follow a law that does not adhere to him because of ethics but it is morally wrong because he was the one that created it so he should be entitled to it because he did not break any law according the National Stolen Act. If they want to prosecute him they should do so for every person that created something and went to work the competitor of the company that they were working for.