Remember the story about the guy who’d allegedly “stolen” (more accurately, downloaded a copy of) the Goldman-Sachs automated trading algorithm software? Well, now a young banker formerly employed by Societe Generale is accused of a very similar crime.

There’ll probably be plenty more incidents like this as time goes by: copying code is a pretty easy thing to do (even if avoiding detection isn’t) and the temptation of an investment-bank-level income is surely enough to justify the attempt to someone with a big enough greed-on (which is presumably a given in the industry in question). If only some egalitarian copyleftist hacker type would pilfer those algos and post ’em to Wikileaks… the anger and frustration of investment bankers would be reward enough for me, had I the pertinent skills. Hell, I think I could probably even ride out the entire jail term with a shit-eating grin on my face.

Interesting side-note: stealing this sort of software is illegal, even though the software itself may be considered to provide an illegal advantage to its owners.