Leaks abound on the interwebs and they come from various sources. While some images or video may pique people’s interest, BlackBerry has suffered from leaks that go way beyond the occasional image, video or rumour. They repeatedly are a victim of leaked operating systems for users to install, leaked apps and more.
BlackBerry CEO, John Chen, has taken to the BlackBerry Blogs to make it clear that BlackBerry will start taking action when it comes to leaks – and it’s well overdue.
Here’s what John Chen had to say:
In my short time leading BlackBerry, I’ve been impressed by this company’s fighting spirit. It’s this resilience that is driving us to transform the company and bring the brand back to its iconic stature. And I know that you – our customers and partners – are all in the fight with us.
One of the most frustrating things for all of us at BlackBerry is when a critical and confidential project is reported in the media before we are ready to discuss it. Leaks are, at their best, distracting, and at their worst downright misleading to our stakeholders. The business implications of a leak are seldom advantageous.
This is why I want to make you aware that, right now, we are pursuing legal action against a party who stole confidential information about a future BlackBerry product and made that information public. This person falsely posed as an employee of one of our carrier partners to obtain access to secured networks.
I recognize that, in some cases, the leaks reflect people’s genuine interest in BlackBerry. There are a lot of people whose enthusiasm for our company and our products makes them want to know what we will do next  and that can be a tremendous asset for us as a brand.
But, when curiosity turns to criminality, we must take strong action.
We will always take appropriate actions to prevent leaks from happening and in some cases this means prosecuting individuals  internally or externally  who leak confidential information.
This may mean you see a few less blog posts with photos and rumors of the next BlackBerry smartphones. I know those can be fun for our fans, but rest assured that we’re committed to communicating our biggest updates to you early and often – when they are ready to be shared.
Damaging
Anybody who knows me will already know my opinion on these leaks. They are nothing more than self-serving and do a lot more harm than good. We have had instances of an old BBM beta being leaked which totally screwed up an important BlackBerry launch.
Operating systems are dissected and information from them proclaimed as facts. This leads to user expectations being built up and then crashed when the purported information turns out to be false. Of course, it’s then BlackBerry that take the blame for not producing what users believed was coming.
What really irks me is when these leaks are made available to download, effectively letting users install an unapproved OS that could cause problems with their phone, invalidate warranties and a whole lot more. Many readers have asked us why we have never published download details or helped distribute them. The answer is simple. The distribution of these leaks is illegal and piracy. The “leakers” do not have the legal right to publish them, distribute them or even possess them.
As a developer, I need the latest sdk’s and OS’s in order to support clients. I don’t need any leak to do this though as BlackBerry provide authorised Developer builds and simulators for their developers. While these aren’t full OS’s, they provide what we need to ensure our code is ready for the latest OS.
Official BlackBerry OS Releases
If BlackBerry do clamp down hard and bring an end to these unofficial releases, they really need to improve on their official releases. Many users have been using leaked builds simply because their carrier wouldn’t release the latest update. In countries like the US for example, users could be waiting on an OS update for several months.
In this situation, if they had access to OS updates, they wouldn’t require leaks.
It’s been a long time coming but hopefully BlackBerry will now clamp down hard on these practices and pull the plug on them completely, while sorting out official release distribution.[signoff predefined=”Enjoy this?” icon=”icon-users”][/signoff]
