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Am I the only one who thinks what he did was not only criminal but morally wrong, and that he deserved to go to prison for a long time? I realize that everybod

Am I the only one who thinks what he did was not only criminal but morally wrong, and that he deserved to go to prison for a long time? I realize that everybody likes to call themselves a "hacker" because they can program a computer, but this is an actual black-hat hacker. There are bad guys in the world and he's one of them. He wrote malware. He stole source code and gave it to the world. And this wasn't some evil corporation he was trying to bring to justice for its crimes. This was Valve. All they do is make cool games for the world. It's incredibly difficult work and they do a fantastic job. What kind of asshole do you have to be to shit all over them like this kid did?

icarus_drowning 16y ago
No, you aren't. And what I find galling about the article is how they go out of their way to use sympathetic language in describing him. Just one example: "Gembe's malware crimes, while undeniably exploitative and damaging, were crimes driven by a passion for games rather than profits." I understand that it is important to explore his motivations, but the way this is phrased (in particular what seems to be an attempt to contrast the boy's "passion" with Valves lust for "profits") is pretty terrible. I don't think his "pure" motivations matter at all-- what matters is that he chose to steal the property of Valve and make it available to others. Whether Gembe meant for it to end up on the internet doesn't matter when it ends up on the internet. I see a lot of comments on this that are sympathetic to the kid, and while I understand that feeling, I think a more sensible look at the situation demands that you feel sorry for him because he brought this upon himself, not because he was any kind of "victim". I'm glad to see that he was able to get on with his life, and I probably don't agree with what U.S. authorities would like to have sentenced him to had they gotten ahold of him. But that doesn't make him the persecuted hero that so many people seem to think he is. And that doesn't mean he shouldn't have done some jail time either.
- __david__ 16y ago
  > in particular what seems to be an attempt to contrast the boy's "passion" with Valves lust for "profits" Wow, did you read the same sentence I did? They weren't implying Valve had a lust for profits, they were indicating that Gembe wasn't motivated by profit. I think you're reading way too much into that particular sentence. > I see a lot of comments on this that are sympathetic to the kid, and while I understand that feeling, I think a more sensible look at the situation demands that you feel sorry for him because he brought this upon himself, not because he was any kind of "victim". I see the comments here differently--I don't think anyone thinks he's strictly innocent, I think people are sympathetic because he was looking down the barrel of the American Corporate Legal System™ and only narrowly escaped. I understand Valve's anger at having their stuff ripped off and published around the internet and if I were in their position I might have the same outlook. But, having the gift of 20/20 hindsight, we can see that it didn't actually affect them negatively in any tangible way. Half-life 2 was released and overwhelmingly successful and there are no game engines with stolen Valve code stealing licensing profits from them. So I am sympathetic to the fact that he escaped any jail time because in the end what he did didn't matter. 2 Years of probation seems perfectly appropriate.
  - icarus_drowning 16y ago
    >Wow, did you read the same sentence I did? They weren't implying Valve had a lust for profits, they were indicating that Gembe wasn't motivated by profit. Fair enough. I think its a fairly straightforward example. Reading it again, I still think its fairly obvious that the piece was designed to minimize the clearly stupid, clearly wrong actions of an individual, and in order to do so, they needed to paint Valve as the villain. But I appreciate that this is my own interpretation and certainly one could read it differently. (The example I cited should have been changed regardless, as I don't think its necessary to the story and to me still reads as an attempt to vilify Gembe's victim). > we can see that it didn't actually affect them negatively in any tangible way Red herring. This probably helped Valve's sales, but that doesn't mean that it necessarily would have, and has nothing to do with the morality/legality of the matter, and as such, it has very little impact on my view of Gembe's actions.
burgerbrain 16y ago
So let me get this straight, because this wasn't "some evil corporation", but rather a corporation who "make cool games", you think that some kid deserves a "long time" in fucking PRISON? Are you not familiar with the American justice system at all? I have a hard time wishing American prison on murders and rapists, people who do actual tangible harm to people.
- bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
  I was trying to draw a distinction between this and something like Wikileaks. There are acts which are illegal but might be done for the ultimate good of society. If Gembe hacked into a company's network in order to secure evidence of their involvement in some heinous thing like genocide, it would still be illegal, but he would have my sympathy. But Valve just makes games. It was a dick move.
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    I don't care if it was illegal, or if it was a dick move. Prison time is hugely out of line for this sort of offense and perpetrator.
barrkel 16y ago
I don't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong". You ask what kind of person could do X considering consequences Y for victim, but that presumes the person knows and understands Y, which in this case, they didn't. So no, they are not necessarily an asshole because of this. I also think it's deeply immature to divide the world into black and white, good and bad, and put curious kids on the bad side of the line with the rapists and murderers. The world isn't black and white. The perspective on the other side of the line can be quite different; and the people who really are bad are probably more in need of being locked up for medical reasons than some biblical, retributive, medieval eye for an eye logic of punishment
- barry-cotter 16y ago
  I don't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong". So you're totally okay with me beating your [underspecified relative] so badly they're in chronic pain for the rest of their lives then?
  - pyre 16y ago
    I think that you're mis-interpreting the statement. He's not stating that he doesn't believe in morality. He's stating that he doesn't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong." I.e. He's doesn't believe in the same ideas as the poster he was replying to.
drivingmenuts 16y ago
It was criminal and morally wrong. But the law allows for intent as well. From the article, it seems that his acts were committed as a result of maximal fanboyism rather than any real intent to do harm. So, in this case, it's about whether the sentencing is punishment or deterrent. Sentencing as deterrent is only useful a small part of the time (if it was more effective, then the death penalty would be an excellent deterrent - which it appears not to be). Sentencing as punishment really depends on the person being sentenced and in his case, he actually worked pretty hard to turn his life around. So, from the article, it appears he got what was coming to him, without having to waste his life in prison, where it does no one any good.
- bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
  Any toddler knows it's wrong to steal a candy bar. I'm pretty sure every teenager smart enough to do so knows it's wrong to hack into a company's network, download their corporate secrets and distribute them to the internet. Deterrance is absolutely the point of punishment. What he did was a white-collar crime. There's a perception in society that you can get away with certain extremely harmful things, like hacking or financial crime or environmental pollution, because it's hard to pin down intent and the results are hard to measure. * Mugging. Damage: $50. Punishment: 3 years in jail. * Hacking Valve. Damage: $250,000,000. Punishment: 2 years probation. * Oil spill. Damage: $10,000,000,000. Punishment: have to sit through Senate hearing. * Financial ponzi scheme. Damage: $18,000,000,000. Punishment: 150 years in jail. Yeah, it worked out with Bernie Madoff, actually. Still it doesn't seem proportionate to his crimes.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > There's a perception in society that you can get away with certain > extremely harmful things, like hacking or financial crime or > environmental pollution, because it's hard to pin down intent > and the results are hard to measure. I think that you're mis-directing anger here. 'Hacking' in some cases (in the US at least) carries harsher penalties than other more heinous crimes (regardless of the amount of damage done). Hackers usually face stiff minimum penalties (in the US). Had he been tried in the US he probably would have spend a decade or more in federal prison, and been destitute and/or a 'product of the system' by the time that he got out. This would have increased the chance that he would re-offend (and just not be stupid enough to get caught this time). > * Hacking Valve. Damage: $250,000,000. Punishment: 2 years probation. Do you really believe that Valve lost $250M? That number is probably equivalent to the amount of money that Valve had invested into the Half-Life 2 source code at that point in time or the amount of money that they expected to earn through that source code. In hind-sight, Valve didn't lose much. They were still able to monetize their source code, and were very successful at it. Do you really think that there are people out there that did not buy Half-Life 2 because they downloaded the source code to a broken pre-release version of it? Do you really think that there are any serious commercial game companies out there that are using the leaked source code in their code base rather than licensing the engine from Valve? The amount of 'damages' that Valve incurred due to this is/was speculative. Of course, once the initial estimate comes out, Valve isn't going to go back and state what the actual damages were, because then people would question why the initial estimate was so high. There are also perverse incentives to inflate those numbers: - Larger damages get more attention from the FBI. - Larger damages are more likely to see harsher action by the justice system (aka courts). - Larger damages garner more sympathy from the public. - Larger damages can make you look like a hero to investors when the reality turns out to not be so bleak. You can always spin yourself as the hero that saved the company from financial ruin. - Larger damages make the incident a likely scapegoat should the financial quarter be tough on the company (much like piracy is the scapegoat for the MPAA). E.g. "Yea we did poorly, but it wasn't our fault! It was all that darn hacker!" When in reality the leak had nothing to do with the losses. > Yeah, it worked out with Bernie Madoff, actually. Still it > doesn't seem proportionate to his crimes. What exactly should the punishment for Madoff be? 1000 years in prison? I somehow don't think that extra prison time would be much of a deterrent or a punishment. (Unless you're advocating torture, but in that case, you've really shown us your true colors.)
marshray 16y ago
I believe what he did was wrong, but probably not "go to prison for a long time" kind of wrong. At the end of the day, he didn't kill or hurt anybody, or destroy property, or probably even intend to do those things. Certainly he wasted a lot of expensive people's time and at a critical point in a software development project. You can bet they wanted to wring his little neck badly. By the time of the trial 8.6 million copies of Half-Life 2 had been sold, its success seemingly unaffected by the leak of 4th October 2003. But it's unclear how much money he really cost the company. This $250M figure is obviously not credible when they were spending $1M a month on development costs.
elwin 16y ago
It was indeed criminally and morally wrong. It does not follow that sending him to prison for a long time is the proper response, even if he acted like an annoying jerk to some "cool" people.
ugh 16y ago
He himself admits that what he did was criminally and morally wrong. I don’t know why he should go to prison for a long time for what he did, though. He was punished harshly (two years probation are no joke) and the judge made abundantly clear that the only reason for not punishing him harsher was his behavior after being caught. I have no desire to destroy other people’s lives just out of spite and I find this desire to be quite baffling. The only question I care about is whether the punishment is sufficient to prevent future similar crimes from him or other people. I have no doubt that allowing him to keep his stable job and leaving it at a strong slap on the wrist is pretty much the optimal thing to do in this case, in terms of deterrence. (I would think that hackers who lose everything and go to prison for a few years are more likely to become criminals than hackers who get two years of probation but get to keep their job.) The only quarrel I have is that it took apparently three years to bring this case to court. Swift trials matter a lot more than the harshness of the punishment when it comes to deterrence. (In this particular case it was probably for the best that it played out like this but as a German citizen I would like to see a faster judiciary in general.)
tptacek 16y ago
You are not the only one. At this point, most of the people who agree with your point of view have accepted the futility of making that point in a venue where the comment immediately preceding yours, modded 5 times higher, claims that the the guy who leaked Valve's source code is the victim and Valve the villain.
jessedhillon 16y ago
You seem to divide the world starkly into black and white. A fallacy that is common to people who think this way is the either-or, or False Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma) fallacy. Despite your first sentence, where you try to introduce some nuance to your argument, your other statements suggest that you don't have any room in your schema for people who commit damaging, non-violent crimes but express remorse for them. Essentially remorse is less important (if at all) to you than the fact that someone, somewhere was damaged in some way. Many people here have expressed the opinion that yes, this kid f-ed up real bad and damaged/destroyed Valve's reputation significantly. But no, there isn't a need to lock him up, because it wouldn't serve a purpose. If the purpose of the lockup is only to punish him (for punishment's sake), which you seem to be intent upon, then yeah it makes sense to give him 10-20 years despite a marked shift in his personality and outlook on life. To me, it seems like a horrible waste of money and of everyone's time to punish him so severely given that he's already had a change of heart, has the beginning of a successful career doing legitimate work, and he didn't commit any violence. Also, we have the benefit of hindsight here: Valve went on to be an even bigger success after this, as HL2 + Steam is practically a money printing machine for them.
danssig 16y ago
>go to prison for a long time? Go to prison? Prison should be reserved for violent offenders. IMO, putting non-violent offenders in a pen with violent offenders is very clearly "cruel and unusual punishment".

icarus_drowning 16y ago

No, you aren't. And what I find galling about the article is how they go out of their way to use sympathetic language in describing him. Just one example: "Gembe's malware crimes, while undeniably exploitative and damaging, were crimes driven by a passion for games rather than profits." I understand that it is important to explore his motivations, but the way this is phrased (in particular what seems to be an attempt to contrast the boy's "passion" with Valves lust for "profits") is pretty terrible. I don't think his "pure" motivations matter at all-- what matters is that he chose to steal the property of Valve and make it available to others. Whether Gembe meant for it to end up on the internet doesn't matter when it ends up on the internet. I see a lot of comments on this that are sympathetic to the kid, and while I understand that feeling, I think a more sensible look at the situation demands that you feel sorry for him because he brought this upon himself, not because he was any kind of "victim". I'm glad to see that he was able to get on with his life, and I probably don't agree with what U.S. authorities would like to have sentenced him to had they gotten ahold of him. But that doesn't make him the persecuted hero that so many people seem to think he is. And that doesn't mean he shouldn't have done some jail time either.

__david__ 16y ago
> in particular what seems to be an attempt to contrast the boy's "passion" with Valves lust for "profits" Wow, did you read the same sentence I did? They weren't implying Valve had a lust for profits, they were indicating that Gembe wasn't motivated by profit. I think you're reading way too much into that particular sentence. > I see a lot of comments on this that are sympathetic to the kid, and while I understand that feeling, I think a more sensible look at the situation demands that you feel sorry for him because he brought this upon himself, not because he was any kind of "victim". I see the comments here differently--I don't think anyone thinks he's strictly innocent, I think people are sympathetic because he was looking down the barrel of the American Corporate Legal System™ and only narrowly escaped. I understand Valve's anger at having their stuff ripped off and published around the internet and if I were in their position I might have the same outlook. But, having the gift of 20/20 hindsight, we can see that it didn't actually affect them negatively in any tangible way. Half-life 2 was released and overwhelmingly successful and there are no game engines with stolen Valve code stealing licensing profits from them. So I am sympathetic to the fact that he escaped any jail time because in the end what he did didn't matter. 2 Years of probation seems perfectly appropriate.
- icarus_drowning 16y ago
  >Wow, did you read the same sentence I did? They weren't implying Valve had a lust for profits, they were indicating that Gembe wasn't motivated by profit. Fair enough. I think its a fairly straightforward example. Reading it again, I still think its fairly obvious that the piece was designed to minimize the clearly stupid, clearly wrong actions of an individual, and in order to do so, they needed to paint Valve as the villain. But I appreciate that this is my own interpretation and certainly one could read it differently. (The example I cited should have been changed regardless, as I don't think its necessary to the story and to me still reads as an attempt to vilify Gembe's victim). > we can see that it didn't actually affect them negatively in any tangible way Red herring. This probably helped Valve's sales, but that doesn't mean that it necessarily would have, and has nothing to do with the morality/legality of the matter, and as such, it has very little impact on my view of Gembe's actions.

burgerbrain 16y ago

So let me get this straight, because this wasn't "some evil corporation", but rather a corporation who "make cool games", you think that some kid deserves a "long time" in fucking PRISON? Are you not familiar with the American justice system at all? I have a hard time wishing American prison on murders and rapists, people who do actual tangible harm to people.

bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
I was trying to draw a distinction between this and something like Wikileaks. There are acts which are illegal but might be done for the ultimate good of society. If Gembe hacked into a company's network in order to secure evidence of their involvement in some heinous thing like genocide, it would still be illegal, but he would have my sympathy. But Valve just makes games. It was a dick move.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  I don't care if it was illegal, or if it was a dick move. Prison time is hugely out of line for this sort of offense and perpetrator.

barrkel 16y ago

I don't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong". You ask what kind of person could do X considering consequences Y for victim, but that presumes the person knows and understands Y, which in this case, they didn't. So no, they are not necessarily an asshole because of this. I also think it's deeply immature to divide the world into black and white, good and bad, and put curious kids on the bad side of the line with the rapists and murderers. The world isn't black and white. The perspective on the other side of the line can be quite different; and the people who really are bad are probably more in need of being locked up for medical reasons than some biblical, retributive, medieval eye for an eye logic of punishment

barry-cotter 16y ago
I don't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong". So you're totally okay with me beating your [underspecified relative] so badly they're in chronic pain for the rest of their lives then?
- pyre 16y ago
  I think that you're mis-interpreting the statement. He's not stating that he doesn't believe in morality. He's stating that he doesn't fully buy this concept of "morally wrong." I.e. He's doesn't believe in the same ideas as the poster he was replying to.

drivingmenuts 16y ago

It was criminal and morally wrong. But the law allows for intent as well. From the article, it seems that his acts were committed as a result of maximal fanboyism rather than any real intent to do harm. So, in this case, it's about whether the sentencing is punishment or deterrent. Sentencing as deterrent is only useful a small part of the time (if it was more effective, then the death penalty would be an excellent deterrent - which it appears not to be). Sentencing as punishment really depends on the person being sentenced and in his case, he actually worked pretty hard to turn his life around. So, from the article, it appears he got what was coming to him, without having to waste his life in prison, where it does no one any good.

bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
Any toddler knows it's wrong to steal a candy bar. I'm pretty sure every teenager smart enough to do so knows it's wrong to hack into a company's network, download their corporate secrets and distribute them to the internet. Deterrance is absolutely the point of punishment. What he did was a white-collar crime. There's a perception in society that you can get away with certain extremely harmful things, like hacking or financial crime or environmental pollution, because it's hard to pin down intent and the results are hard to measure. * Mugging. Damage: $50. Punishment: 3 years in jail. * Hacking Valve. Damage: $250,000,000. Punishment: 2 years probation. * Oil spill. Damage: $10,000,000,000. Punishment: have to sit through Senate hearing. * Financial ponzi scheme. Damage: $18,000,000,000. Punishment: 150 years in jail. Yeah, it worked out with Bernie Madoff, actually. Still it doesn't seem proportionate to his crimes.
- pyre 16y ago
  > There's a perception in society that you can get away with certain > extremely harmful things, like hacking or financial crime or > environmental pollution, because it's hard to pin down intent > and the results are hard to measure. I think that you're mis-directing anger here. 'Hacking' in some cases (in the US at least) carries harsher penalties than other more heinous crimes (regardless of the amount of damage done). Hackers usually face stiff minimum penalties (in the US). Had he been tried in the US he probably would have spend a decade or more in federal prison, and been destitute and/or a 'product of the system' by the time that he got out. This would have increased the chance that he would re-offend (and just not be stupid enough to get caught this time). > * Hacking Valve. Damage: $250,000,000. Punishment: 2 years probation. Do you really believe that Valve lost $250M? That number is probably equivalent to the amount of money that Valve had invested into the Half-Life 2 source code at that point in time or the amount of money that they expected to earn through that source code. In hind-sight, Valve didn't lose much. They were still able to monetize their source code, and were very successful at it. Do you really think that there are people out there that did not buy Half-Life 2 because they downloaded the source code to a broken pre-release version of it? Do you really think that there are any serious commercial game companies out there that are using the leaked source code in their code base rather than licensing the engine from Valve? The amount of 'damages' that Valve incurred due to this is/was speculative. Of course, once the initial estimate comes out, Valve isn't going to go back and state what the actual damages were, because then people would question why the initial estimate was so high. There are also perverse incentives to inflate those numbers: - Larger damages get more attention from the FBI. - Larger damages are more likely to see harsher action by the justice system (aka courts). - Larger damages garner more sympathy from the public. - Larger damages can make you look like a hero to investors when the reality turns out to not be so bleak. You can always spin yourself as the hero that saved the company from financial ruin. - Larger damages make the incident a likely scapegoat should the financial quarter be tough on the company (much like piracy is the scapegoat for the MPAA). E.g. "Yea we did poorly, but it wasn't our fault! It was all that darn hacker!" When in reality the leak had nothing to do with the losses. > Yeah, it worked out with Bernie Madoff, actually. Still it > doesn't seem proportionate to his crimes. What exactly should the punishment for Madoff be? 1000 years in prison? I somehow don't think that extra prison time would be much of a deterrent or a punishment. (Unless you're advocating torture, but in that case, you've really shown us your true colors.)

marshray 16y ago

I believe what he did was wrong, but probably not "go to prison for a long time" kind of wrong. At the end of the day, he didn't kill or hurt anybody, or destroy property, or probably even intend to do those things. Certainly he wasted a lot of expensive people's time and at a critical point in a software development project. You can bet they wanted to wring his little neck badly. By the time of the trial 8.6 million copies of Half-Life 2 had been sold, its success seemingly unaffected by the leak of 4th October 2003. But it's unclear how much money he really cost the company. This $250M figure is obviously not credible when they were spending $1M a month on development costs.

elwin 16y ago

It was indeed criminally and morally wrong. It does not follow that sending him to prison for a long time is the proper response, even if he acted like an annoying jerk to some "cool" people.

ugh 16y ago

He himself admits that what he did was criminally and morally wrong. I don’t know why he should go to prison for a long time for what he did, though. He was punished harshly (two years probation are no joke) and the judge made abundantly clear that the only reason for not punishing him harsher was his behavior after being caught. I have no desire to destroy other people’s lives just out of spite and I find this desire to be quite baffling. The only question I care about is whether the punishment is sufficient to prevent future similar crimes from him or other people. I have no doubt that allowing him to keep his stable job and leaving it at a strong slap on the wrist is pretty much the optimal thing to do in this case, in terms of deterrence. (I would think that hackers who lose everything and go to prison for a few years are more likely to become criminals than hackers who get two years of probation but get to keep their job.) The only quarrel I have is that it took apparently three years to bring this case to court. Swift trials matter a lot more than the harshness of the punishment when it comes to deterrence. (In this particular case it was probably for the best that it played out like this but as a German citizen I would like to see a faster judiciary in general.)

tptacek 16y ago

You are not the only one. At this point, most of the people who agree with your point of view have accepted the futility of making that point in a venue where the comment immediately preceding yours, modded 5 times higher, claims that the the guy who leaked Valve's source code is the victim and Valve the villain.

jessedhillon 16y ago

You seem to divide the world starkly into black and white. A fallacy that is common to people who think this way is the either-or, or False Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma) fallacy. Despite your first sentence, where you try to introduce some nuance to your argument, your other statements suggest that you don't have any room in your schema for people who commit damaging, non-violent crimes but express remorse for them. Essentially remorse is less important (if at all) to you than the fact that someone, somewhere was damaged in some way. Many people here have expressed the opinion that yes, this kid f-ed up real bad and damaged/destroyed Valve's reputation significantly. But no, there isn't a need to lock him up, because it wouldn't serve a purpose. If the purpose of the lockup is only to punish him (for punishment's sake), which you seem to be intent upon, then yeah it makes sense to give him 10-20 years despite a marked shift in his personality and outlook on life. To me, it seems like a horrible waste of money and of everyone's time to punish him so severely given that he's already had a change of heart, has the beginning of a successful career doing legitimate work, and he didn't commit any violence. Also, we have the benefit of hindsight here: Valve went on to be an even bigger success after this, as HL2 + Steam is practically a money printing machine for them.

danssig 16y ago

>go to prison for a long time? Go to prison? Prison should be reserved for violent offenders. IMO, putting non-violent offenders in a pen with violent offenders is very clearly "cruel and unusual punishment".