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Stealing intellectual property and trade secrets isn't the same as stealing hard assets. Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal that stole real money from c
by nostromo 6y ago
Stealing intellectual property and trade secrets isn't the same as stealing hard assets.
Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal that stole real money from clients and is serving life in prison.
Google may have been damaged, but they can still use their software that was stolen.
- zerr 6y agoInteresting, can pure money be treated as virtual goods? and reversing that crime must be easy, no? Like banks reversing those transactions, or invalidating the stolen records and re-allocating funds to affected clients?
- jmpman 6y agoLet’s say an employee working for Bank A developed software there. Left Bank A to work for Bank B. Brought his software with him. Bank B has had to spend less money to develop that software and is more profitable had their employee not stolen the code. Bank A and Bank B are competitors. How much would this be considered theft?
- nostromo 6y agoA: I steal your house. You are now homeless. B: I steal the blueprints to your house. You still have a house, but you paid for an architect and I didn't. B still sucks, but almost everyone agrees A is much worse. And that's why if you steal $20m from a bank, the sentence is much worse than if you copy software that a bank spent $20m to develop.
- jmpman 6y agoThe architect may not agree with you. He was personally impacted. It’s a matter of upholding intellectual property. I suspect the rampant justification of music pirating from the early 2000s has caused people to have defective morality circuits.