3 ms·
How is that fraud?
by burnished 3y ago
How is that fraud?
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoArtificially inflating sales numbers to get higher on bestseller lists seems like an intentional deception to secure unfair gain. How is that not fraud?
- tyingq 3y agoThere's no automatic connection from immoral to illegal. I can think of lots of intentional deception that secures unfair gain that is not illegal.
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoI was under the impression that fraud is fraud regardless of whether it is illegal or simply immoral. (Not a native speaker.) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fraud https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fraud > 1. (law) The crime of stealing or otherwise illegally obtaining money by use of deception tactics. > 2. Any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved or unlawful gain. > ...
- burnished 3y agoSure, I think the matter of contention here is whether buying your own book is deceptive (as a mandatory element of fraud). So if the body publishing those figures of sales hasn't reached an agreement with you that you'll refrain from that behavior then I don't see a way for it to be deceptive and so not fraudulent.
- sirspacey 3y agoThis definition is broad enough to apply to all of commerce.
- ssl-3 3y agoHe did buy those books, though -- correct? Were those not real sales of real books that were paid for with real money? There's no implication that he crossed out a number on a report before artificially enhancing it by increasing it by 400, is there? I feel that both of these examples are reprehensible in this context, but that only one of them rises to the level of fraud. (I mean: There are companies performing stock buybacks all the time for various reasons, and some of those reasons can include improving the market's perception of that stock's value.)