5 ms·

So these guys now are at risk of going to prison in order to create an advertisement for McDonalds and lots of buzz around Burger King. Somehow I don't think th

by gfodor 14y ago

So these guys now are at risk of going to prison in order to create an advertisement for McDonalds and lots of buzz around Burger King. Somehow I don't think they thought this one through.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- jlgreco 14y ago
  If they are in America, they are certainly at risk of going to prison, and international boarders have provided less safety in recent years than one may hope.
tatsuke95 14y ago
The fact that we can talk casually about people going to prison for what is essentially cyber-vandalism is so ridiculous I don't know what to think. These are weird times.
- GauntletWizard 14y ago
  Punishment should be proportional to the crime. When you do graffiti on the side of a Burger King, it's a few hundred dollars and two man-days to clean it off. In proportion, the fine should be 2-3x that cost, and maybe 2-3 days in county jail for the offenders. With the economy of internet scale, that ramps up fairly quickly. How many people saw that vandalism? With your local McDonalds, it's probably a few hundred, a thousand on the outside. How many people follow @BurgerKing? It's probably more on the order of millions. Even using a logarithmic scale, there's an arguement to be made for months in prison. The cost of the offsetting advertising campaign? Who knows; They say "There's no such thing as bad publicity", but certainly some money is going to be spent cleaning up this mess; Probably again 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the cleanup of the local franchise.
  - ihsw 14y ago
    The problem with applying that logic to internet-related crimes is that it's impossible to measure the number of people affected. Your hypothetical '2-3 orders of magnitude' is spurious reasoning as well, the effect this unfortunate event had on the brand is also impossible to measure. I'm not denying that the punishment should be proportional to the crime but by what proportion should we calculate against? The total number of followers that @burkerking has? That number multiplied by the number of fraudulent tweets? Nobody should go to jail for 'tarnishing' some marketing material.
  - amirmc 14y ago
    > "How many people follow @BurgerKing? It's probably more on the order of millions." It's more like 85k, as the screenshot in the OP shows [1]. > "Punishment should be proportional to the crime." I guess that depends on what the 'crime' here actually is (not saying it was acceptable, just that we should be specific on what the wrongdoing was before getting into sentencing - so to speak). Edit: And isn't security a more important question than punishment? How did this account get hacked? I'd much rather the focus be on creating more secure systems. [1] http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screen-shot-2013-02-18-at-12-39-51-pm.png?w=600 http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screen-s...
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Should highly visible graffiti (say, on a freeway overpass) deserve harsher punishment than graffiti down a poorly lit rarely trodden ally or in an unlit subway tunnel?
    - gfodor 14y ago
      An interesting point and I'd have to say yes if you consider the punishment to be based upon potential damages.
      - stfu 14y ago
        Are you enhancing this visibility economics to other "ideas" as well? e.g. that the punishment for the killing some public figure should be higher than the one for some homeless guy?
- gfodor 14y ago
  The prison-worthy crime is not the vandalism but the illegal access to Burger King's accounts and website. It's not illegal for you to deface Burger King's wikipedia page, after all.

by gfodor 14y ago

So these guys now are at risk of going to prison in order to create an advertisement for McDonalds and lots of buzz around Burger King. Somehow I don't think they thought this one through.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jlgreco 14y ago
If they are in America, they are certainly at risk of going to prison, and international boarders have provided less safety in recent years than one may hope.

tatsuke95 14y ago

The fact that we can talk casually about people going to prison for what is essentially cyber-vandalism is so ridiculous I don't know what to think. These are weird times.

GauntletWizard 14y ago
Punishment should be proportional to the crime. When you do graffiti on the side of a Burger King, it's a few hundred dollars and two man-days to clean it off. In proportion, the fine should be 2-3x that cost, and maybe 2-3 days in county jail for the offenders. With the economy of internet scale, that ramps up fairly quickly. How many people saw that vandalism? With your local McDonalds, it's probably a few hundred, a thousand on the outside. How many people follow @BurgerKing? It's probably more on the order of millions. Even using a logarithmic scale, there's an arguement to be made for months in prison. The cost of the offsetting advertising campaign? Who knows; They say "There's no such thing as bad publicity", but certainly some money is going to be spent cleaning up this mess; Probably again 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the cleanup of the local franchise.
- ihsw 14y ago
  The problem with applying that logic to internet-related crimes is that it's impossible to measure the number of people affected. Your hypothetical '2-3 orders of magnitude' is spurious reasoning as well, the effect this unfortunate event had on the brand is also impossible to measure. I'm not denying that the punishment should be proportional to the crime but by what proportion should we calculate against? The total number of followers that @burkerking has? That number multiplied by the number of fraudulent tweets? Nobody should go to jail for 'tarnishing' some marketing material.
- amirmc 14y ago
  > "How many people follow @BurgerKing? It's probably more on the order of millions." It's more like 85k, as the screenshot in the OP shows [1]. > "Punishment should be proportional to the crime." I guess that depends on what the 'crime' here actually is (not saying it was acceptable, just that we should be specific on what the wrongdoing was before getting into sentencing - so to speak). Edit: And isn't security a more important question than punishment? How did this account get hacked? I'd much rather the focus be on creating more secure systems. [1] http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screen-shot-2013-02-18-at-12-39-51-pm.png?w=600 http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screen-s...
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Should highly visible graffiti (say, on a freeway overpass) deserve harsher punishment than graffiti down a poorly lit rarely trodden ally or in an unlit subway tunnel?
  - gfodor 14y ago
    An interesting point and I'd have to say yes if you consider the punishment to be based upon potential damages.
    - stfu 14y ago
      Are you enhancing this visibility economics to other "ideas" as well? e.g. that the punishment for the killing some public figure should be higher than the one for some homeless guy?
gfodor 14y ago
The prison-worthy crime is not the vandalism but the illegal access to Burger King's accounts and website. It's not illegal for you to deface Burger King's wikipedia page, after all.