> If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, then the

> If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, then they have some pretty strange value judgments. We can get really philosophical about this if you want. Is it worse to kill 1 person or dismember 100? Is it worse to bankrupt one person or steal $1 from a million? If the perpetrator is a single entity, then courts have precedents to punish appropriately. But what if it is a systemic theft where a million people are involved in making hundred million others suffer slightly? Is that somehow "less wrong" than 5 people killing 25? What if one of the hundred million suffering slightly, missing school work, or work assignments because of bandwidth theft, and loses grade or job and consequently, a chance at productive life? Every time my home internet goes down, I lose a chance at being productive, meeting my deadlines, and making money. We have started placing a lot more importance over the last few decades on violent crimes committed against a few over white collar crimes that marginally impact millions. Violent crimes against a few will never stop as long as humans continue to be humans. However, by excusing the white collar crimes that steal pennies from everyone, we are slowly chipping away at our standard of living. Banks charge fees incorrectly and get away with it. Cellphone companies do the same. Insurance companies do the same. Since nobody in a large company can be held guilty for distributed crimes, every large company engages in them without consequences. An EDI error at my wife's health insurance company caused a refusal in her invoice. The doctor's office said "Sorry, the insurance company said they won't cover it." Only after I read through the fine print and contacted all parties involved, did we find out that it was an automated electronic processing error instead of an outright denial by a human or algorithm. Nobody got blamed for this. There is nothing I can do about this to prevent future instances. And I am 100% certain, there are many many many others who have just paid the $200 without putting up a fight. And then someone of them stop getting the treatment because $200 is too much, and then suffer despite having insurance. You might still put outright murder in a different league than bandwidth theft, but my point is that scale matters and we continue to ignore it because we solely look at individual instances and go "Pfft! It's only bad 10% of the time for 5% of the base so who cares?", ignoring that the base is 100 million people.