'Starfield' Fan Banned From Subreddit For Narcing On Leaker To Cops (kotaku.com) 127
Kotaku reports that last week 29-year old Darin Harris "allegedly stole dozens of copies of the game from a warehouse and started selling them online," prompting lots of pre-release leaks for the game.
"One Reddit user immediately reported the leaks to Bethesda and Memphis police," adds Kotaku. "And he's now been banned from the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit after posting about it." I know this because the commenter in question, Jasper Adkins, emailed Kotaku to inform us it had happened. "It seems to me that the subreddit is running on 'bread and circuses' mode mixed with bystander syndrome," he wrote in his initial email. "They're perfectly willing to ignore a crime that hurts a developer they claim to support, in exchange for a few minutes of shaky gameplay filmed from a phone...."
Despite the criminal charges against him, Harris has become something of a folk hero within the community of fans hungry for Starfield leaks. As the Commercial Appeal reported, memes hail him as "Lord Tyrone" (his middle name) and one player even vowed to name their Starfield ship "Memphian" in his honor...
[Adkins] was banned from r/GamingLeaksAndRumours on August 24 shortly after posting about how he tried to help get Harris arrested. "An officer at the station told me so himself when I called him about it," he wrote in the middle of a long comment thread. Adkins soon received a notification that he had violated the subreddit's rules. He protested, but the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours admins weren't having it. "Just not interested in having someone here who takes action against the community like that," they wrote back.
I reached out to one of the subreddit's admins to confirm what had happened and the thinking behind the ban. "If he just did it I wouldn't think badly of him but to come on the sub and brag about calling the cops on the dude just rubbed me the wrong way," one of them told Kotaku in a DM. "Might unban him at some point but for now he's behind the bars of the internet."
"One Reddit user immediately reported the leaks to Bethesda and Memphis police," adds Kotaku. "And he's now been banned from the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit after posting about it." I know this because the commenter in question, Jasper Adkins, emailed Kotaku to inform us it had happened. "It seems to me that the subreddit is running on 'bread and circuses' mode mixed with bystander syndrome," he wrote in his initial email. "They're perfectly willing to ignore a crime that hurts a developer they claim to support, in exchange for a few minutes of shaky gameplay filmed from a phone...."
Despite the criminal charges against him, Harris has become something of a folk hero within the community of fans hungry for Starfield leaks. As the Commercial Appeal reported, memes hail him as "Lord Tyrone" (his middle name) and one player even vowed to name their Starfield ship "Memphian" in his honor...
[Adkins] was banned from r/GamingLeaksAndRumours on August 24 shortly after posting about how he tried to help get Harris arrested. "An officer at the station told me so himself when I called him about it," he wrote in the middle of a long comment thread. Adkins soon received a notification that he had violated the subreddit's rules. He protested, but the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours admins weren't having it. "Just not interested in having someone here who takes action against the community like that," they wrote back.
I reached out to one of the subreddit's admins to confirm what had happened and the thinking behind the ban. "If he just did it I wouldn't think badly of him but to come on the sub and brag about calling the cops on the dude just rubbed me the wrong way," one of them told Kotaku in a DM. "Might unban him at some point but for now he's behind the bars of the internet."
I mean.... what is there to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I mean.... what is there to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there's anything shitty about them in this case. GamingLeaks exist to do what it says on the tin, someone in the community was against this objective and got banned. Boohoo. Their sub, their rules.
It's a community of shitty people, the moderator is there to uphold the values of the community and his actions make him a good moderator ... of a shitty community.
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The reporting of leaked information is generally, in the United States, protected under the 1st Amendment for the person who reports on it. Theft of proprietary information, whether or not the with intention of giving it to a reporter, is generally not protected and can result in civil suits, civil prosecution, and/or criminal prosecution of the person who takes it. Theft of physical property, such as CDs or game cartridges, is a crime in any jurisdiction regardless of whether or not the taker has good
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The First Amendment only restricts governmental action. There is no obligation for private companies to honor your rights under the First Amendment.
Re: I mean.... what is there to say? (Score:3)
Banning him can be interpreted as witness intimidation and is illegal.
Both for banning him, and for discouraging others from reporting crimes.
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I'm no lawyer but there are plenty of cases in the record of private entities attempting to sue reporters for publishing information leaked to a reporter, and unless there are serious aggravating circumstances the courts generally reject such lawsuits. Although under the corrupt Roberts/Federalist Society court who knows what the future will bring.
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And in those cases, the private entities are seeking legal remedies enforced by the government.
There's nothing saying that those same private entities can't sanction a reporter in other ways, (refusing the do business with them, refusing to comment for future news stories, etc.)
You're comparing oranges to Sherman tanks. Do I think this reddit community is shitty, and this particular mod is shitty for his actions? Yes. But they didn't do anything wrong here.
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"But they didn't do anything wrong here."
Incorrect - Aiding and Abetting a crime is ultimately what happened here.
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Laws are not relevant to this discussion, no law enforcement or government agencies are involved.
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This wasn't just leaks, it was theft as well.
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This wasn't just leaks, it was theft as well.
Naw. He was just sharing his 29 copies with a few million of his friends. There's more where they came from.
Besides, it's not as if his friends would have bought the game. They can't afford it, so this is their only option.
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Irrelevant. Not the groups job to police, not the groups moral code to rat people out to police.
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I don't think there's anything shitty about them in this case. GamingLeaks exist to do what it says on the tin, someone in the community was against this objective and got banned. Boohoo. Their sub, their rules.
It's a community of shitty people, the moderator is there to uphold the values of the community and his actions make him a good moderator ... of a shitty community.
"Their rules" then, are crap. He wasn't ratting out leakers or reporting leaks. He was ratting on physical theft of product. "Leaks" are typically insiders/reviewers violating their NDA and releasing video they shouldn't or someone screwing up and not following decent opsec with their freakinin' iCloud account or somesuch. No one's particularly harmed (other than their veil of secrecy) by those leaks. It doesn't generally deprive the publisher of sales. All in all it's fairly genteel.
...but in this cas
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Agreed, I said it was a shitty sub. And it is.
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This is Reddit...I mean - are we honestly surprised? Mods were replaced by /u/spez bots and fanatics. So, of course they would do radical right wing things like ban people that are legitimately trying to make this world a better place.
Re:I mean.... what is there to say? (Score:4, Interesting)
That was my experience with one sub. A guy was proposing actively helping spammers with Joe jobs [wikipedia.org]. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know how that works, posted a link to an explanation, told him he shouldn't help spammers with a technique that is often used in a criminal fashion, and the mods gave me a 90 day ban, with the full knowledge that the guy they were protecting was - literally - advocating abetting criminals. Commenters in general were so full of their revenge fantasies they thought abetting crimes was a great idea.
When I told them (the mods, that is) to fuck off, they ended up having to ban me from private communications to stop themselves from continuing to harass me.
Reddit's not a shithole in the same way that, say, Facebook is, but it smells just as bad.
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Simping for Microsoft makes the world a better place?
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What a shithole (Score:1)
Taking part in a crime (Score:2)
It seems that the moderators at reddit want to part of the people arrested. Because that is what happens when people allow crimes to happen. Reddit is dead anyway, as are all other social media companies. Turns out, social media was not a good idea when bad people are not banned from those platforms they grow to be massive and uncontrollable.
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Reddit is dead anyway,
wait ... again??
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Social media is dying. This year (2023) and last year (2022) where the years the slide downward started. The main reason why social media is dying is money or lack of it. Only company that is making profit is Meta and that has started to decline. They seem to have lost 1 billion USD between 2021 and 2022 in profits. Smaller companies are not doing much better it seems.
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yeah, that's nearly a full 1%. also twitter is seeing a dip, for obvious reasons, but every other social media platform i check seems to be growing in mass and revenue. anyhow, that's surely is misleading and social media is dying because you read some groundbreaking analysis on .... let me guess ... the verge? :o)
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I don't read much of the Verge. But the current internet bubble has been running on free money. That is not a surprise that many social media are now starting to offer paid service with extra features. This is slowly happening all over. The reason is that the period of 0% interest rate money is over, that time period started after the economic crash of 2008 and that started this social media internet that we have today. Social media had existed before 2008, but cheap money allowed them to grow as was the ca
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Is tiktok growing? Isn't that social media?
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Is it social media?
As much as anything else on the internet is.
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Which is to say it's not. Reddit has more in common with Slashdot than Facebook or Twitter. Slashdot could exist, (oh, and look, it does [reddit.com],) as a Reddit sub.
There's something very different between a message board, (or collection thereof, which is basically what Reddit is,) and "social media." The former are, generally, a good thing. The latter are the scourge of the internet.
It's wrong... but who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're wrong, but he has no right to do anything about it. I suggest moving on to a place that's less shitty.
If you persist in using social media, get used to the idea that it is not open and free, that it's usually controlled by assholes, and that the more popular the site gets the worse it gets.
Reddit, the flour-bag of the internet (Score:2)
Even devoid of any relevant content, just give it a kick and it will still produce a cloud for your enjoyment.
The mods should be banned from reddit (Score:2)
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Their duties are to moderate a forum ... dedicated to the leaking of video games!
This wasn't /r/video_games or /r/support_video_game_companies or anything ... it was r/GamingLeaksAndRumours
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The thing is, though, I've seen subreddits being shut down by Reddit for less siding with illegal activities...
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Well, Reddit is certainly inconsistent in how they discipline both their regular users and their moderators; I won't dispute that.
But my point remains: faulting the mods of a leak subreddit (for banning a leak thwarter) is like faulting the /r/diet moderators when they kick someone out for posting cupcake pictures.
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That depends entirely on the cupcakes, there are diet cupcakes indeed, that take the craving off while not contributing meaningfully to a calorie intake. But I digress.
I can see that the sub's theme is to promote leaking, but we're talking about something that is almost certainly at least borderline illegal, if not outright illegal. Of course, if I run a subreddit that deals with telling people how to break into their neighbor's home and someone rats a burglar out, he's not welcome here, but the subreddit i
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The sub itself isn't encouraging you, it's simply showing you how you might go about it. The same knowledge could help you better secure your home or business.
Do you blame security researchers for finding bugs and telling people about it?
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I am a security researcher. There is a thing called "responsible disclosure". That means you don't blurt out a 0day but instead you give the creator of that piece of software considerable time to fix it before releasing the information.
Blurting out 0days is frowned upon in the industry, to the point where it may destroy your career chances if you do it.
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Or shut down the entire sub, since the membership is probably overwhelmingly on their side.
Reddit mods being powerhungry isn't news. (Score:3)
It's much less "News for nerds", it's crappy mental illness disguised as Internet drama that ultimately doesn't matter to anyone but those involved.
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Well it wouldnt be Slashdot if there wasnt someone whining about a post not belonging on the site.
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If you think this all the story has to offer then you don't understand news for nerds. Scroll on and stop polluting Slashdot with your gatekeeping sorry opinion.
Protecting Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suggest such sanctimonious people who are appalled by game leaks should stay way from communities that promote this kind of content and certainly not be surprised when they are expelled by the community for engaging law enforcement against them.
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I would suggest such sanctimonious people who are appalled by game leaks should stay way from communities that promote this kind of content and certainly not be surprised when they are expelled by the community for engaging law enforcement against them.
I would suggest that Reddit should delete any sub that has, as its very premise, aiding and abetting crimes.
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The problem with that being that, much like with 'leaked' sex tapes... it's very often viral marketing to make the product seem more desirable than it would otherwise.
Until there's an officially filed legal complaint, it's probably just marketing. You and I have no way to know before the fact.
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Not all leaks are crimes. You can't fathom that?
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And if the leak is a crime? And if you’ve fostered a community that encourages such crimes?
The fact that there are non-criminal leaks does not excuse those that are, such as the one at the crux of this matter.
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Some people are pants-shittingly terrified of the idea that actions have consequences. Makes you wonder what they're so afraid of.
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He can't fathom that anybody, anywhere, isn't inclined to commit crimes on a regular basis.
In all likelihood, it's because he's never met someone who hasn't, including himself.
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We see in others what we see in ourselves.
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Takes one to know one. ;) Given your anonymous faggotry, and my own inherent homosexuality, I hereby declare you to be gay as fuck.
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I would suggest there is a large difference between breaking an NDA and stealing copies of a prerelease game. Namely that one is outright theft. There is at least some level of plausible deniability on whether someone is breaking an NDA or not, that goes away when you know someone stole copies of a game and distributed them. Plus one is a civil issue (at most) and the other is a criminal issue. Sorry, if you are protecting people stealing copies of a game, you are the bad guy.
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The name of the subreddit is GamingLeaksAndRumours. Every leak is the result of someone breaking a NDA or quite possibly the law. Certainly the mods of the subreddit desire to protect their sources of this information.
The dude literally (allegedly) broke into a warehouse, stole 67 copies of the game, then started selling them online.
There's quite a big difference between that and breaking an NDA.
I would suggest such sanctimonious people who are appalled by game leaks should stay way from communities that promote this kind of content and certainly not be surprised when they are expelled by the community for engaging law enforcement against them.
Yeah, so sanctimonious, ratting on someone who robbed a warehouse and then sold the stolen goods.
I would suggest the community needs to realize that not all crimes are created equal. Playing dumb with wrt the sources for game leaks? You can probably get away with that. Punishing folks for reporting the theft of physical goods? Yo
The name of the Subreddit is pretty clear (Score:2)
Given that the name of the Subreddit pretty much defines it as a place for the sort of behaviour Jasper Adkins ratted out, I can't see why he'd be surprised by the ban...especially when he decided to do his little church lady victory dance after the fact. Snitches get glitches? Rats lose habitats?
bruh (Score:3)
>They're perfectly willing to ignore a crime that hurts a developer they claim to support
Fucking white knight, simp, whatever you call it these days.
Bethesda isn't injured by 30 free copies leaking unless the game is shit.
Narc and snitch journalism (Score:2)
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Over a fucking game?
You're more insane than the copyright loonies.
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Well, the guy who was reported on, who may or may not be non-violent, will likely lose his freedom for a period of time and also get a record which will make companies hesitant to hire him.
I'm not saying theft is OK, but the justice system makes things worse for everyone.
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Look I agree that the justice system isn't perfect but a guy who (it is alleged) not only steals copies of a game from a warehouse, the game is not yet released, sells said copies of the game online, posts about it on a public forum and films himself going to Fedex to ship the alleged stolen copies of the game. [frinkiac.com] At what point do we say "you probably knew this was wrong as step in this process".
Harris says the copies were purchased legally, if he has receipts to that then this is pretty open and shut in his
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you want them to ignore it?
You need reading comprehension help, badly.
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But people legitimately reporting crime (ie, you know, not swatting or the like) should never be in the wrong. If the system is shitty, it's not the fault of the person reporting the crime.
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Depends on the crime and laws in question. Would you give a favorable assessment of a person who reported a black person drinking from the wrong water fountain in the 1950's American South or would you think they were shitty people supporting shitty laws?
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It's not the fault of the justice system that this guy made a deliberate, conscious choice to commit a felony (or, really, multiple felonies), and do so in such a stupid way that people on the internet who had never met him reported him to the cops.
Choices have consequences, and bad choices have bad consequences. This guy's clearly so stupid that nothing short of fucking up his entire life will teach him to not commit felonies. That probably won't, either, but nothing else will. So yeah, he deserves to have
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The justice system is absolutely a valid target for criticism. It is the one with the power to choose how to respond to other people's choices... and it can not be simply written off with 'they knew the consequences' since study after study has found that the applicat
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The justice system is absolutely a valid target for criticism.
But not responsible for this guy's problems. He made the choice to commit a felony, knowing what the consequences are.
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Say you and a few friends are hanging out and your friend decides to do something stupid and illegal. You turn in your friend and he goes to jail. You then proceed to brag about this to your other friends in the circle. They decide, we don't want to be friends with you anymore, because clearly you don't have our backs under any circumstance.
Sure, your former friends may not be terrific people but you can't expect them to want you around after you betrayed the group.
“Friends help you move. Real friends
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The guy who turned in this thief wasn't party to the theft.
Want to try to justify felonies again, loser? You failed to do so this time.
Loser.
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Except going to jail will make him even more criminalized because that's what happens in jail. He's not going to get taught not to commit more felonies, he's going to be fucked up mentally to the point where he commits more felonies. End result: 1. He doesn't learn to commit less crime. 2. More crime happens.
How is that a win for anyone?
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End result? He ends up in prison for life, and the world has one less felon wandering around free. Mission accomplished.
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LOL yeah after committing a bunch of crimes and leaving a bunch of victims/suffering .. that feeds your fantasy too? Questing blindly for vengeance because someone annoys you is not only stupid but also counterproductive.
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If he's inclined to commit a serious felony and brag about it on the internet once, there's no reason to believe that anything other than permanently removing him from society will keep him from doing so over and over.
Good riddance.
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Except going to jail will make him even more criminalized because that's what happens in jail.
Perhaps he shouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. Or was that not an option?
I mean, look at me, sitting here, typing away, and not committing a crime. It's not difficult. It takes no effort at all.
This is like blaming a rape victim. You know how to prevent rape? Don't rape [tumblr.com].
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1. I am not blaming the victim. Nothing I said can be construed as that, nor did I mean that.
2. I don't know why the person committed the crime. Maybe something in his brain structure, impulsivity, or some dopamine regulation BS.
3. Just because you aren't committing a crime now, doesn't mean your mind cannot be placed into a situation wherein your brain justifies and compels you to do so.
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Re: Snitches get stiches (Score:2)
I mean, he stole thousands of dollars of merchandise with intent to resell it, and even though he remained uncharged because the purpose of gun laws as applied in the US is not to stop criminals but to fuck over otherwise law abiding citizens, had a shitload of weed and several guns, at least one of which was stolen.
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And you should be committed to a mental hospital until effective treatment can be implemented to control your violent antisocial fantasies.
Seriously. Get help. Before your hurt someone, or yourself.
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Re:This is part of a larger social pathology (Score:4, Informative)
Plenty of incidents where the right-of-center thinks the laws they put in to place should only apply to "the left".
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Your post has nothing even remotely to do with Leftist core values and everything to do with demonizing people whose politics you dont like. Your whole post is just one giant strawman creating a fantasy where you set up those you disagree with as "the bad guys" with universally disliked values which then makes you one of the "good guys" of course in pointing to these fabricated evils.
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Hahaha, you're calling me a "sheeple"...
My favorite part about your post is that I'm pretty sure you feel like you gave me a clever "gotcha" with it and most certainly did not make yourself look even nuttier.
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I could have written your post myself when I was younger, but I eventually came to understand, as you will, that Rand and Marx are equally incompatible with human nature.
Don't look for solutions in aphorisms, slogans, and generalities. Simple solutions don't exist.
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Given I'm in my 7th decade already, I'm skeptical that your insane fantasy will come true.
I have mellowed with age, though. I no longer believe that all felonies should carry an automatic death penalty.
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Speaking of medication...
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Libertarians believe that if some young freelance socialist (like you) steal from them, they should be able to hunt you down and kill you for it with impunity.
Democrats believe that if you even think about defending yourself while their stooge steals your shit, rapes your daughter and kills your do, you should be tortured to death slowly as an example to anyone else.
No, it's 100% left wing ideology.
Re: This is part of a larger social pathology (Score:2)
This is basically thieves Omerta. Its a belief that because thugs see themselves as strong and able to attack their own attackers, that everyone in society is the same and therefore a coward if they ask others for help instead of just beating their attackers into oblivion.
Then thugs and thieves intentionally target victims who are weaker and unable to defend themselves and call them weak if they dont somehow just directly fight the thugs and avoid calling the police for help.
Its basically a logical workarou
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"leftist"????
The mod is a fucking criminal fascist, about as far right from left as you can get.
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Maybe he should of bragged about it on a pro-police forum and not a leaks forum? Nah, crazy talk.
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And that's clearly more important to you than the felonies committed by the thief.
People like you are the reason the world is a festering shithole.
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That's a very subhuman, barbarian view of the world. People like you are the reason the world is such a shithole.
(And, as I understand it, the guy who reported this thief didn't even know him.)
Civilized people report crime whenever they see it. The Unabomber was turned in by his own brother. So obviously, as Universal Truths go, you haven't got one.
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So I guess you're about 12 or have criminal tendencies.
Most mature adults figure out the line between 'tattle-tale' and 'reporting criminal activity as a civic duty'.
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I'm just doing as all my political and corporate leaders are doing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
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I love how cretiins like yourself always go to maturity as your argument, I don't care to be seen as "mature" by people like yourself, here's to never growing up in your eyes. I unlike you never believed making peace with the establiishhmennt had anything at all to d with maturity and see myself as plenty grown up. I don't need your approval.
If you were robbed of your property, you would not consider reporting said robbery as "snitching". You are calling "snitching" this particular instance because the robbery did not affect you.
It's amazing how some people are all about individual rights and respect of private property when it's their rights and their property but suddenly don't care at all when it's someone else's. Very mature indeed.
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It isn't theft. Theft removes the original, imagine going to sleep and someone steals your car but it's stlll there.. it's copyright infrigement
Don't try to play semantics. First of all, actual property (the game boxes) was stolen. Second, the same reasoning works perfectly well with intellectual property: if your intellectual property were infringed, you would not consider reporting said infringement as "snitching" either.
and *yawn. * starfields manufacturer is going to be flush with cash with or without the leak, why the hell should ANYONE pity them or care?
You should care about their property because you don't want a society when people feel entitled to arbitrarily decide whether someone else's property is worth respecting or not.
Would you be fine if a hobo living in the street sud
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Re: I approve. (Score:2)
Retail prices are based on how much pain a company thinks consumers will take. Whatever this guy did will cost you less than Microsoft shareholders wanting a fourth home, third car, second girlfriend, whatever. If things worked the way you claim prices would go down when companies are making super profits. They don't.
There are no victims in this story. Microsoft could easily compensate the warehouse if they wanted. At the end of the day we're talking about a product that costs cents per unit to produce.
Micr
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Dude stole over a thousand dollars worth of BOXED PRODUCT. How is that not theft?
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They might as well ban the entire subreddit.