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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

I mean that people are finding a sweet spot to act maliciously while still staying on the legal side. We all know what they're doing, but we can't make it illegal without hurting innocent people.

Consider advertising. We can often tell when a vendor is bullshitting their customers, but if they do it well, the law has no way of reaching such person. Trying to extend the reach of law to cover such cases would create opportunities for other malicious actors could silence people who disagree with them. So bad people are free to thrive at the intersection of "in bad faith" and "still technically legal".

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That may be so, but it sounded like you were making a much stronger claim two messages up - as though intent made activity more harmful to the victim (than if no intent were present). That worries me because that way lies thought policing.

Of course intent doesn't change the harm done to victim, but I believe it definitely changes the way we should look at the perpetrator.

In a perfect world, the only thing that would matter in a justice system would be intent - it would determine whether one's to be punished or left alone. The issue of harm to the victim could be covered by insurance. But such a system would require something that could determine intent and rely it truthfully. We don't have such an instrument, so we're stuck with a system that considers everything but intent in order not to get gamed too easily.

Again, what I think we need to figure out is not how to just limit harm done to the victim (which, of course, is not dependent on intent), but how to push back against the perpetrators who are clearly acting in bad faith but stay on the legal side. Just like we don't only instruct people to keep their valuables safe - we also go and catch thieves.

> In a perfect world, the only thing that would matter in a justice system would be intent - it would determine whether one's to be punished or left alone. The issue of harm to the victim could be covered by insurance.

Not really: insurance for harm to victims deals with harms for which the justice system (particularly, the civil justice system) holds the insured liable. If the justice system doesn't deal with the harms, there is no liability to insure. It doesn't make sense to talk about insurance for harms to victims as a primary solution independent of the justice system.

"how to push back against the perpetrators who are clearly acting in bad faith but stay on the legal side"

But by definition of being on the legal side, such people are not even perpetrators.

Perhaps "bad-faith-crimes" are something the legal system shouldn't get involved in (never mind that it cannot competently, as we agree). Among other reasons, the bad-faithness definition itself becomes easy to game (see "*ism!" accusations).

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