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Comment by PurpleBoxDragon | Hacker News Reader

In this particular case, he had all reason to believe his work was being used by some to do illegal things. But even then, is that any different than the people who work on TOR knowing full well it is used to abuse children, or who work on military weapons knowing that innocent people are targeted? Should a gun seller who has reason to believe the buyer might do something illegal with their be punished for making the sell anymore than any of the tech products used to circumvent laws (from minor laws dealing with content piracy to major laws dealing with child abuse)?

Can we draw a definite consistent lines on where helping criminals commit crimes is moral, where it is immoral, where it is legal, and where it is illegal?

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So, if you are acting during the normal course of business, you are not liable. If someone tries to buy a rope from your store saying they are going to use it to strangle someone, you can sell it to them anyway, you are not liable.

The prosecution is arguing he is a co-conspirator. The biggest evidence mentioned in the article was that the guy asked Alfred to make a compartment big enough to store 10 kgs [of cocaine]. As in, he literally specified how big the compartment needed to be in terms of kgs of drugs. That wouldn't fall under the normal course of business, that's doing custom work specifically to aid in an illegal activity.

I think another fun comparison is car seller. Their products are 100% going to be used in a crime at some point. It's just not as effective as this guy's compartments.

> Their products are 100% going to be used in a crime at some point.

Citation needed

Perhaps overly pedantic, but I would imagine that practically all cars are used to commit traffic violations (speeding, rolling stop at a stop sign) by even very careful drivers.

I believe there is a huge difference between you working on something that has the main function of facilitating an illegal enterprise and you working on something that has a tiny minority mis-using your product for illegal purposes. Silk Road vs Craigslist is an example that comes to mind.

I wonder how much of Tor usage is for illegal activities, including black markets, compared to legal activities? And doesn't it seem fickle that the same action may or may not be legal depending upon how many people use Tor for legal vs illegal activities? What happens if last year it was primarily for legal purposes but this year some new black market site took off and people are primary using it for that now?

sometimes things that are illegal are not immoral and there are also plenty of things that are immoral but not illegal.

For whatever reason the law cares greatly about the intention of work. If it can be proven without a doubt that your actual intention is to facilitate breaking the law you can get into a lot of trouble as is the case here. Economic activity can't have the primary purpose of facilitating someone breaking the law.

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