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Comment by eb0la | Hacker News Reader

>> we are a free online game and thus have no measurable economic damage, the public prosecutor left it at a sternly worded warning.

The prosecutor is a #@*&%! : your time costs money. Working outside normal office hours is costly.

Maybe you need to setup a contract between the "organization" that runs the servers and yourself that states how much time (and money) does it cost to run the game.

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Not to mention the damage to the service providers that have their other clients affected because of this. Besides, if someone robs you, would the prosecutor handwave it away saying it's fine because they only got $20

> if someone robs you, would the prosecutor handwave it away saying it's fine because they only got $20

Yes.

In fact, when my mother's grandfather was in conservatorship, his conservator (my mother's cousin) embezzled over $600,000 from his estate, and the prosecutor refused to prosecute.

We were able to get somewhere over half of the amount back through a civil suit.

Don't ever expect that the prosecutor is there to help you.

Monetary boundaries are quite common in law. The "grand" in the video game titled Grand Theft Auto refers to stealing of a car worth more than $5,000. Stealing of a car worth less than that is simply theft (of an) auto. There are a lot of factors that go into a decision not to prosecute, but there are many petty crimes that go unpunished and unprosecuted. (There are also some that are prosecuted, but that doesn't disprove that some aren't.)

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