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Comment by alexk307 | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't even care if he's vaccinated or not. He's one of the best Tennis players of all time, and if he wants to be unvaccinated, he should have the right. However, he doesn't have the right to provide a fraudulent test result in order to enter into a country with its own rules, and a Tennis tournament with its own rules. Covid or not, vaccine or not, this is a scummy move by one of the world's most influential athlete.

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Famous/rich people don't have to follow the same rules as the rest of us obviously.

Problem is – he did follow "the rules".

He just had root access at the gov't COVID testing system level.

Here's a separate thought experiment too:

We've all heard stories of people faking COVID tests. E.g. people don't want to pay the price to get tested, or they can't be bothered to go get tested, so they grab an old covid test, change the date and then go to the airport. The airline representative can only do a visual inspection of the document, and most of the time they have bigger issues than making sure each covid test is valid. For example, they're not going to call the doctor's office for each test.

This seems to be what Djokovic did, fake the COVID test. Hundreds / thousands of people break the rules with fake covid tests and they don't get caught, but he fakes it once and he gets caught.

With this framing, you could in fact say that he is under even more scrutiny than the rest of us. So, not only does he have to follow the rules, he has to follow them even more than we do.

I'm going to stop paying my taxes, because some other people also do not do it. If the IRS goes after me, it's discrimination, because they could've gone after someone else instead :)

doesn't make that much sense, does it?

Not sure I follow the analogy, but yes you could play the discrimination card in any circumstance.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s comment in his famous letter from Birmingham Jail: "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

It's up to ever single individual to interpret what is just and what is unjust, with all its consequences.

I, personally, find that the restriction is stupid, doesn't bring any benefit, and would have no problem to completely disregard it on a moral basis, if I had no fear of consequences.

The tricky part is how to identify what is an unjust law. If each individual is free to make that decision and not bound, that is the absence of a state, that is called anarchy. The consequence is not freedom, because those who have power will rule anyway. Therefore in a democracy the power to determine what is just is vested in the legislator and the power to apply those laws is vested in a government that responds to the parliament that put it in place and the power to oversee the application of laws lies with independent courts, the judges of which have nothing to fear and nothing to gain in adjudicating a case. Don't like that system? That's calling for a revolution. To me, that's the wrong path. I prefer to live with the bad decisions or compromises a government makes instead of fearing the gangs and guns in my neighbourhood.

I agree with you, but it’s not either or. You don’t need to drop the whole system just because you find some parts of are unjust. Opposing, ignoring and fighting nonsense is the way to go, because the rules change only when something previously illegal becomes socially and morally acceptable. That’s how we got cannabis legalisation and same sex marriage.

Feel the same – even if this test investigation is true (looks true) he can plead ignorance of course by saying he doesn't know how that system works.

In effect, if his team + Serbian gov't manipulated the tests, I'm not sure what the recourse is, except for the Australian gov't to sue the Serbian gov't?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse (in most/all jurisdictions).

Australia's recourse would be to deny him entry.

If he committed fraud, they could arrest him and charge him criminally.

If he delegates that declaration he still is responsible. That's the normal and perfect consequence of the concept of legal representation. You cannot just hand your duty over to others and then get away with anything. And honestly if there is one thing he must have known, regardless how many overpaid aids he employed, that is whether his test actually came back positive. So the struggle involves him rightly, not the Serbian government or whoever aided and abetted a wrong committed on Nov. Dj.'s behalf.

well if you go to the doctor and they mess up their timestamps or results, are you liable?

I am not sure how this applies in Djokovic's case? He isn't claiming that there are errors (made by others) in any of the papers he has provided, or is he?

P.S. But either way, of course it's he who is ultimately responsible, in the same way I'm responsible for the contents of my tax return, regardless of who prepares or files it on my behalf.

Fair point.

Except many of these cases where folks are trying to vilify someone turn out to be false or misleading, so slow down on the judgement bandwagon you seem eager to jump onto!

The date an image is generated (which is what they are looking at) on some website is not the date's the test were taken.

I completely agree, he's lying. At the same time, the rules are ridiculous.

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