Hacker News Reader

Comment by ezoe | Hacker News Reader

Let's hope the police, prosecutor and judge, hell, even your lawyer understand any of this.

Meanwhile in Japan, there was a crazy sentence for a crime of using a crypto-currency that has been stolen. Not the real criminal responsible of the theft, but some random idiots who think investing on crypto-currency was a good idea and purchased the token that was a part of stolen token.

I bet these idiots has never run full-node on the computer he owns. He just relies on some SaaS wallet service by somebody else.

I guess ignorance is a crime.

View on HN

Being ignorant of the law has never been a valid defence

Worked for plenty of people.

So I can shoplift and just say I didn't know it was illegal?

No, but you can be gifted a shoplifted item and legally defend yourself by demonstrating that you did not know that it was stollen before being gifted to you.

However, the same defense does not protect against confiscation; just criminal liability.

This isn't about ignorance of the law though.

Violating sanctions is breaking the law, isn't it?

The distinction they're drawing is between ignorance of the law (e.g: you take someone's phone because you didn't know stealing was illegal) and lack of knowledge/criminal intent relating to the act you committed (e.g: you take someone's phone because someone sold you a stolen phone and you were unaware).

Former is what "ignorance of the law is not a valid defence" applies to. Latter can be valid, and particularly in this case I'd find it hard to imagine that those affected by the dusting attack would be found guilty of violating sanctions.

Exactly. If you're given a marked bill as change, you haven't violated the law. If you know it's marked and accept it, you have.

Sounds just like buying a stolen bike, knowingly or not.

Knowingly is a crime. Unknowingly is not. In England anyway.

I think it's the same in the US. Actus reus and mens reus.

mens rea. mens is feminine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

It's more like pulling dirty money out of an ATM.

Ignorance is not a crime, but it’s also not a defense.

No knowledge/criminal intent relating to the act can be a defense (other than for strict liability crimes like statutory rape), ignorance of the law is not.

With some small exceptions for a few white-collar crimes that do require knowing the act was illegal. But that doesn't apply 99% of the time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com