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Comment by mhb | Hacker News Reader

So Spin is abandoning the scooters or their leaving is justification for looting? Also, if people are looting, isn't the more desirable thing the scooter?

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Legally, abandoned property (at least at common law, not sure about Washington state) is up for grabs. Claiming abandoned property is not looting and not only is there nothing wrong with it ethically or legally, it’s probably for the best that it is out to reasonable use.

Yes, so are they abandoning them, or plan to pick them up and use them somewhere else?

I don’t know anything about their actions surrounding the pull out from Seattle, and that’s what a court would look at. It does seem reasonable that if one were pulling out of a region and they had gps coordinates of all their assets, they would quickly collect them all. If they didn’t do that, that’s probably a strong argument that they were abandoned. If they are in the process of doing that and it’s only been a short period of time since they announced, that’s a strong argument that they’re not abandoned.

Really context pointing toward intent is king here.

Yeah, based on the other comments below I've revised the title. But if Spin left Seattle and didn't bother to properly clean up their scooters off the streets, it's fair game for anyone to pick up and dismantle what effectively is a lug of e-waste.

Spin moved out of Pittsburgh recently (the law allowing them to operate was not renewed in the PA state legislature).

They responsibly and quickly gathered up (almost) all of the scooters in one weekend.

Maybe 0.1% of the scooters remain, likely due to the battery being dead and tracking being difficult.

So in my experience, I believe they are acting in good faith when exiting a city.

If anything the pis are the payment for disposing of the companies trash for them. They should be getting a fine for something like that, much less call it looting.

Well, and that scooter attached to the pi. Those things go for a couple hundred bucks. Renovating it to be your own supposedly shouldn't be all that hard.

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