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Comment by Larrikin | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I wonder if it’s a thing where no one ever actually wrote “cable theft is a 6mo max sentence”, but rather a serious of things that seem reasonable on their own:

- Cable theft is fraud - Fraud is a Class Z crime - Class Z crimes have this sentencing range

I guess I can see how that happens.

Someone actually wrote 6 months, it's the same statute.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/553#:~:text=For%2...

its much more that theft of service is generally treated as an actual crime, and the franchise situations especially due to the costs led to them pushing for laws with real teeth instead of civil penalties that are pointless on poor people.

I once "heard a story" about a very smart white guy that was retired special forces--just to put this racial thing to bed. Anyway, this guy lived in a subdivision that did not get cable. The cable company said there were not enough subscribers to justify the expense of the construction to bring them service. So mister special forces takes it upon himself to string a cable himself, and then decided to bring cable to the rest of the subdivision. After getting caught and arrested, part of his restitution was to make a PSA with him on camera in handcuffs saying something like "stealing cable is a crime" or something to that effect.

> just to put this racial thing to bed

n=1

Did this happen in the lower mainland?

Oklahoma

Certainly it is a crime in Canada too, so I think the answer is no---theft of telecommunications is broadly criminalized to prevent mafia-type involvement.

This comment is deeply inappropriate. Engaging in ideological flamewar is against HN guidelines and is just plain rude to all of the HN folks who actually work in the field you're being casually dismissive of.

I don’t think the parent post was engaging in an ideological flame war. As a way to start educating yourself, I’d recommend reading about the correlation between long jail sentences and African American heritage.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/racial-d...

(Edit: this DOJ report is more relevant to the time period of the article. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/sfc-drmtsg8690.pdf)

Deny the bad sides of America all you want, but given US history, the parent presents a very likely hypothesis.

What a thread. Guy randomly claiming “the racism” with literally no evidence gets upvoted, while you who know what you’re talking about try pointing out that it’s nonsense and get downvoted and flagged.

I know it’s an old guideline to not claim HN is turning into Reddit, and I used to agree with it, but at least since Reddit killed Apollo etc and drove people away a lot of them seem to have come here, so it may really be happening this time. HN was pretty good while it lasted I guess.

There was no claim of racism, there was speculation that was reasonably on topic and at least somewhat credible given the history of racial disparities in sentencing rules. Downvoting this speculation as low value is also fine since it doesn't really add any constructive value to the conversation.

The only thing here that is close to "deeply inappropriate" was the response asserting that this speculation constitutes a "flamewar" (which is not what that term means at all) rather than bothering to try to refute the speculation with any real information or data that would contribute to creating a constructive discussion.

Genuinely trying to understand your point of view. How is this potentially offensive to anyone other than the lawmaker who decides that cable theft should carry such a harsh sentence?

I don't understand how this could be construed as derogatory toward, for example, people who work at a cable company.

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