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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

I think we may be running into the weeds of pedantry here, but here goes...

(Speaking about how things are in the US. I don't know how they are elsewhere.)

Contract law is about how to interpret and adjudicate contracts when there is a dispute between the parties in the contract.

Nothing about that means that violating a contract, in and of itself, is illegal. You aren't going to suffer any criminal penalties for failing to adhere to your contractual obligations.

What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated, and the legal system is also geared to work out and enforce such things. But that's a world apart from the notion that violating a contract is "illegal".

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> Nothing about that means that violating a contract, in and of itself, is illegal..

Its a violation of legal rights for which there are legal remedies. Claiming that its not a violation of law (the original upthread claim) is... well, as wrong as it is for any other violation of civil law. (“illegal" adds more complications because “illegal” has multiple overlapping senses, it can apply to any violation of law, or it can be used to refer specifically to criminal violations.)

> What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated

No, contract law itself specifies penalties for contract violations. Contracts may attempt to specify damages for certain violations as a replacement for the usual calculation of actual damages (“liquidated damages” provisions), but contract law governs when these will be given effect instead of the usual assessment of actual damages. It is neither necessary for there to be a specified penalty in the contract for one to be applied, nor will a specified penalty automatically be applied.

"I think we may be running into the weeds of pedantry here, but here goes..."

When we are talking about the law, of course one has to be pedantic. Apart from that, the sibling posters expressed my reply very well already.

I think you’re using the word “illegal” in place of the word “criminal”

"Illegal" means "a violation of law". That's automatically a question of criminality. Contract violations are not a violation of law, they're a violation of a legally-binding contract. Violating a contract isn't illegal in any meaningful sense, but doing so will incur whatever penalties the contract specifies will happen if it's violated. Those penalties are enforced through the legal system, but that doesn't mean that a law was violated. Only a civil agreement.

Parking without paying the meter is illegal, but not criminal.

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