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Comment by user24 | Hacker News Reader

I admire your certainty. Maybe it is as simple as that and I'm overthinking it.

I can't quite express the difficulty I'm having in a comment so I'll try to write it up some time.

I can't argue it yet, but my intuitive feeling is that it's socially irresponsible to create this economy for them and then pull the plug like this. The bigger picture, I think, is that OP got his code stolen which sucks, but the contractor (or one like him) may have to sell a kidney or go back to working 18 hour shifts in the factory with toxic fumes now. That doesn't seem proportionate.

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The market your talking about (software-mediated freelance development) only works if the participants trust each other. If Odesk allowed the Indian programmer to steal IP, that creates a precedent, our at least a perception, that theft is OK. This perception discourages western customers from using the system.

This shrinks the market, reducing demand for programmers in India. Now MANY Indian programmers can't find work, even ones who were honest and efficient.

I think this effect is very important to keep in mind if you're concerned about the morality of the situation. The thief is hurting his fellow Indian programmers just as much as his western customer.

Getting your car stolen sucks, but if you report it the thief may have to go to jail, and who's going to feed his family then?

Protecting wrong-doers because "we" have supposedly created a system that forces their hands makes no sense.

I watched a dilemma like this unfold first hand when my landlord had his bike stolen by an illegal immigrant. He didn't want a drunk stealing the bike off of his porch, but he didn't want him to get in so much trouble that he got deported either.

Then maybe the thief shouldn't have stolen it.

I believe the point is some of us have aspirations for a society that minimizes the number of people in terrible situations. The idea being that some of us feel many of these terrible choices are as much the result of circumstance as otherwise.

Particularly for someone like me who doesn't believe in immigration control at all, deportation (or even subjecting someone to the horrible abuses of ICE without actual deportation occurring) constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment for a crime that should be punished by a fine or a few days in jail.

If I knew a drunken bicycle thief-citizen would be imprisoned for years, I wouldn't report them, either.

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