Comment by voakbasda

Let's separate criminal and civil here, because this is all civil law.

Civil law systems largely aren't about "good" or "bad". Justice there isn't "good guys win" and "bad guys fail". It never has been.

It's about trying to reasonably resolve disputes. That's all. Civil legal systems were created not to enforce morality or social order, but instead to formally resolve disputes. The system is pretty good at doing that. It will never resolve all disputes, let alone resolve all disputes in an "optimal" way (for any possible definition of optimal you come up with). It only tries to do a reasonable job of it.

If your expectation is that the law will stop "bad" actors from acting "badly", i think your expectations are out of whack. Yes it gets tried, but it is a fairly miniscule portion of the system overall, and generally not a very successful part of it. It's also remarkably recent in the history of legal systems. It is a quasi-political thing that the legal system simply isn't good at dealing with, and really is not a good match for it. I think results bear that out so far

You can take that for whatever you want - I can only tell you why the system is there, historically and currently. That doesn't mean you have to like that idea, and you are welcome to rail against it.

How are you defining "justice"/"bad guys"? Under HN rules, if a company requires payment, it's explicitly only OK to post if a “workaround” to avoid paying is available. Additionally, HN explicitly says it's OK for HN comments to ask how to get around payment requirements, and for HN users to help other users to get around payment requirements.

Source: Official HN FAQ page.

The question is not how then is one supposed to trust the law, because you already know the answer. The question is what one does about it.

What if writing proprietary and/or non-free software was the real evil? LLMs have made everything open source. All software is free now.

The Justice is the liberation of code from those that wish to seek rent from it.

I imagine most people don't expect actual justice in life.

What I am hearing is "if you can't beat em, join em". If there is no justice for software pirates then we should all pirate everything, at least from companies we dislike.

This is HN so nothing else to expect than Big Tech people giving us the scoop with the tagline "let's be realistic here".

> In all seriousness, this kind of stuff happens every day: bad guys getting away because the law does not have the ability to do anything. How then is one suppose to trust the law, when there is virtually zero chance of seeing justice?

Guess why trust in democracy itself is eroding everywhere and why even executing a health insurance CEO on broad daylight is not just widely approved but widely beloved.

The rich can get away with anything (Trump's claim of "I could shoot someone on 5th ave and get away" is pretty realistic, to say nothing about the Epstein crap), but if you are poor or, even worse, an immigrant - pray to God to help you because not just will no one else help you, but in the worst case you might end up getting fucked over for seeking help.

This is what HN has devolved into: someone taking adware and removing the ads is a "bad guy".