Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

In most places, to bring conspiracy charges, there has to be an "overt act" in furtherance of the conspiracy. So they'd have to do something to further a murder plot in order to be charged with that in those places.

Conspiracy: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=432 Overt Acts: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=517

View on HN

Does it change the perspective of anything else they've done, e.g. They could be viewed as more willing to do non-murder crimes? It of course shows they definitely don't like the guy, but that's obvious when they were trying to take out his company or whatever.

It's not an element of any crime I'm aware of unless there's evidence of a serious murder plot that we don't yet know about, so it wouldn't be very relevant. They generally try to keep things that make one party look bad, but which are not relevant to the case being tried, out of the courtroom.

Reread parent post. It says "conspiring to do economic harm", which they did.

That doesn't normally buy you a murder conspiracy unless there were overt acts that furthered a murder plot and you need a felony in there somewhere. There's no law against "economic harm" as such, but there are certain ways to compete unlawfully.

Rather, the article says there's a rule against disparaging other products. That sounds more like policy, rather than law, which is not usually a felony. It also merely says they're 'investigating', so there's nothing for us to even look at until we see whether or not they actually bring charges against anyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com