Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

The problem is they are not soliciting a bot, they are soliciting children and are going to lengths to ensure that they are getting what they are paying for.

If an MMORPG had "100 year old elvish" NPCs which had childlike features and full nudity, then playing the game might be distasteful but probably should fall under constitutional protection.

The law is very cognizant of intent and willfulness. If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime. I don't have a problem with that.

I think you must agree that if you solicit a bot then there is no crime, just like if you "murder" a bot there is no crime. Ultimately we have juries to decide of the accused if full of shit claiming they were soliciting bots when they were actually soliciting children. The burden of proof falls on the Government to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

As bots get increasingly realistic and entertaining enough to create a market for that service (regardless of the physical characteristic of the avatar) it will be interesting to watch jurisprudence evolve.

A convincing avatar which can be synchronized with a human's text input, and/or speech alteration (not text-to-speech) is one way you approach 'the singularity' without having to synthesize human thoughts and emotions. Such a system, if it can cross the uncanny valley, would radically improve quality of live for millions of (and I hate this term) 'genetic lottery losers'.

> If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime.

No, you can't.

If you take concrete action in an attempt to commit a crime, that is often itself a crime (usually a lesser offense than the one attempted; e.g., "attempted murder" is a distinct crime, and a lesser offense than murder.) But if you are not proven to have broken the law (and, more specifically, committed a crime -- not all lawbreaking is criminal), you cannot be convicted of a crime.

Do attempted murder charges typically have a less extreme penalty than actual murder charges? It is my impression that is the case, but I can't find much that actually supports that notion.

This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off. Nobody should get off lighter just because their victim was particularly hearty.

Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum, if I try to break the speed limit with my beat up '65 Volkswagen beetle, but fail to do so, obviously I don't deserve a speeding ticket. Attempted speeding isn't a crime, not all "attempted [whatevers]" need to be punished.

> Do attempted murder charges typically have a less extreme penalty than actual murder charges?

Yes.

> This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off.

Typically, both the degree of "wrongness" of the act and the degree of harm inflicted by it are factors in setting criminal punishments. While attempted murder might be as morally wrong as actual murder, the harm inflicted is different.

What if we view sentencing not as punishment or revenge, but rather as something that we do for the safety of society?

It isn't clear to me that an attempted murderer is less dangerous to society than a successful murderer (unless we assume that all failed murder attempts failed due to incompetence, but I don't think that is safe to say), surely they should both be kept off the streets for the same amount of time.

> What if we view sentencing not as punishment or revenge, but rather as something that we do for the safety of society?

It could be argued that someone with both demonstrated bad intent and demonstrated capacity is still more dangerous than someone with equally bad intent that fails to demonstrate the capacity to successfully carry that intent into fruition.

> This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off.

Your friend calls you. The police have discovered you tried to hire a hitman to kill your wife. You despair, but then realize you won't get punished any worse for killing her before they show up...

Is hiring a hitman who successfully kills somebody the same crime as successfully killing somebody yourself?

I understand not increasing the punishment of certain types of crimes so that we don't create incentives to escalate (for example, don't give the death penalty for armed robberies, because then all armed robberies would turn into murders as well), but in the case of attempted murder, the person doing it has already committed themselves to killing somebody. There aren't really many ways that can escalate. If they tried to kill somebody, realized that they failed, and had the opportunity to try again, I don't think there is much incentive currently for them to not try again.

> Is hiring a hitman who successfully kills somebody the same crime as successfully killing somebody yourself?

Yes.

(Well, hiring the hitman may itself be other crimes, but once you've done it, its the same set of crimes for "hiring the hitman to kill somebody" + "hitman kills them" and "hiring the hitman to kill somebody" + "you kill them yourself". For you, at least. Less crimes for the hitman, though.)

Hmm, that seems strange, but on the other hand felony murder makes sense to me so I'm not sure why I should find this strange. My intuition on what punishments should be dolled out for extreme crimes is probably a little wonky.

I didn't say "the crime" I said "a crime". As is typical for hackers, we are in "violent agreement" :-)

"If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime"

Suppose I try to kill you using my specially crafted voodoo doll, but fail to do so (my magic powers are not what they used to be) then I can still be convicted? What if I curse someone, is that enough to be convicted? I doubt it.

There is something called "moral luck" in philosophy, which relates to this.

I should probably give up, because clearly my wording was poor...

By 'willfully intend' I meant basically what jlgreco said, 'take concrete action in an attempt to commit a crime' and I fully understand that the charge for that is different than the charge if you were successful in the act.

If you 'willfully intend' to commit murder by sticking pins in a voodoo doll, you are crazy but probably not guilty of attempted murder.

I'm not exactly sure what the jury instructions would say. Is it whether the act would reasonably result in death, or whether the defendant believed at the time that the act would result in the death of their chosen victim?

Often times, trying to kill someone in a way that is extremely unlikely to actually result in their death doesn't save you from getting charged. A good example is Ross Ulbrich hiring a hitman online for bitcoins. Twice.

> The law is very cognizant of intent and willfulness.

Not in strict liability offenses, such as statutory rape. Which isn't entirely relevant to playing a game, until the legislature makes 'possession of child pornography' strict liability and includes drawings as being child pornography.

I found this to be a good summary: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/mens-rea-a-d...

But what you suggest is unlikely to occur because the Supreme Court has consistently found strict liability for first amendment issues is unconstitutional. See: http://www.volokh.com/posts/1218485530.shtml

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