this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023

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What is something you've done that was questionable but legal? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I issued a (valid) DMCA notice to a small corporation who used the intellectual property of a colleague but did not pay them for it (they promised payment in writing, then just... didn't pay for a year or more). Their whole business website was down for a week or more as a result, as their registrar just took down their website without checking anything, and they didn't really have technical staff to resolve it.

The whole DMCA system is quite a broken mess, and is often (usually?) used unethically. However, it is possible to use correctly, even by private individuals. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it a little, that day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did he get paid in the end?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No.

Honestly running a business in Asia is like... 35% harassing people who haven't paid you. I hear it's pretty similar elsewhere but can't confirm.

[–] j4k3 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's most businesses. At least as a former owner of an Auto Body shop in California, and then one in Georgia, this was the case. As a Buyer for a chain of bike shops I also spent a significant amount of time avoiding paying at least 35% of my purchase orders at any point in time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Yeah, the best solution I've found is inflating the initial deposits with new clients (enough to cover costs for the project, but not more than that). Then if they agree, overdeliver on the work, then pursue a more collegiate arrangement in the future.

Working with Western companies can still be a pain sometimes. Many of them don't come to Asia to do things well, they come here to do things cheaply. A cheaper option than paying me, is not paying me. In reality, I have little recourse as my company doesn't have the resources for an international lawsuit. I've been burned a couple of times, but to some extent it's just the cost of doing business.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (4 children)

One time I stole a balloon on free balloon day. The guilt still keeps me up at night.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

With helium or no?

[–] hinterlufer 6 points 11 months ago

Well it floated, but it was also underwater so we will never truely know

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Asking the important question here!

[–] dystop 3 points 11 months ago

think of the poor kid who you deprived of a balloon, you monster!

[–] islandofcaucasus 2 points 11 months ago

I hope you at least spent a few moments in jail to learn your lesson

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I am an apartment building manager. Once, years ago, I was brought in to clean up after another manager who had quit/been fired for... let's just call it incompetence.

Anyway, there was a unit in the building that was occupied by a guy I never met or even saw, and the rent was months overdue. So I followed the required legal procedure to declare the unit abandoned. I spoke to neighbors who hadn't seen the guy either. I posted notices, etc. Eventually, the unit was legally declared abandoned and I started the task of clearing out any property left behind.

The unit was very neat and tidy and full of nice stuff. Not the usual state of a rental that someone abandoned, and this should have tipped me off. But it didn't, and so I had everything hauled away. Furniture, electronics, clothes, the lot.

Then after 6 months I moved on to a different building. Later, I learned that the person who lived there was on active duty in the military, and that's why no one had seen them for months. Apparently, a neighbor had been entrusted to pay the rent but they had just kept the money for themselves, and lied to me when I inquired about the neighbor's whereabouts.

So, this poor guy comes back from overseas military service to discover that not only has he lost his apartment but also everything in it. And since I had followed the legal procedure, no law was broken (by me.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Ah man. I'm sorry that happened. That's not your fault. You couldn't have know.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Copied an example source code, which was under MIT+Apache 2.0 license, and created a derivative work under GPL, maybe that's questionable?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

After a quick research, this should be fine. It means that the original is theirs and licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0, and your modifications are yours and licensed under GPL

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Tracing art back in highschool for an ungraded art project since it was just for the front and back of a crummy "sketch book" made entirely of white paper and staples.

[+] coolcrowe -31 points 11 months ago (8 children)

For the vast majority of my life, I regularly paid mega corporations in a corrupt and evil industry to rape females with machines to impregnate them, then separate the children from their mothers shortly after birth so that I could drink the mammary secretions meant for those children (who were then murdered if they were male, or raised in deplorable conditions to become part of the process themselves if they were female).

[–] Viking_Hippie 27 points 11 months ago (4 children)

And vegans wonder why they have a reputation for being overly dramatic and preachy 🤦

If you want sane people to listen, maybe take it down several hundred notches..

[–] EuroNutellaMan 16 points 11 months ago

I mean to be fair what he said is exactly how the milk industry works.

I say this as a meat eater, that intensive production shit should be illegal even at the cost of reducing meat supply as traditional, more ethical, methods are insufficient to meet our (unsustainable) meat demand. Well at least until lab-grown meat becomes mainstream enough.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

Sane people usually don’t listen, though. No matter how you put it, you’re always the crazy preachy vegan. Insane people respond by saying how they’ll order and extra steak just to spite you. It’s weird.

Also, RE: climate change. Normal arguments don’t do anything for the average person. That’s why you get the crazy stuff nowadays.

[–] coolcrowe -3 points 11 months ago

Sorry, I don’t find any of the actions I described above to be sane. And if you think I’m being sensational, you haven’t watched Dominion yet, and you should. I was actually just describing the “normal” aspects of the dairy industry; the reality of the conditions these living, thinking, feeling beings live in are even worse.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Krishnamurti

[+] [email protected] -11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

We have this reputation solely because people feel threatened and offended when you tell them that you refuse to eat animal products. They suddenly start being confrontational and refuse to listen to your reasoning.

It's like arguing with little children who plug their ears and sing while you're trying to explain that 30% of the reason we're in a climate crisis is their overconsumption of animal products, derived from creatures capable of emotion, able to see, hear, and smell not unlike you and me.

And those conversations do not come up unsolicited but provoked by meat eaters asking "but why would you do that to yourself?"

But maybe I'm being overly dramatic and preachy 🤦

If I didn't completely kill your interest in the topic, check out Ed Winters on YouTube.

[–] Viking_Hippie 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

We have this reputation solely because people feel threatened and offended when you tell them that you refuse to eat animal products.

Not even close to true. If you tell me in the same way that I'd tell you my dietary preference, I wouldn't mind at all. I'm not in the business of telling other people what to eat or not eat and as long as you extend me the same courtesy, we should get along just fine.

It's only when you go out of your way to shame people into agreement like the comment I first replied to that I have any problem with vegans.

They suddenly start being confrontational and refuse to listen to your reasoning.

Yeah, weird how people will confront you about it when you're being needlessly aggressive and judgmental and not feel like listen to THAT kind of reasoning 🙄

It's like arguing with little children who plug their ears and sing while you're trying to explain that 30% of the reason we're in a climate crisis is their overconsumption of animal products, derived from creatures capable of emotion, able to see, hear, and smell not unlike you and me.

It's like arguing with a holier than thou arrogant person that insists that anyone who doesn't live their lives like them are wilfully ignorant children. Funny how most of us frightfully ignorant meat-eaters aren't very receptive when being treated that way.

And those conversations do not come up unsolicited but provoked by meat eaters asking "but why would you do that to yourself?"

Not true. In this specific case, nobody asked. A very openended asklemmy prompt is NOT the equivalent of your strawman

But maybe I'm being overly dramatic and preachy

Yeah, you very much are, especially the latter.

If I didn't completely kill your interest in the topic, check out Ed Winters on YouTube.

I already know a lot about the topic and yeah, anyone recommended after such arrogant tirades is not someone I'd be likely to check out.

If his approach is anything like yours, I expect he'll be showing me gruesome slaughterhouse footage and calling me an evil ignoramus within the first minute of every video.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

If you tell me in the same way that I’d tell you my dietary preference, I wouldn’t mind at all. I’m not in the business of telling other people what to eat or not eat and as long as you extend me the same courtesy, we should get along just fine.

The point is that this is not like having different favourite colours.

One "dietary preference" slaughters intelligent beings with complex social behaviour and emotions, the other does not.

One contributes a massive amount of greenhouse gases and thus fuels climate change, the other's impact is much, much smaller.

One degrades soils and pollutes rivers, the other less.

One leads to zoonotic epidemics, the other does not.

One leads to incredible water consumption, the other much less.

In short, one "preference" has a massive negative impact on many aspects of life and the earth, the other is a plant-based diet. Consequences!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If the description above is not dramatic the idk.

Concepts like rape just don't exist in the animal kingdom. It's like the standard way of having offspring.

Same for the thing about taking children away.

[–] coolcrowe -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Concepts like rape don’t exist in the animal kingdom

Did you forget humans are animals? If you don’t like using the word rape to describe sexually violating an animal, there’s another one we’ve come up with… bestiality.

Same for the thing about taking children away

Are you seriously trying to say humans are the only species who should have a right not to be sexually violated or have their children taken from them and killed? Since we know that cows are thinking, feeling, emotional creatures capable of forming strong family bonds… what exactly is it about humans that makes them special in that way?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did you forget humans are animals? If you don’t like using the word rape to describe sexually violating an animal, there’s another one we’ve come up with… bestiality.

Humans are special in more than one characteristic. One of them is that humans have consensual intercourse and have a word for and laws against intercouse that isn't.

Cows don't have that. Animals in general don't have that. You wouldn't say one shark is raping another. Or lions are raping each other. Unless you are really missing the point at least

Bestiality is another term you don't seem to understand. Artifical insemination does not involve the performance of sexual acts from the human's point of view.

It's a human term from a human's perspective.

You wouldn't call it Bestiality when a dog humps your leg. the animal's perspective does not matter here. It should be that way because animals cannot in a meaningful way consent.

Are you seriously trying to say humans are the only species who should have a right not to be sexually violated or have their children taken from them and killed?

I don't agree with the term sexual violation.

In a perfect way no animal would ever die, but nature is eat or be eaten most of the time. Cows usually are the ones that will be eaten.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Humans are special in more than one characteristic

nature is eat or be eaten

Choose one

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yep, totally natural way of having offspring

CW: faecal matter

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not what I said. Something being unnatural doesn't make it rape though.

In vitro insemination in humans also isn't rape.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No, but you keep arguing by applying naturalistic fallacy.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

🌱

[–] dioxy 6 points 11 months ago

Love to see a fellow based vegan on here 🌱

[–] dystop 2 points 11 months ago

I put out some bait last month to get rid of an ant problem I had in my kitchen, I guess I'm as guilty of mass murder as you are

[–] Thteven 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Being legally raped by a corporate machine...yeah that sounds about right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You don’t believe that’s possible? It’s perfectly legal in pretty much all countries.

If you don’t just do it for fun… then it’s illegal. But for profit it is.

[–] Thteven 2 points 11 months ago

When did I say I didn't believe it? I said it sounds about right.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It really is. Check this out:

CW: violence

https://watchdominion.org

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

meat is murder. tasty, tasty murder.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So did I, then I decided to stop eating corpses and eat even more of these secretions. One chapter into Jesus Ed's book and I don't think I'm ever going back to this lifestyle.

People think I'm crazy and extreme for not participating but I enjoy my "frozen dessert" and "nut/seed drink" without feeling like having blood on my hands.

[–] coolcrowe 2 points 11 months ago

Same here, and I’d rather be down-voted into oblivion than pretend my past actions weren’t “questionable”. I’d love to say I’m a proud vegan, but truthfully, I’m not proud of being vegan; I’m ashamed and regretful of how long it took me to become one.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 11 months ago

I, too, regrettably, participate in Capitalism. But rather then taking a counter-productive individual approach based on inconsistent morality and twisting myself into knots as a victim of this society, I took a systemic approach, got to the root of the problem and became anti-capitalist instead. This let's me enjoy the fruits of tens of thousands of years of human agricultural and animal husbandry while enjoying some of the best cuisine's human culture has produced.

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