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The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

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81–90 of 99 posts

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#81

>"Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?" That's the most important thing I took away from this article. The kid did something stupid and it almost ruined his life because he almost got onto a plane that would have taken him to the FBI & US justice system. Instead local authorities got a hold of him and he learned a vocation waiting for a trial (programming) & having show…

Is he still at risk of deportation to US if he travels outside of DE?

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#82
post #46

Valve's response here seems exceedingly harsh. This kid went of his way to reach out to Valve and apologize for what he did, because he felt guilty. Valve's response was to forward his message to the FBI and organize a sting operation. I realize he broke the law, but only because he wanted to play Half-Life 2. It was done out of love for what Valve themselves created.

That kid destroyed the life of many people for quite some time. Now I can agree that this is the kind of situation where what he did VS the consequences of what he did are disproportionate, which is the issue with computer/cyber crimes in general. Some kind of punishment is required here, I think Valve did the right thing, now the Justice System...

You really can't just throw out a line like "destroyed a lot of lives" when we are talking about an essentially useless leak of a video game without further explanation.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#83
post #12

How f-ed would he be if he flew to the US?

Yeah, you know you are in Germany when the police even tells you that :D Epic.. > There he was greeted by the police chief. He walked up to Gembe, looked him in the eye and said, "Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?"

This response sounds more like fabulation for a film script.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#85

The article claims/repeats the claim that this cost valve $250 million, but I don't see how. If the leaked version wasn't very playable the damage can't come from lost sales

yeah that is just "let's throw random numbers to victimize ourselves even more". I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game. The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.

> The game didn't run on my computer. I made some code changes to get it to run in a basic form without shaders or anything, but it wasn't fun.

Some people might have tried, but that doesn't sound like it was a great gaming experience. If it ran at all.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#87

>"Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?" That's the most important thing I took away from this article. The kid did something stupid and it almost ruined his life because he almost got onto a plane that would have taken him to the FBI & US justice system. Instead local authorities got a hold of him and he learned a vocation waiting for a trial (programming) & having show…

And the FBI, having no leads and no data, simply attempted to arrest a kid whom they knew got past Valve's firewall. The court judged there was no connection between the kid and the damages, and the FBI attempted to ruin his life anyway.

Oh, and those, of course, were claimed damages that failed to materialize ... Having about the same validity of the RIAA's claims of $25000 per mp3 downloaded.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#88
post #46

Valve's response here seems exceedingly harsh. This kid went of his way to reach out to Valve and apologize for what he did, because he felt guilty. Valve's response was to forward his message to the FBI and organize a sting operation. I realize he broke the law, but only because he wanted to play Half-Life 2. It was done out of love for what Valve themselves created.

That kid destroyed the life of many people for quite some time. Now I can agree that this is the kind of situation where what he did VS the consequences of what he did are disproportionate, which is the issue with computer/cyber crimes in general. Some kind of punishment is required here, I think Valve did the right thing, now the Justice System...

What life was destroyed?

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#89
post #40

Valve's response here seems exceedingly harsh. This kid went of his way to reach out to Valve and apologize for what he did, because he felt guilty. Valve's response was to forward his message to the FBI and organize a sting operation. I realize he broke the law, but only because he wanted to play Half-Life 2. It was done out of love for what Valve themselves created.

I can't disagree more. He built malware, and distributed it to steal game keys. Then, he stole and published the hl2 source. It's a lot more than just wanting to play a game early.

>Then, he stole and published the hl2 source

Do you disagree with the article or did you just not believe it? Because, Gembe denied publishing the source code and there was no evidence that Gembe is the one who published it.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#90
post #62

>"Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?" That's the most important thing I took away from this article. The kid did something stupid and it almost ruined his life because he almost got onto a plane that would have taken him to the FBI & US justice system. Instead local authorities got a hold of him and he learned a vocation waiting for a trial (programming) & having show…

It’s crazy. How is it any different than the CCP luring Americans over to China and throwing them in prison for posting distasteful content online? The CCP and the FBI have different values, but it’s entirely the same concept.

There's some differences: 1. He would the right to a public trial, there'd be free press coverage. 2. He'd have the right to a lawyer. 3. There wouldn't be political interference in the trial. 4. The majority of Chinese people that this happens to are political prisoners. I.e. they critisized their government. This guy commited a crime that is recognised in both the USA and Germany, there's no argument about that.
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