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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the same situation at all.
No, his netbook+bank account situation does indeed show similarities to the main question. If you read between the lines, it amounts to "What is the minimum legal standard I have to follow to make money on this questionably gotten X?" That's a sad question to have to ask.
Why legally? A couple of days ago I found a wallet with what looked like £40 (Didn't count it), travelcard and bank cards in it. I could have taken the money and put it the rest in the bin. I could have even skimmed the credit/debit cards and gone on a spending spree! But I did not. I went to the local shop and enquired - 'do you know this guy?' The wallet owner actually lived in the flats above the shop and the wall…
Does using the information on the document mean whoever misplaced is going to lose something? Probably not. My point is, the OP's case and your example about the wallet are not the same. PS: if I were the OP I would try to return or destroy them.
Conversely, doing the wrong thing probably means that the 'unintended consequences' are bad - getting caught etc.
You could take the documents and through thinking of 'I have struck gold' and nothing else, walk out of the cab and into the on-coming bus, to go under it and be rescued by the paramedics.
However, what I think you are getting at has been discussed regarding music.
Imagine finding a USB stick, making a perfect copy of it. When you get home you find that it contains the latest and as yet unreleased album by your favourite artist. Being good you don't post it onto youtube or even let your mates have a copy. However, even then the record label would deem you a pirate, if they found out. But we have had that argument.
Or...
The financial scenario: you find documents that Google are to make a cash bid for Facebook next week. You sell your mother and buy lots of shares in Facebook. The bid happens and you get to sell your shares, buy your mother back and make a tidy profit. Seems simple, victimless crime!
However, the documents could have been planted there (and elsewhere) by someone in the city with lots of shares to sell and wanting to 'secretly tip' the market so they profit. In this case you lose out on your investment and cannot buy your mother back.
Or Sergei and Brin find they have lost their documents in the back of the cab, see it as an omen, and don't go ahead with the bid.
However, if you did try and return the documents and were successfully able to do so, they might give you a T-shirt and a pat on the back for being good. They might even give you a job.
Here is a joyful parable:
The Parable of the Flowers
Believing in God is to believe in God's presence and uniqueness. This belief saves the person from meaninglessness and from being errant. Assuming that lies would make a person happy is to go after a dream that will never come true. Reality is God's consent.
In old times, there was a sagacious emperor, and his people loved him. But the emperor was enduring an absence; he did not have a son or a daughter. After a while, the emperor decided to adopt a child.
Public criers shouted, "Listen to me people! On Friday our emperor will adopt a child. This child must be a ten year-old boy; our emperor will leave his throne to his foster son, and he will rest. The people who want to give their sons to the emperor should gather in front of the palace on Friday."
Before the crier finished talking, the public square in front of the palace became full of ten year-old boys.
The emperor gave flower seeds to each boy, and declared his condition: "After sowing these seeds and growing them, you should bring me a bunch of flowers. Of whose flowers that I become fond of, that boy will become my adopted son. You have three months; after this period it is our decision to gather in this same place."
Three months passed. The emperor went to the square and saw that the square was full of beautiful flowers with different colors. The boys who had taken the seeds were waiting for the happy moment.
The emperor looked attentively at the boys while passing near them without stopping.
At another corner stood a boy crying who had no flowers in his hands. The emperor went near the boy, and stopped. He asks:
"Why are you crying?"
The boy spoke of his trouble:
"My emperor, the seeds that your Excellency has given me did not grow despite my efforts. I tried everything, but in vain. I am weeping because you will not adopt me since I do not have any flowers."
The emperor replied, "Do not cry because of that, because I will adopt you as my son. Your seeds did not become flowers because I boiled them before giving them to you. These people who have brought flowers think that they can deceive me. Their flowers are not from my seeds. They found them somewhere else" said the emperor and hugged the boy.
"You told me the truth; you did not lie to me. Listen carefully, it is the person who accepts the truth, not the liar, who will become happy in the end."
See a lawyer. Seriously. See a lawyer. People on the internet are not lawyers; if they are lawyers, their main advice is go see a lawyer . Law is a profession of tiny details with huge consequences. Those tiny details vary from place to place and from subject to subject. Even lawyers have lawyers. If I learnt one and only one important lesson from my time in law school, it's this: If you have a question of law, go se…
> tiny details with huge consequences. This reminds me of tax filling. > Even lawyers have lawyers. Do accountants have accountants too?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does using the information on the document mean whoever misplaced is going to lose something? Probably not. My point is, the OP's case and your example about the wallet are not the same. PS: if I were the OP I would try to return or destroy them.
...however, my point is that you don't actually know what the benefits are of doing the right thing, except that it is highly likely that there will be benefits, even if small ones. Conversely, doing the wrong thing probably means that the 'unintended consequences' are bad - getting caught etc. You could take the documents and through thinking of 'I have struck gold' and nothing else, walk out of the cab and into the…
An interesting moral for a situation based on finding information.
See a lawyer. Seriously. See a lawyer. People on the internet are not lawyers; if they are lawyers, their main advice is go see a lawyer . Law is a profession of tiny details with huge consequences. Those tiny details vary from place to place and from subject to subject. Even lawyers have lawyers. If I learnt one and only one important lesson from my time in law school, it's this: If you have a question of law, go se…
If our only understanding of the law came directly from consulting a lawyer, we'd all be very poor and very ignorant. There is nothing wrong with asking about the experiences of others who may have asked lawyers similar questions, as long as we understand that we should directly seek a lawyer's advice in proportion to what is at stake. By sharing our legal experiences, we'd all become better at understanding the spec…
If only you get rid of the printouts you're safe because nobody can prove anything so basically you're free to do what you feel is right. After the printouts are gone and you do happen to remember what they said, there's absolutely no way to connect that information to you.
The owner of the papers might want them back though, so consider that too, please. You can return them in an anonymous envelope if you want your identity to not be disclosed.
1. The texts are subject to copyright. You have to treat them as you would any other copyrighted text. 2. You can trade on the information in the capital markets. The information was disclosed to you inadvertently. You are not an insider, you did not conspire with anyone to to violate the law. 3. The physical papers still belong to the owner. You may have custody of them, but you do not own them. With respect to trad…
Be careful of acting on that idea; just because something is morally reasonable doesn't make it legal. I heard of a case once where someone sold shares based on happening to see a factory on fire through an airplane window, and a court found it to be insider trading. Sure, maybe that case wasn't representative; I'm not a lawyer - but consult someone who is, before assuming that sort of thing is legal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> tiny details with huge consequences. This reminds me of tax filling. > Even lawyers have lawyers. Do accountants have accountants too?
Yes. A friend was recommending her accountant the other day- she said initially it put her off that he didn't do his own taxes, but he explained that doing your own taxes is like representing yourself in court - even if you're qualified to do it for others, you should never do it for yourself.
What would happen if we had a "double blind" system where people could receive insider trading information based on karma points? The idea is that a system would anonymously give out insider trading information to one or more people with the highest amount of karma. The granter of the stock tip would get a corresponding boost (or drop) in karma based on the value of the knowledge but couldn't benefit from the insider information directly with the exception in the future they would have a greater likely hood of getting anonymous insider information based on their karma point count.
example: 1) Alice creates an anomymous tip that Apple stock is likely to drop due to an unexpected sales decrease of the iphone 6. 2) The system establishes an initial weight for the stock tip based on company valuation and reliability of Alice. 3) The system identifies a user or set of users with the highest current karma points. Bob is one of these users. Bob's karma point total is reduced by the value of the recommendation. 4) Later on after banking a large number of points Alice is given a tip that Tesla stock is expected to rise. Alice is able to profit on this insider knowledge without... really having insider knowledge
This is somewhat akin to profiting off of documents in the back seat of a taxi. Since this seems like somewhat of an obvious system I wonder if it is practiced in real life and what law enforcement does to counter it....