Professional sports league games are the output of the efforts of thousands of people and billions of dollars of capital. The right to distribute video of those games are the largest part of how those leagues make money, as arranged by contracts and underpinned by intellectual property law.
This is not a case of "you're just bottling tap water". There is tremendous value created by these leagues as represented by their revenues. It is totally absurd to me that someone can believe stealing that intellectual property at scale is not a crime. It is no different than stealing a laptop. In fact, it's worse! The ease by which the scale of the theft can amplified is like stealing thousands of laptops. Do you believe stealing laptops and selling them is criminal?
It is not. If I can copy your laptop: You still have a laptop. I also have one now. So it's actually the opposite of worse. It's not nearly as bad.
> Do you believe stealing laptops and selling them is criminal?
Do you still have a laptop? Then why should I be punished in a jail cell? If you want to settle for cash, we can talk, but if you intend on threatening my life over copies then you have lost the plot.
We likely won't agree on this. I think you're wrong and theft should absolutely be criminal, and theft of certain magnitude should result in prison time.
But, he wasn't sent to prison just for the theft and distribution. He also "illegally intruded into MLB computer networks" and then "engaged in an attempt to extort approximately $150,000 from MLB ".
He plead guilty to all of this. You think all of that should just be settled via lawsuit, too?
Well.. as you yourself said: they're a billion dollar company. I expect them to secure their own infrastructure better. One guy with spare time working from home bested them? The FBI is not there to cover corporate negligence.
> He plead guilty to all of this.
Then he almost certainly would have settled very quickly in a civil case.
> You think all of that should just be settled via lawsuit, too?
Yes. It's the appropriate remedy. It's the fastest and most direct path to justice for the harmed entity.
If you're still so thirsty for blood then ask yourself if simple probation with agreed restrictions wouldn't have brought about the same outcome. Would the NFL and MLB have felt just as "protected" with this simple jurisprudence?
This was a criminal act. Not a civil dispute. Crime disturbs the moral order of a society. The punishment should fit the crime. Here, this man stole millions of economic value (with some extortion on the side). That certainly warrants jail time, in my mind (and the court’s, apparently).
A crime’s punishment should hold the criminal accountable, mete out retribution, deter other would be criminals, and incapacitate the criminal so they cannot continue to harm others.
> I expect them to secure their own infrastructure better
Sounds a lot like victim blaming. You must subscribe to the San Francisco justice model where people are told they shouldn’t have anything in their cars and they should be left unlocked, else they deserve it when a scumbag breaks their window to burgle their property. I don’t. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world doesn’t either.
This is not a case of "you're just bottling tap water". There is tremendous value created by these leagues as represented by their revenues. It is totally absurd to me that someone can believe stealing that intellectual property at scale is not a crime. It is no different than stealing a laptop. In fact, it's worse! The ease by which the scale of the theft can amplified is like stealing thousands of laptops. Do you believe stealing laptops and selling them is criminal?