alt Hacker NewsIsn't the nuance mostly or only the fraudulently obtained debit cards?
I suspect the case hinged on that, and everything else was legal, albeit part of the fraud, and was included as a complete description of the scheme.
To be fair, I'm guessing he couldn't have created the scale of fake accounts without debit card fraud, but creating multiple accounts, even if they're fake, is usually just a TOS violation, or maybe a civil matter, not criminal.
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Could be a separate charge, I agree that's an even clearer cut.
But I was responding to the comment touching on more general seemingly ambiguous situations.
What makes Terms of Service / contract violations a different case than deceit for financial profit. Why is one tolerated by justice but the other condemned as criminal activity.
But you are right, debit card fraud, wire fraud and the likes are clearly defined as criminal.
> but creating multiple accounts, even if they're fake, is usually just a TOS violation, or maybe a civil matter, not criminal.
Yes, in and of itself, creating multiple accounts in violation of TOS is probably not a criminal fraud under either state or federal law.
But when you do it as the mechanism to conceal streaming manipulation in violation of the agreement that governs the terms of payment, and thereby to secure large amounts of money from the streaming service under false pretenses (and, given the structure of streaming payments, to deny payment to other song owners which they would have received without the deception) on the other hand is a different story.
Like yeah, flexing your index finger isn’t a crime, either, but if you are holding a gun with that finger on the trigger and the barrel pointed at someone's head...
The law very often is focussed more than anything about the purpose and effect of an action, and that you can ignore that and describe the action in terms that aren't criminal without considering purpose and effect really doesn't matter.