Hypothetical question about value created using stolen money I was thinking about this scenario where a person steals some money and uses that to start a business and even becomes very successful and makes many times the initial money. I was wondering that if he gets caught, what would happen to the value he has created? I think that it is not fair to give all the created value back to the person the money is stolen from. I also think that the thief (here) has put some effort to make that business successful so he would not get anything back for his effort if all the value is taken away. What does the law say in this type of situation? (US-law)
In general, the law seeks to make all parties whole. There is no mechanism for profit-sharing between thieves and their victims. Victims of theft are entitled to receive their money back plus the applicable rate of interest (called the judgment rate). They are not entitled to profits or windfalls above and beyond the statutory judgment rate of interest. What if the act of stealing the money has destroyed the owner's business and has left him with a lot of debt and bankrupt? Criminal statutes provide for the return of stolen funds plus interest. Recovery of damages, as you describe, is provided by civil statutes and common law. So, to recover damages, the victim would need to sue the thief in civil court.
Stealing money is theft, see RCW Chapter 9a.56 in Washington, and analogous laws in other jurisdictions. What you describe is theft, as defined under RCW 9A.56.020, and that is a crime. Defenses are available only in case of an open taking made under a good faith claim to title to the property (&quot;it's my money&quot;), or an irrelevant defense related to pallet theft from a pallet recycler. There is no exception arising for goods &quot;in the possession of a criminal organization&quot;. There is also no applicable attainder process for declaring an organization to be a &quot;criminal organization&quot; to which such an exception could be referred, in Washington or any other state that I am familiar with. At the federal level, 18 USC Ch. 96 does not have a provision for declaring some organization to be a &quot;criminal organization&quot;, but it does prohibit using proceeds from &quot;a pattern of racketeering activity&quot; that a person or organization participated in, to support a business engaged in interstate or foreign commerce. There is an extensive but specific list of trigger crimes, which are all federal crimes. Supposing that a state wanted to make it legal to steal from criminals, there would have to be a suitable definition of &quot;criminal&quot;. Compare the various sex offender laws, where under dell-defined circumstances, a person is legally declared to be a sex offender required to register. If the property is in fact the proceeds of a criminal activity (not merely &quot;in the possession of a criminal&quot;) or is used to support criminal activities, it might be seized under civil forfeiture statutes. However, those statutes only allow the government to seize the property – vigilante civil forfeiture is still theft, a crime for which you can be prosecuted. The state might seize such assets and, when challenged in court, may have to prove that the assets a seizable (this is highly jurisdiction-dependent). The prospects that a prosecutor will turn a blind eye to a theft on the grounds that the victims are criminals is pretty small. More likely, everything gets seized and everybody gets prosecuted.
The crime of theft generally requires two elements - taking control of property, and the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. If Bob had no intent to leave without paying, he may lack the intent often required for theft. In the scenario described, it's possible Bob has not committed theft, but his actions may indeed constitute theft depending on the jurisdiction. As pointed out in the comments, some jurisdictions codify the concealment of merchandise as prima facie presumption of an intention to steal, or may even codify the act of concealment itself as a crime. There are some shoplifting laws statues that specifically call out &quot;willful concealment&quot;, which does not require leaving the premises of a store to have committed a crime - merely concealing the item may be a crime in itself, although perhaps not the crime of &quot;theft&quot;. Whether a court would find Bob guilty of theft will depend on a number of factors, depending if there is leeway in inferring intent, and how that intent is inferred. If Bob's actions are found to be sufficiently inconsistent with the behavior of someone who truly intended to pay, the court may find him guilty. If a reasonable person would infer a lack of intent to pay from Bob's actions, he may be found guilty.
I'm confident that there has been no successful breach of contract lawsuit on that basis: that is not the right legal basis. Actions against a shoplifter would either be under tort law or, much more likely, criminal law. Put simply, theft is a crime, encoded in the laws of all nations, and the government will shoulder the burden of punishing a shoplifter. Since the goal of criminal law is to guarantee a well-ordered society (not to restore the victim of the crime), a victim of theft may have to pursue their own legal case against the criminal, if they want to be restored for their loss (let us say that the criminal also ate the evidence).
It isn't necessarily "illegal" (in the sense you are committing a crime) but you may be in violation of a verbal contract (which would fall under tort law). Let's take this a bit further. Perhaps Joe Schmoe gave you his debit card information so that you could make deposits for him and he said you could take $5 out for yourself for the trouble. This is a contract between you and Joe for a service. You can't extend Joe's offer to Jane Doe by saying "here is some debit card information, take $2.50 out for yourself". You have no right to extend your contract with Joe to somebody else. Now specifically for passwords it basically boils down to the same thing. Unless Joe gives you explicit permission to give that to somebody else, you can't just decide to unilaterally give what Joe gave you to somebody else. This may be different if Joe said "here, I'm buying you a subscription to service XYZ because you are a nice guy", this may be construed as a gift which transfers ownership. At that point you have control over what is or isn't done with the account. As another example let's say Joe let you borrow his car. You can't turn around and say to Jane, "here's a car you can use", Joe did not extend the offer to Jane, nor did Joe give you the right to extend the offer to another person. It's a moot point though, in the original context of this question, Netflix does restrict you from sharing your passwords "outside your household". Almost every paid service has some restriction against sharing with others. In the end Netflix may shut off Joe's account and Joe may sue you for damages, but you aren't going to be thrown in jail for this. This would be a civil case (tort) which you may be liable for monetary damages.
The statute of limitations is quite relevant. A couple points to help explain why: First, there are a lot of different legal actions that could arise from someone stealing property. You could have criminal charges for theft, you could have a civil claim for conversion (to pay the value of the stolen property), you could have a civil claim for replevin (to return the stolen goods), and you could have a civil action to determine the true owner of the property. All those cases arise under different laws, and all of them could have different SOLs. The fact that time has run out for one doesn't necessarily mean that time has run out for all of them. Second, improperly obtaining title does not mean that you are not and never will be the true title holder. Take a look at the doctrine of &quot;adverse possession,&quot; which basically allows you to become the true owner of real or personal property by simply acting like the owner for a long enough period of time -- ranging from 5 to 21 years, depending on the jurisdiction. Third, SOL is a restriction on when you can start a lawsuit. Sometimes, as Dale M said, it starts when you actually learn about the transfer, but it could also start when you would have learned about the transfer if you had exercised reasonable diligence. So the fact that a lawsuit is happening now regarding something that happened a long time ago doesn't necessarily mean the SOL was inoperative; it may just mean that the SOL didn't start until long after the transfer, or it majy just mean the litigation is dragging out. Fourth, the Facebook example is not a good one. That lawsuit is primarily focused not on the transfer of property, but on breaches of contract, for which the relevant statute of limitations is six years. Second, those breaches are focused on a contract reached in 2004. Because the lawsuit began in 2010, it was started within the statute of limitations. Had Ceglia waited until today to file it, he probably would time-barred.
No, it is not. Just as it is illegal to steal from a thief, it is illegal to hack a hacker. Criminals are often considered a good target for crimes from a practical standpoint, but crimes against criminals are still prosecuted. As criminals are unlikely to report crimes against them to the authorities (particularly when doing so runs the risk of them being arrested for their crimes), targeting them does tend to result in a lower risk of being caught by the authorities, but if the crime is discovered, it will generally be prosecuted all the same. To that point, two Florida men have recently been arrested and are being prosecuted for stealing millions of dollars in Bitcoins from an illegal, darkweb drug marketplace in 2013, and there is always the more famous case of the two government agents who are in jail for stealing from the Silk Road. In your specific example, if all you did was hand over the information to the FBI, it's less likely that you'd be prosecuted than if you did so for personal gain, but you would be at risk of prosecution for engaging in vigilante computer hacking, yes. Also consider that if your actions happened to interfere with an ongoing investigation or result in the inability to prosecute (say, for the evidence you gathered being tainted and inadmissible by your involvement), you could be charged with crimes such as obstruction of justice or interfering with a police investigation as well.
Whoever "derived" the illegal derivative work most likely has copyright in his derivations, unless they are not worth copyright protections. Say I take the Harry Potter books and add a few chapters and try to sell it - that's copyright infringement of course, but I have the copyright on these additional chapters. However, I don't have the right to allow you to copy the derived work. And even if you have the right to copy the original work, you don't have the right to copy the derived work because it is a different work. I could extract my changes, and allow you to take them and do with them what you like. You could then create an illegally derived work yourself. I couldn't sue you, but the original copyright holder could. To the comments: One, a work and a derivative of the work are not the same, so even if you have the right to make a copy of a work, that doesn’t give you any right whatsoever to copy a derivative work - they are not the same work. Two, the copyright holder has the exclusive right to control copying and the creation of derivative works. If the copyright holder doesn’t want derivatives to exist, then creating them, copying them etc. is always copyright infringement.