Since this topic has been coming up in the discussion of which is worse here's the topic to discus if they are right or wrong. Honestly i find scamming to be much harder to morally justify. When you scam a person you have the intent of stealing their years or months of hard work. The fact that you have the intent of stealing the things that directly belong to the owner of the account is the problem i find. I find using a program such as an aber a lot easier to justify morally because of the fact that i haven't planned on stealing somebody's years of hard work. The fact that i didn't have the intent to cost a person years of work makes it much easier for me to justify this. When i click the start button on my aber i do have the intent to beat other people and abers to the buy of an item, but i do not intend to make TNT freeze a legit rser. This is a bad analogy but it's the only one i can think of right now xD In court murder is considered intentional or "premeditated" or unintentional "manslaughter." If you run over somebody with your car without the intent of killing that specific person it's a lot different that following that person and planning out how you're going to hit him. again a bad analogy but it's the first one that came to mind xD Final statement: Neither of these are completely justifiable by my moral standards, but it's much /EASIER/ to justify using a program, and not doing anything intentionally other than buying an item, than it is to intentionally take an account from somebody and intentionally cost them the years of work they put into the account.
Using programs like autobuyers is already hard enough to justify, but they don't actually hurt anyone. Okay, someone misses an item they would have otherwise gotten because an autobuyer got it, but even if they did get it, there would still be plenty of people out there that missed it anyway. People that RS legit like me know all too well that you're going to miss items and you're going to miss them a lot. However, hacking/cracking someone's account and stealing from them is never justifiable. Maybe if they've been inactive for months or years it isn't so bad, but taking something that someone else earned, indeed taking everything they've earned, is far worse than taking something they would have earned.
ya using autobuyers really does not hurt anyone it makes it a bit harder for legit rser's but thats it unlike a program that steals all information on someone's account so you can go in and clear them out that is not justifyable.
I think you hit it pretty much on the head - scamming, IMO, is much worse than using programs because you're taking someone else's hard work.
As I see it, when you AB, you aren't stealing from another player. You're simply rendering all the other people trying to restock said item unable to receive a potential gain, so they're essentially just losing something that wasn't theirs to gain in the first place. (After all, RSers miss often enough that I don't think it's that huge a deal.) Or at least, that's my logic...for example, when I first started playing Neopets 2 letter names were available, as were most RNs. (I wish I'd created a bunch back then...) But my having not created them back then is just not gaining a potential gain, just like having (a) legit player(s) miss an item that could have been a potential gain to them. Scamming someone of all they've earned, though...that's just morally wrong. You're stealing what they've done, what they've worked for. (Unless they so happen to also have used an AB for most of what they got. )
The only thing an ABer does that I couldn't do myself is restock 24/7. I don't have the time to play much, so I leave an AB to do it. In my opinion that merely puts me on level footing with people who don't have jobs and/or school. Scamming however, is stealing from people, usually the gullible (i.e. young kids or people or low intelligence)... not very nice If you want an analogy, imagine to thief's. One steals from big companies, say by stealing a TV from a WALMART store, nobody will really miss it as the company has loads of money and will not even be effected - this is like the ABer. Another thief robs old vulnerable ladies on the streets, upsets their lives and effects them greatly - this is like the scammer.
I think that scamming is entirely morally justifiable. I'm not big on laws. I think that if someone has the skills to steal and get away with it that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I mean, I know that this is probably going to cause a bit of a stir, but I'm a believer in the whole strong-preying-upon-the-weak thing. And before it's asked of me, no, I don't want someone to come steal my computer to show me that it's not nice. I've been stolen from before, and I would prefer it if it didn't happen again. No, I don't necessarily like that it happened - I think that it was my own fault that it did, however, and I've taken steps to prevent it from happening again - but I'm glad that it did. I've learned from the situation, and it has helped to make me who I am. I think that if you learn something from a situation, then it's a good thing that it happened. I do try not to bring up this mentality at funerals, but there it is. If you hack into someone's account, they'll learn to better safeguard themselves, not only on Neo but in real life. If you scam someone out of something, they're going to learn something from that, too. Victimless crimes like ABing and such are, to me, a completely different class of offence. Because no one is getting hurt, no one is learning anything concrete from it. Maybe the person ABing is learning to abuse the system, but that's not a single-experience kind of thing, that's over the course of time. I dunno, I guess I'm of the "if you've got it, flaunt it" mindset. As long as you've got the skills, then I see nothing wrong with using them. That being said, I am also of the whole "education is everything" mindset. Maybe what I think is wrong overall because we're not in an equal-opportunity world. However, I refuse to think that it's wrong in this case, because if you're on the internet for Neo, you can find the resources that allow you to cheat the system. And if you're against using them, then you can at least learn from them and use them to protect your assets.
Neither ABing or Scamming is morally justifiable. Stealing from a large corporation is just as bad as stealing from a small one. The fact that "they won't notice the difference" is only an excuse used to ease the conscience. Sure, people can learn from actions done to them, but it doesn't make the action morally right. Is it morally right to pickpocket? Of course not. The person being pickpocket-ed might learn to be more careful, but it doesn't justify the pickpocket-er. With that said. I don't know why a person would want to justify ABing to themselves/others. You do it because you can; that's all there is to it.
It's an opinion - one based on faulty logic. If you want to say that everyone has different morals, what is the point of the whole discussion? Morals are standards; just because a particular person may have different morals doesn't mean that society itself doesn't. In fact, before the question of whether ABing/Scamming is morally justifiable, it would be prudent to define morals (in what context, etc) If we go back to the WAL-MART example, your reasoning would indeed be flawed. WAL-MART is, perhaps, the most advanced big box retailer in terms of keeping track of inventory. This allows each individual store to maintain its stock. This, in turn, (along with cheap goods produced overseas) leads to profit. However, just because the owners/CEOs of WAL-MART are rich, doesn't mean the people who work there are. By stealing from them, you are endangering the livelihoods of those who work at minimum wage with minimal benefits. Will it affect them? Yes it will - the loss of inventory will be placed on their shoulders. They would be hurt as badly as the "vulnerable old ladies."
Cheating is actually a sign of intelligence. In childhood there is a strong correlation between those that lie and general IQ! Morality is a sliding scale have a look at Kohlberg, Piaget and Maslow if your interested in this area of research. Some people choose to live in the box, some people choose to live outside it. Some morality requires a breaking of conventional morality. eg. The man who breaks the law to get medicine he cant afford for his wife
Cheating != Lying Life has many choices; some choices affect others more so than other choices do. If we want to discuss morality, perhaps The Trolley Problem would be good to being in. A utilitarian view would be to kill one so that five could live, but morally, the better option would be to let five die. Does the life of any one person outweigh the lives of numerous others? What is the line between morally justifiable and not?
In the absence of other information you would have to save the 5 at the cost of 1. If you had chosen the other path, imagine the survivor guilt, nobody benefits from that path.
Alright, a little variation on the standard trolley problem: All 3 of these are essentially the same case; the answer to each, however, may not be.
I agree with this. However, when you throw in something that is virtual, ie, on the internet, then you feel that it's not as big of deal. Certainly it's not completely morally justifiable, but its more morally justifiable so that more people do it than say, scam other people.
Oh please~ You say my reasoning is flawed because the stealing of a TV could contribute to a loss which would result in repercussions for the staff who work there - certainly that's true. It's also true that every cigarette you smoke damages (or time you drive a car or time you spray a deodorant can or fart - take your pick) the environment which could, let's be silly and say cause a snowy day that would never have happened if we took better care of the environment, and this snowy day results in the death of X "vulnerable old people". Using your logic, this would not be morally justifiable because you have contributed to the death of "vulnerable old people". So based on that ridiculous-yet-possible situation, in which your logic is applied, do/would you or anybody else really consider spraying an aerosol can or hell, farting to be immoral? No, the fact is that your contribution is so minor that it is morally justifiable, exactly where you draw the line on that point is opinion. The logic in where you draw your line is irrelevant as it is an opinion and however you justify it is logical as an opinion is something owned by you and the logic applied is your own. Summary: my logic is not flawed, and using programs is morally justifiable to me. As is stealing a TV from WALMART. FACT.
Once again, this discussion goes back to the exact definition of "moral." But meh. Your argument is based on a slippery slope. The world does not exist in black and white; the difference between spraying a can of aerosol and stealing a TV is the intent behind the action (trolley problem, hello). The fact remains that stealing a TV from WAL-MART will be much more detrimental to employees of that particular store than driving a car and watching carbon emissions go out the back will ever be to a random person on the street. The question is when a person would make the distinction between "minor" and not.
You originally said my opinion is based on flawed logic because I said that there's a difference between stealing from a large corporation and a vulnerable individual. Now you are drawing your own line based on your morals, while still trying to say that I am wrong? "The question is when a person would make the distinction between "minor" and not"? - I.E. where they would draw the line, as I stated? My argument is not based on a slippery slope, it's quite clearly yours, and it was from the offset - claiming flawed logic in an opinion is absurd as the logic in an opinion is subjective. It is entirely logical for me to say that it is morally right to steal a TV from a large corporation, but wrong to steal from a vulnerable individual.
And this would be a case of misquoting my statement. The "minor" I was referring to was the effect of the action, not the action in and of itself. Did I draw my own line? No; I merely stated that it was necessary to define a point (in this case, differentiating between the severity of two actions) to use as a reference in order to clarify the topic. Your argue that stealing from "big corporations" is different from stealing from individuals. Really? So stealing is fine when you can't see the immediate outcome? Okay. If you want to claim that your viewpoint is your opinion (and thus subjective), that's fine. I'm in no rush to change your point of view. Is it logical for you to make that statement? Sure, it might be. Could opinion be based on faulty logic? Of course.
They're about as morally justifiable as each other. In each scenario, you will still be depriving another user of items, and hence neopoints. Using programs is more justifiable than scamming, however. When you use a program, you steal the item from the shop - affecting the user, but not directly. When you scam, you take that item. To use my bar analogy again: A guy walks up to a girl at a bar, strikes up a conversation and is about to take her back to his place. Unfortunately, he needs to go to the toilet before he can go home and get laid. When he comes out of the toilet, he sees the girl walking out with a hotter guy. The guy loses the girl in this situation. The next night, the same guy strikes up another conversation with a similar looking girl. She agrees to come back to his place for some 'coffee', but has to go to the toilet again.. but has learned his lesson from last time - he tells her to wait by his car outside. When he's at the urinal, a guy comes up behind him, clubs him on the head, and then steals his car keys and the girl. In both situations, the guy doesn't get laid. But in the second one, the scamming situation, the man directly affected him.