According to the other post (Q&A), if Jonathan reported it as theft it would become a police matter. I think that sums it up in moral terms. If he bought himself $625 of coffee probably not. A nasty prosecutor might treat each cash transfer as a separate case of wire fraud.
At the end of the day I just ask myself "what the hell was that about?" and the idea of donating an iPad to the poor is the most idiotic use of diverted coffee money. With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world. Much better than strangers buying each other coffee. Way to change the world.
"With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world." seems to indicate that you believe that he's buying (or bought) an iPad to send it off to the 3rd world. That's - erm - quite wrong.
From all I can tell he
- wrote a script to tell him that more than $ X is on the card
- transfer money to a gift card by going to the counter (he was sitting in a StarBucks)
- repeat - he said he got $625 (on two cards, it seems those top out at $500)
His initial blog post used the iPad 2 as link bait and said 'You could buy an iPad with that cash!'. Afterwards he put these gift cards on eBay and claimed he'd give the return to charity.
No iPad in sight. No money to Apple.
So - posts like yours are showing that this is a very emotional thing. It's not helpful to jump in and bash people though, especially if you misunderstand the situation. Correct me if I failed to understand you?
Thanks for the correction. The $500 card is going for $510 now. I've donated to Save the Children before and no doubt it's a good cause. Can't argue that I find this mildly offensive. I guess it's the violation of implicit rules of an experiment that gives false hope on anonymously reciprocated altruism.
I would be surprised if police would investigate or a jury would convict. If you're doing something that looks like a social experiment, police usually don't really want anything to do with enforcing it. If someone stole your gift card out of your wallet, sure. But if you post your gift-card information on the internet and invite people to use it, it's not really their job to enforce your unwritten rules on how people should've used it.
At least if there were formal written rules on proper usage, you could make an argument that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should cover misuse of a card number, when the user agreed to an EULA in order to acquire it. Though I think that approach of turning EULAs into criminal law is also dangerous.
At the end of the day I just ask myself "what the hell was that about?" and the idea of donating an iPad to the poor is the most idiotic use of diverted coffee money. With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world. Much better than strangers buying each other coffee. Way to change the world.