To be honest, I think I'd probably become a super villain for a while. Then grow tired of it and start trying to help people.

Look at Bill Gates. "World's Richest Man" (super power of economic amazing-ness)

At first (and as part of Microsoft) he did all sorts of horrible things (according to the general Slashdot population... all sorts of we hate Bill Gates sentiment on here. Even a photoshopped photo of him as a Borg). Compare to today, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has taken on the task of completely eliminating malaria from the world & improving american education.

Bill has teamed up with Warren Buffet and other Bajillionaires to "Pledge to give away the vast majority of their fortunes"

Of course it remains to be seen if their hopes for the follow through is as solid as the words behind it... but the hope is there.

Villian to Superhero.

What about Mark Zuckerberg? $100 Million to Education. Sure, there's a douchebag past ... but signs of hero in the making?

I think the idea of a "100 year" bill is on the right track ($7500).

But in the back of my head, it doesn't sound like it's enough.

Fire Department Budget / Number of Fires per year = Cost per fire.
Looking here: http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhall/dept/fire/budget/budget.htm

They've got about 1200 fires a year and a $3M budget

Which actually works out to $2500 per fire.

So actually, a charge of $2500 to put out the fire and a $5000 penalty does sound about "right" (maybe just $5000)

Maybe they can put a process in place whereby "next time" something like this comes up, they can offer the "you didn't have insurance" rate to someone. Allowing three dogs and a cat to die for $2500 doesn't site right with me. In fact it feels downright evil.

Hopefully hindsight will fix this for the future.

Compared to the actual cost of the fire, the actual numbers paid out by the insurance company, and the actual losses, even $10K would be a deal.
(what's the price of life?)

Maybe.

If I were a betting man though... I'd put my money down on the side that said he didn't.

Most of the people I know who rattle on about bittorrent and such don't actually buy copies of the things they download. They just watch 'em and delete 'em.

He could very well be the person who cancelled his cable and then buys or rents DVD box sets. My experience tells me that the vast majority of the time, that is not the case.

There is some "conventional business wisdom" out there that says first mover advantage is a myth whereas "Fast Follower" is a really good place to be.

http://steveblank.com/2010/10/04/why-pioneers-are-the-ones-with-the-arrows-in-their-backs/

Goes into detail but the short version is, find something successful and copy it, means you don't have to spend a bundle on market research to find out what doesn't work. (Or something like that)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

I didn't know what you were on about ... but being slashdot I assumed there was something going on.
Apparently:

and boobies before that...

( . )( . )

An interesting other thing they might be able to do is map the frequently banned IP's track them and follow up with a great big lawyer-stick.
You know ... RIAA style!

Honestly, this isn't specifically a response to the immediate parent - but the whole length of the thread that has gone off on religion.

WTF?

I've not got the mod points to mark the whole of this stuff Offtopic ... this really has nothing to do with the court case of a dude who's addicted to a shitty version of World of Warcraft.

mod parent up. Seriously. the only reason I clicked "read more" was to find out WTF PrestaShop was. Then the whole review...
This review could have been written by running a preg_replace on "Generic Book Review" (released under the GPL) /the subject/prestashop/

I think there's a possibility that the company has a "duty of care" and could possibly have seen that someone playing 20,000 hours is not using the game in a healthy way. WOW has a command line option (played) that adds up the total time you've played on that character down to the minute or second... lineage could very likely have a query that runs to tell them if anyone's account is online an unhealthy amount.

WOW even has a message during a load screen "remember to go outside sometimes"

There are stories about of Korean kids who've died at the computer playing games... not sure if it was WOW, but the deaths have happened.

Is there a reasonable expectation that the company have usage monitors in place to detect "over playing"? They know that a certain, minuscule portion of the population can get dangerously addicted.

I'm pretty sure that they should hold some responsibility for it, however I don't think that this person is necessarily worth $3million. The average american doesn't make 3 million in five years. I'd estimate the absolute minimum wage times the number of years they were playing at dangerous levels.

I'd see a non-disclosed settlement without admitting guilt on the order of $60K to $80k just to make him go away. The court fees are more & the precedent is worse.

You'd think that would solve things... but have you ever met his son?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8227915.stm

Same evil, just younger.

this is the funniest one liner I think i've ever heard.
I'm sure it's one of those 'old as time' ones - but it really hit my funny bone.

Or found a bloggy website "yelp-lies.com" and allow for user-submitted posts referencing evidence of yelp strong-arming users into removing their posts.
Same-ish end result but with a larger user base you'd have to spend less time finding each individual story.

Suppose the drawback would be the down-vote mob that yelp hires to somehow fill your site with posts about how great yelp actually is.

If you've got the photos in my facebook account, Then don't you already know who I am?
With those rules, I could Identify you with one facebook photo.

The Hummer tax loophole? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11172853 I prefer the electric car tax break as opposed to the polluting gas-guzzler loophole.