The court in Idaho decided that a software developer’s computer could be seized without him being notified primarily because his website stated: “We like hacking things and don’t want to stop.”

What elevates the case from a run-of-the-mill intellectual property dispute is that Battelle persuaded the court to allow it to seize Thuen's computer to copy its files. The district court ruled that the programmer has the skills, as a "hacker", to release the contested code publicly, and destroy any evidence, if he knew a seizure was imminent: "The court has struggled over the issue of allowing the copying of the hard drive. This is a serious invasion of privacy and is certainly not a standard remedy... The tipping point for the court comes from evidence that the defendants – in their own words – are hackers. By labeling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act. And concealment likely involves the destruction of evidence on the hard drive of Thuen’s computer. For these reasons, the court finds this is one of the very rare cases that justifies seizure and copying of the hard drive." The plaintiff also obtained a temporary restraining order against Thuen and Southfork Security without a prior notice primarily because, again, the Southfork website declared “we like hacking things and we don’t want to stop"./auote?

Mostly, they don't want to face the consequences of players' bad behavior. In an interview with the website Rock Paper Shotgun, Battlefield 3's executive producer Patrick Bach explained that he doesn't "want to see videos on the Internet where people shoot civilians. That's something I will sanitize by removing that feature from the game." Bach believes that video games are serious business but that players' irreverence is holding back the form. "If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go [to the] dark side because people think it's cool to be naughty, they won't be caught," he said.