EVE Search - I have reached a decision on whether to reimburse the overpaid ransom.

James 315 wrote:

This weekend a controversial incident occurred in which I asked an orca pilot to pay a 90 million isk ransom and he sent me 900 million instead. Since he failed to pay what I asked, I was forced to kill his orca, the hulk he had parked alongside, and his pod, with damages totaling over 2 billion isk. However, he insisted that overpayment of a ransom should count as paying it, and we engaged in an extended discussion about whether my actions were honourable, and whether some reparations should be paid.

Since I was not aware of any custom or precedent establishing the idea that overpayments satisfy ransom demands, the miner and I agreed the matter should be brought before his peers on this forum. He created a thread describing what occurred (found here) and opened the floor to the general public to weigh in on the situation. Upon request, evidence of the incident including API-verified killmails and screenshots were provided.

The debate in that thread has wound down, and I believe it has served its purpose. I have created this thread to avoid the outcome being buried in pages of previous replies, and to serve as a reference point for future use: I believe this is the first time the issue has been raised, so we're establishing some precedent here.

The options presented me were essentially as follows:

A. Keep everything, pay the miner nothing.
B. Return the excess ransom (900m - 90m each for the orca and hulk).
C. Return the excess ransom and reimburse the miner for the value of the ships/pod that should have been let go.

Before I announce my verdict, I would like to address the concerns of some cynical players who believe that I never intended to reimburse the miner, and that this is some kind of "show trial." Let me be clear. I value my honour above all else. I am among those who believe that one's actions in EVE reflect upon one's real-life character, and aside from stealing 30 billion in the Currin Trading scam I have always sought to maintain the highest level of integrity and fairness throughout my EVE career. When my reputation is on the line, and when people question my commitment to the code of Bushido, I take it as seriously as a heart attack.

Therefore, I want to stress that I did not come to this decision lightly. I gave this a lot of thought, and I am well aware that since this is a matter of first impression (to my knowledge), my decision here will have an impact on the future conduct of space piracy. To that end, I will provide a detailed justification for my verdict.

Without further ado, my judgment is as follows:

I have decided to keep all of the isk, and I will not reimburse the miner for any of the losses he incurred when I destroyed his ships/implants.

Again, I would like to caution readers against assuming that I am being guided by selfishness or the desire to grief. This is not a case of "because I said so"; I believe one's actions should always be guided by enlightened reason. My verdict is based upon four separate grounds, which are as follows:

#1. Public opinion. The miner and I agreed that we would put this issue to the forum. While some posters expressed a feeling that reimbursement was appropriate, the majority felt I should keep the isk and destroy a miner's ship regardless of whether he paid a ransom. A persuasive case was made by some that the miner was tempting fate by mining during Hulkageddon, and that his orca was fail-fit.

#2. Failure to follow instructions. I specifically demanded the miner pay me a ransom of 90 million isk for each ship. He did not follow that instruction. Although the miner claimed it was a mistake, I gave him ample time to correct his mistake when I asked him again to send me the proper amount. It was only after he refused that I killed his ships and podded him.

#3. Mathematical destiny. When a ship is destroyed, its modules (aside from rigs) have a 50% chance of dropping. Over the years, I have noticed that the "drop lottery" has tended to disfavor me. For some reason, it seems that the more valuable mods tend not to drop. Just a couple weeks ago, I killed a hulk with a faction invulnerability field worth about 400 million. Do you think it dropped? Of course not. But according to the law of large numbers, I shouldn't expect this kind of bad luck to continue. When the miner sent me 900 million by mistake, this was most likely an act of fate, balancing out all of my bad luck from before. I am therefore entitled to the isk.

#4. Highsec miners must all be destroyed. As I explained in my recent manifestos, highsec miners pose an existential threat to EVE. By endlessly demanding nerfs to highsec violence and redistributing wealth from nullsec, the miners have caused extraordinary damage to EVE. If they are allowed to continue nerfing non-consensual PvP, they will remove EVE's central purpose, and CCP will go out of business. To save EVE from that fate, we must reduce the power of the carebears by reducing their numbers, and this is accomplished by making highsec mining less profitable--by causing economic damage to the miners and increasing the risk of their profession. The simple fact is that the miner I killed was caught red-handed taking ore from a belt in highsec. It may not be against the EULA to do this, but it is a counter-revolutionary act for which I have absolutely no patience. Once he trained his mining laser on that first chunk of ore, he forfeited all of his rights.

I hope that everyone can respect this decision. Regardless, it is final.

- 315