Prison labour used in China to farm gold in games?

[Neil]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...et-gaming-scam As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells. Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do. "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

[AcesandEights]

China probably has them on life support and low-level dialysis as they harvest them for organs at the same time.

[JDFP]

What??? You mean to tell me that China would violate human dignity and rights in such a clear-cut way? No, I don't believe it! j.p.

[Trin]

I will be the first to say that playing some of these games is cruel and unusual punishment. Game Informer said it very well in the Sacred Cow article... "Wow is a game so tedious you have pay people to play it for you."

[Mr. Clean]

Inmates should be forced to pay for their room and board instead of the burden falling on the taxpayer. I understand some make licence plates and uniforms but WOW Gold is so much more profitable. I know someone who throws a good amount of cash at these websites for gold on WOW. Shame to know his money is going to China. >.<

[Mitchified]

I don't know about the rest, but I'm fairly sure that forcing people to play EverQuest is seen as cruel and inhumane by the United Nations.

[brer]

Inmates should be forced to pay for their room and board instead of the burden falling on the taxpayer. I understand some make licence plates and uniforms but WOW Gold is so much more profitable. In a very real sense, the taxpayer is the one who demanded that certain offenses carry jail time. The taxpayer can pay for their care. We have in recent years moved to a very dangerous model of "For Profit Pri$on$". This means that the .gov makes money off of you if they can put you in prison. There has already been evidence that this type of system is easily abused. If the state can make money off of putting people in prison, everyone's safety is in doubt. Putting a person in prison should be expensive. It shows that society has failed and needs to pay to rehabilitate the person. Do you want punishment or do you want rehabiltation? You really cannot have both.

[Mitchified]

Putting a person in prison should be expensive. It shows that society has failed and needs to pay to rehabilitate the person. I've never bought this line of thinking. It's society's fault if a guy goes out and shoots his girlfriend because she's been cheating on him? It's society's fault if a drug dealer sells drugs to kids? It's society's fault if some business executive skims money off the top of his company's books? Committing a crime is an individual's choice, not some failure of the society that individual is a part of. This whole "blame society" stance that's cropped up more and more since the seventies is just a way for people to escape having to take responsibility for their own actions.

[brer]

No, people do need to take responsibility for their actions. That is why we put them in a prison vice a mental home. Does society have no responsibility though? The cutting of social programs in the past has been directly correllated to increases in current crime levels. If you have looked at statistics, we have almost doubled our prison population since the seventies with the "Get tough on crime" stances our politicians often take. Would you really like to go in front of a judge on some charge in a cash strapped state when the state can make money off of you? Our nation already imprisons more people than any other country in the world. It's really not that good of an idea to make it profitable.

[Mr. Clean]

Do you want punishment or do you want rehabiltation? You really cannot have both. I believe you can have both. If the punishment is harsh enough, the offender won't think about doing it again. For example, if my son whacks my cat over the head with a toy lightsaber...I in return spank his ass and put him in time-out and tell him not to ever hit the cat. It doesn't matter if he believes what he did was wrong or not. He's going to remember what happened for hitting the cat and "most likely" not do it again. I say most likely because there is always that one. I do agree with you about society having "some" blame in the whole thing. It's extremely hard for felons to get employed once back on the streets. If you steal a chicken, go to jail and get out with no way to buy food.....your probably gonna steal another chicken. I'm not certain if there is programs out there to help individuals returning to the streets get a job but with a competitive job market, I can imagine it's probably a pretty big challenege. I just don't think that taxpayers shouldn't pickup as much of the tab as we do. If prisons can make revenue off inmates, I'm all for it.

[brer]

I just don't think that taxpayers shouldn't pickup as much of the tab as we do. If prisons can make revenue off inmates, I'm all for it. This is where it starts getting dangerous. If government does not bear any cost for putting people in jail and can actually turn a profit from it, what is to stop them from putting people in jail just to get a kickback or to make the next budget? It's already happened with a few judges and a kickbacks at a for profit facility. I would be willing to bet that the abuses are a bit more widespread. The last time my town had a budget crunch, cops were out in force ticketing people to make money for the city. Would you like to see them putting people in jail to fix a state budget?

[Mr. Clean]

This is where it starts getting dangerous. If government does not bear any cost for putting people in jail and can actually turn a profit from it, what is to stop them from putting people in jail just to get a kickback or to make the next budget? It's already happened with a few judges and a kickbacks at a for profit facility. I would be willing to bet that the abuses are a bit more widespread. The last time my town had a budget crunch, cops were out in force ticketing people to make money for the city. Would you like to see them putting people in jail to fix a state budget? This is why people put in a position of power must be chosen wisely. Not to mention have something in place to ensure honest of the system. (IRS, FBI, ect) I'm not calling you a liar but normally when a town/city does a budget crunch people get laid off. Tickets are bad for business. You have 10 cops all working for a $20,000ish salary. Getting rid of 1 is a hell of a lot easier than writing 100 tickets @ $214 a pop. Not to mention not as many people pissed off when election time comes around. Out of that fine, the issuing police department might get 1% of it. Most is given to the courts.

[brer]

I'm not calling you a liar but normally when a town/city does a budget crunch people get laid off. Tickets are bad for business. You have 10 cops all working for a $20,000ish salary. Getting rid of 1 is a hell of a lot easier than writing 100 tickets @ $214 a pop. Not to mention not as many people pissed off when election time comes around. Out of that fine, the issuing police department might get 1% of it. Most is given to the courts. I saw it with my own two eyes. There was a town meeting where a shortfall was announced.speed traps started setting a lot of traps the next day.It quit after petitions for a recall election were being spread around. Here, ticket money goes into the towns general fund. We also have a very corrupt local government, many if not most city employees are closely related to someone with power.

[DjfunkmasterG]

I've never bought this line of thinking. It's society's fault if a guy goes out and shoots his girlfriend because she's been cheating on him? It's society's fault if a drug dealer sells drugs to kids? It's society's fault if some business executive skims money off the top of his company's books? Committing a crime is an individual's choice, not some failure of the society that individual is a part of. This whole "blame society" stance that's cropped up more and more since the seventies is just a way for people to escape having to take responsibility for their own actions. A man should be exonerated for killing the woman who was cheating on him. Back n the really old days, adultery was punished via stoning... just saying...

[Mr. Clean]

A man should be exonerated for killing the woman who was cheating on him. Back n the really old days, adultery was punished via stoning... just saying... People are still punished by stoning in some countries....just saying