[kstenerud]

Ok, let's go down this road. Suppose a crime is discovered long after the event. Does that mean you take their house? They probably wouldn't have gotten a job good enough to buy one. Their possessions? Gone. How about their family? Probably wouldn't have gotten married. Probably wouldn't have had those children. Erase erase erase!

Honestly, the response here is downright frightening, and I fear for our future...

[hath995]

The difference between all the things that you listed is that works of art are able to give royalties to a person. If you continue to buy or consume their products they still profit.

Obviously ex post facto law is bad for society. However, if an artist is receiving royalties for a work they made during which they raped several people, why should they still profit?

[kstenerud]

Because it's the job of the justice system to mete out punishment, not the modern day equivalent of a lynch mob.

[arduanika]

> Because it's the job of the justice system to mete out punishment, not the modern day equivalent of a lynch mob.

This should be so glaringly obvious.

A common problem when someone finishes serving their jail time as allotted by said justice system, the (much more low-key) lynch mob doesn't want to hire them just yet.

But what doesn't happen is this: the prisoner, by some stroke of luck, gets a job in a say a car factory, and suddenly everyone else in that factory should loose their job, and I'm a bad person for wanting to drive a car that the ex-felon worked on.

[m_mueller]

The difference is probably that the factory worker is not seen by the car buyer - we wouldn’t want to expose everyone’s mind to the terrible sight of an ex-felon would we?

Now all that being said, this is probably just a pendulum swing. It looks like for decades sexual assault was shielded in the media industry - me too is overall still a positive movement IMO, it’s just important to not letting it get too far (and I think those breaking forces are already acting).

[zimpenfish]

One of the key problems, however, is that the justice system isn't doing that. Hence why you get consumer-level campaigns to apply pressure and punishments in other ways.

[xorfish]

How can you know that it isn't doing that?

I imagine sex crimes to be really hard to proof. Because the difference between a completely legal act and one that is deeply wrong is the state of mind of two people at the time.

The justice system shouldn't convict someone if it can't be sure that the accuses really did the crime.

[astura]

The criminal justice system is very, very rarely involved in HR matters, and that's what we are talking about. (Hiring and firing)

[UweSchmidt]

Exactly. The justice system has prisons, or fines. Looking for ways to hurt individuals on top of that is mob mentality. Oh he has a job, lets put pressure on the employer. Oh he has sponsors on social media - lets contact those.

[Someone]

In addition to “because it’s the job of the justice department to dole out punishment”: if an artist is receiving dividend on shares bought in a period during which they raped several people, should we take those dividends? The money they earned in a period in which they raped people?

That would be quite a deviation from what the justice system ‘we’ (in the western world, 21st century, …) agreed on typically do: only take the money people get from a crime (frequently with a fine added), not all their money.

(There may be edge cases, for example: if I steal a million, put all it on red in Vegas, come out with two million, and then get caught, how much money should be taken from me? I can see a judge ordering me to return a million to the owner of the original million and a million to the casino. Those are the exceptions, though)

[MisterBastahrd]

If someone steals $400K from you, and you discover who it was 10 years later, are you not due at least $400K from that person even if it means liquidating their assets?

Don't build your future on the ashes of someone else's past.