
Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons - arb99
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/05/26/chinese-inmates-forced-to-farm-gold-online/
======
ck2
How about the hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the US forced to work for
pennies per hour?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_compl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex)

If they refuse, they are written up as uncooperative and it could affect
privileges, parole, etc.

Makes many millions in profit for the states and federal government, even some
judges own stock.

Ironically it's the only labor in the US that can compete with offshoring.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_Amer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_America)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries>

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/prisoners-help-
build...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/prisoners-help-build-
patriot-missiles/)

[http://articles.cnn.com/1999-11-06/us/9911_06_prison.labor_1...](http://articles.cnn.com/1999-11-06/us/9911_06_prison.labor_1_prison-
labor-prisonindustry-prison-population)

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/pris-m08.shtml>

~~~
hugh3
Is anyone else tired of the fact that on the internet you can't say "Hey, look
at this sucky thing in Random Country X" without having someone pipe up and
say "Yeah, but what about this vaguely-similar thing in the USA? Huh? Huh?"

~~~
ez77
How are the Chinese and American situations _vaguely_ similar? Just because
one involves computers and the other doesn't? If these counterexamples are not
made up, what would it take for you to go from being tired to seriously
revising your beliefs on the US system?

~~~
someperson
I think you two actually agree, the grandparent is saying he is tired of
seeing that for many morally questionable practices happening in the world,
there is sadly similar conduct sometimes happening in the US and he would
rather this wasn't the case.

~~~
ez77
The use of the word "vaguely" makes me doubt it.

------
Jd
Original article is here: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-
prisoners-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-
internet-gaming-scam)

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dstein
I would've thought something like Mechanical Turk would be more valuable.
Mining WoW gold sounds like something that could be fuuly automated. Why not
have them do things that require human insight instead?

~~~
rmc
Blizzard (the company that owns & operates WoW) doesn't want people to
automatically do gold mining, so they try to stop it. A lot of 'gold mining'
is "move you character around, click on this pig 10 times to kill it, collect
the little bit of money/goods it drops". In order to automate it well you'd
have to solve a lot of computer vision problems. Probably cheaper to just use
cheap labour.

~~~
duck
In this case it would be free labor.

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joshu
Well, that's it. I no longer have to read science fiction.

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arctangent
In the 22nd century, when everyone has supercomputers embedded in their heads,
prisoners will be forced to mine bitcoins...

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flexd
Grinding for gold all day but you never get to keep any of it? That is pure
torture. Not only do they force you to play that game for so long all day but
they also take away the only 'reward' you get for playing. I would go crazy
for sure.

~~~
kennu
But you could still grind rep!

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DougWebb
About $800 for 300 inmates playing 12 hours each? That's about $0.25/hr for
each of them. Is gold farming in these games really that unproductive? Who
would do that voluntarily?

~~~
nicpottier
Lots of places have daily incomes below $2 a day.

That said, there isn't a huge overlap between those places and cheap
electricity, internet and computers.

But I guess China is one of them..

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hornokplease
Original story discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2586469>

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ignifero
I m trying to imagine a serial killer killing goblins... That's why it's
torture.

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cliq
"A former prison guard turned inmate"

wait what.

~~~
hugh3
What's the problem? A dude was a prison guard. Then he (presumably) committed
a crime. Now he's an inmate.

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hessenwolf
Meh. Worse ways to be tortured.

~~~
code_duck
Of course, but incarceration is supposed to be the punishment itself, not
extra abuse from the guards. The article does note "the inmates were kept
playing until they could barely see things and missing the daily quota would
result in physical punishment and abuse."

~~~
hessenwolf
True. I am just being somewhat defeatest with respect to the inevitability of
torture in such a jail. I'd rather be farming gold until my ass hurt than some
alternatives.

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olalonde
I bet my little cousin would turn himself in! :)

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riobard
Somehow I was thinking about those game-addicted kids…

