darkmage - 5:38 am on Jun 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

Well at the risk of steering away from the topic, lammert, I think you are mixing up two very different things. I am not saying we are the 'police' or 'judges' (as distinct from moral judging), nor should we have final say about suitable punishment. However if someone admits to doing the wrong thing (clicking own ads), are punished because they were caught (dropped from Google), then we should take the view that this person did the wrong thing.

We are not lynching him - we are supporting the system that finds cheats. In regular society, if someone gets caught stealing because of pure greed and is punished, we say to that person, you did the wrong thing, you got caught, punished and you deserve what you got. Especially if you were the one he stole from.

If there are mitigating circumstances, then these are taken into account (reinstatement).

Personally, assuming he was reinstated, I am pissed off as an Adwords advertiser. He broke the rules, the system caught him, so he should be booted. The rest of us play fair.