It's an engineering decision - Flikr has to host a large amount of data for very little cost, since most users aren't paying. Space isn't cheap by the Petabyte!
The design for a system where you had multiple redundant copies of all the data and could roll back any changes to the data set is different - and would cost a lot more.
I'm very surprised that he wasn't arrested, prosecuted, served with an injunction not to talk about this and have all his computers confiscated.
The lottery commission in BC is on it's Nth major criminal investigation - but the trick here seems to be the simpler method of the shop stealing winning tickets from customers.
I think the idea is to build a community - in order to use SO as more than a Google scrape you need to put in some work and become involved. Then you are more likely to go back and add answers yourself - so you contribute to the collective.
I think the Dutch Sandwich is something like - you move all the money to Netherlands, so no tax in the rest of Europe (common market) then to a Dutch owned off-shore tax haven like the Dutch Antilles - so you pay no tax in the Netherlands either.
This is like helping the nerds carry on taking money from the bullies once they grow up and get dead end jobs