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Because consumer choice is a very weak weapon against your freedoms being taken away. Political action is what corporations fear, in particular the threat of or

by praptak 10y ago

Because consumer choice is a very weak weapon against your freedoms being taken away. Political action is what corporations fear, in particular the threat of organized support behind ideas to regulate them more heavily. Edit: RMS quote: "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what democracy was invented for!"

adrusi 10y ago
Why would they fear regulation? Their competitors become subject to the same restrictions.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  Their competitors may be subject to the same regulations, but new regulations force companies to develop products that comply with the new regulations. R&D is a huge expense, and you can't guarantee the product you develop is going to be better than your competitors. Furthermore, their competitors might already have a product which meets the new regulations, or one which can be easily modified to meet them. This can lead to a financial advantage, but it can also mean the competitor has a period where they are the only product on the market.
  - fmihaila 10y ago
    Regulation demanding not to screw your customers doesn't seem like such a big burden to me.
    - 6DM 10y ago
      I fear it would never meet the paper as "don't screw your customers." It would be something more along the lines of, "Cartridges should be at least the size of (exact dimensions of existing HP cartridges) and work a reasonable amount of time." To which HP could easily counter, "reasonable" is dependent on freshness and quality of the lines or some bs like that. Edit: to clarify, I agree with you that regulation to the consumers benefit would be good, but am assuming that the law written would just be to HP's benefit anyway
      - fmihaila 10y ago
        > to clarify, I agree with you that regulation to the consumers benefit would be good, but am assuming that the law written would just be to HP's benefit anyway A more hopeful, less cynical view would be that consumer protection laws do exist, and it's reasonable to assume that in the absence of any such laws, sellers would certainly try to get away with much more than they currently are. So regulation does work, at least to some extent. To be sure, I don't know that new regulation is needed in this particular case. HP may have broken an existing law already, but I'm not a lawyer. The bigger point is that lawmakers deal with ambiguity all the time, and if they can be convinced to make a law for a purpose, they surely have the means to do it. The convincing is the hard part, which is why taking issues like this one into the political arena is sometimes necessary.
- tehmaco 10y ago
  They'll still need to spend resources (and so will earn reduced profit) updating processes/code/etc to comply with the regs, plus ongoing costs to ensure compliance.
  - fmihaila 10y ago
    They actually _spent_ resources to ensure that non-hp cartridges are treated differently. If they had been prevented by law to do it (and maybe they are), they would have saved money!
smithkl42 10y ago
That's kind of overstating things, isn't it? Yes, what HP did was balls-up stupid, and I'll think hard before buying anything from them, but companies have liberties too. They have rights to free speech (you don't want the government telling newspapers what to print), and they have rights to sell what they want, just as we have rights to not buy the merde they try to force on us. Twitter has the right to shut down speech on its network that it doesn't like, and that's not a First Amendment issue. Nobody's liberties are being taken away: rather, someone's liberties are being exercised. Now, I do think that a lawsuit may be in order here, because it seems quite plausible that HP acted deceptively. But that's not "our rights being taken away", which is primarily an issue related to the guys with guns (i.e., the government). This isn't that: rather, it's a company lying to us, and trying to get us to buy their product on false pretenses.
- jackmott 10y ago
  How about we start characterizing "company lying to us" as theft, and put them in actual jail for it, then? If you want to treat corporations like people with liberties, let's make basic laws like fraud and theft have consequences. We shoot and choke to death people selling cigarettes or cds 'illegally' on the side of the street why can't Wells Fargo executives go to jail for theft?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - witty_username 10y ago
    But financial crimes are illegal. Could you point out a specific person/case? Wells Fargo fired 5300 employees and paid a $185 million fine.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Wells Fargo's shareholders fired 5300 employees and paid a $185 million fine. As far as I'm aware the CEO kept his job and bonus.
- 10y ago

by praptak 10y ago

adrusi 10y ago

Why would they fear regulation? Their competitors become subject to the same restrictions.

Declanomous 10y ago
Their competitors may be subject to the same regulations, but new regulations force companies to develop products that comply with the new regulations. R&D is a huge expense, and you can't guarantee the product you develop is going to be better than your competitors. Furthermore, their competitors might already have a product which meets the new regulations, or one which can be easily modified to meet them. This can lead to a financial advantage, but it can also mean the competitor has a period where they are the only product on the market.
- fmihaila 10y ago
  Regulation demanding not to screw your customers doesn't seem like such a big burden to me.
  - 6DM 10y ago
    I fear it would never meet the paper as "don't screw your customers." It would be something more along the lines of, "Cartridges should be at least the size of (exact dimensions of existing HP cartridges) and work a reasonable amount of time." To which HP could easily counter, "reasonable" is dependent on freshness and quality of the lines or some bs like that. Edit: to clarify, I agree with you that regulation to the consumers benefit would be good, but am assuming that the law written would just be to HP's benefit anyway
    - fmihaila 10y ago
      > to clarify, I agree with you that regulation to the consumers benefit would be good, but am assuming that the law written would just be to HP's benefit anyway A more hopeful, less cynical view would be that consumer protection laws do exist, and it's reasonable to assume that in the absence of any such laws, sellers would certainly try to get away with much more than they currently are. So regulation does work, at least to some extent. To be sure, I don't know that new regulation is needed in this particular case. HP may have broken an existing law already, but I'm not a lawyer. The bigger point is that lawmakers deal with ambiguity all the time, and if they can be convinced to make a law for a purpose, they surely have the means to do it. The convincing is the hard part, which is why taking issues like this one into the political arena is sometimes necessary.
tehmaco 10y ago
They'll still need to spend resources (and so will earn reduced profit) updating processes/code/etc to comply with the regs, plus ongoing costs to ensure compliance.
- fmihaila 10y ago
  They actually _spent_ resources to ensure that non-hp cartridges are treated differently. If they had been prevented by law to do it (and maybe they are), they would have saved money!

smithkl42 10y ago

That's kind of overstating things, isn't it? Yes, what HP did was balls-up stupid, and I'll think hard before buying anything from them, but companies have liberties too. They have rights to free speech (you don't want the government telling newspapers what to print), and they have rights to sell what they want, just as we have rights to not buy the merde they try to force on us. Twitter has the right to shut down speech on its network that it doesn't like, and that's not a First Amendment issue. Nobody's liberties are being taken away: rather, someone's liberties are being exercised. Now, I do think that a lawsuit may be in order here, because it seems quite plausible that HP acted deceptively. But that's not "our rights being taken away", which is primarily an issue related to the guys with guns (i.e., the government). This isn't that: rather, it's a company lying to us, and trying to get us to buy their product on false pretenses.

jackmott 10y ago
How about we start characterizing "company lying to us" as theft, and put them in actual jail for it, then? If you want to treat corporations like people with liberties, let's make basic laws like fraud and theft have consequences. We shoot and choke to death people selling cigarettes or cds 'illegally' on the side of the street why can't Wells Fargo executives go to jail for theft?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- witty_username 10y ago
  But financial crimes are illegal. Could you point out a specific person/case? Wells Fargo fired 5300 employees and paid a $185 million fine.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Wells Fargo's shareholders fired 5300 employees and paid a $185 million fine. As far as I'm aware the CEO kept his job and bonus.
10y ago