Okay, I agree that if you lose in court and get ordered to pay a fine, and you refuse to pay that fine and get a bad credit report as a result, you would indire

Okay, I agree that if you lose in court and get ordered to pay a fine, and you refuse to pay that fine and get a bad credit report as a result, you would indirectly be punished in your ability to obtain credit. But the problematic link in the causal chain is what you have to pay the fine for, isn't it? Treating an unpaid fine the same way as any other outstanding debt seems pretty reasonable to me. Also, I'm under the impression that people imagine something more direct when they talk about web history affecting credit scores, like visiting a site automatically deducting points from a score, or something.