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> This is Google's third EU antitrust fine. Previously, the search giant was fined in a shopping case and an online advertising case. Apparently, "three strike

by p-e-w 4y ago

> This is Google's third EU antitrust fine. Previously, the search giant was fined in a shopping case and an online advertising case. Apparently, "three strikes and you're out" only applies to individuals, who with a repeat offense of this magnitude would have their lives destroyed by the justice system, and get locked away for a decade or more.

esperent 4y ago
The 3 strikes law is a US thing.
- Normille 4y ago
  One of the few areas where I think the US has got it right. No-one should need more than 3 chances to stop being a dick.
  - trasz 4y ago
    This law results in people landing in jail for being poor: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-92042/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an...
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      This law results in people landing in jail for being habitual criminals. Being poor does not excuse criminal behavior.
      - johnday 4y ago
        On the other hand, it appears that being rich does excuse criminal behavior - that is, if you hire a lot of people and get them to work in an office, and they commit crimes, the company gets fined and you don't go to prison (almost always).
        trasz 4y ago
        If you hire a lot of people and then steal their wages you don't go to prison either. You can be proven to be a murderer (OJ Simpson) or a child rapist (DuPont, https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2019/06/14/how-a-du-pont-heir-avoided-jail-time-for-a-heinous-crime/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2019/06/14/how-a-du-po...) and you won't get punished if you're wealthy enough. If you are poor, you'll get life sentence for stealing socks. It's not a bug in US judiciary system, it's how the system was designed.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
We really need the equivalent of jail time for companies. Clearly after a certain size, fines do not cut it. Jailing executives is too hard, so laws should exist that remove the company from a market for x years or something, like if they were in a cell.
- guitarbill 4y ago
  > Jailing executives is too hard Do you mean "too difficult" or "too bigger punishment"? Either way, I disagree. If they reap the reward of huge salaries, they ought to take some of the risks.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Yup. And if you put Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg in jail for a year or two, watch the tech industry whip itself into shape in weeks. Hold people actually responsible for the damage they do and you'll see real change.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I doubt that giving the power to overseas nations to criminalise and incarcerate US citizens has no downsides.
      - cyphar 4y ago
        Believe it or not, committing a crime in a foreign country as a US citizen will result in you being incarcerated in said country regardless of your citizenship status.
        einpoklum 4y ago
        Most crimes committed by US citizens in foreign countries are in the context of their military service: War crimes. And instead of being incarcerated for those, they just complete their tour of duty and go home. With any luck there's some public outcry about their crimes, but often not even that. The US is also not party to the Rome statute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute), and has even threatened to personally target International Criminal Court employees if they try to prosecute US citizens. ... but I suppose you're right about more mundane, non-government-sanctioned crimes.
otippat 4y ago
I don't think three-strikes laws exist anywhere other than in the US to be honest.
- hemloc_io 4y ago
  noone else is as beholden to baseball metaphors as us. There's even judges who love baseball so much they quote it in opinions lol.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    when will the sport of baseball stop wreaking havoc on the justice system at last?
  - justnotworthit 4y ago
    Whenever someone goes in a long baseball analogy to make a point, i start looking around the room uncomfortably.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  But whether it's a repeat offense is taken into account by almost every criminal justice system. A first-time thief might get off with a light sentence by claiming that they needed money and made a stupid mistake. That's not going to fly when it happens for the third time.
- tzs 4y ago
  New Zealand had one until last month, when it was repealed. Their ACT and National parties have said they will bring it back if they ever get a chance. I don't know enough about New Zealand politics to know if those parties have a chance of actually doing so.
  - rodgerd 4y ago
    They're sleepwalking to a win in the next election, sadly[1]. [1] I say sadly, less because I like the current government, and more because they seem desperate to import Bannon-esque culture war nonsense like attacking women's rights.
dahfizz 4y ago
I don't believe Europe has three strike laws. Anyway, in the US, three strike laws only apply to criminal charges and not civil ones.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > Anyway, in the US, three strike laws only apply to criminal charges and not civil ones. And not even to all criminal charges. Three strike laws usually apply only to felonies.
jefftk 4y ago
While the EU doesn't use a "three strikes" model, they do use progressively higher fines and other consequences for repeat offenses. If Google had ignored the 2017 Google Shopping order, for example, they would have lost a repeat investigation relatively quickly and there would have been very large fines. But instead, they changed how the product works, in a way that looks like they're responding to the decision and trying to follow it. In a company with as many independent lines of business as Google has it's possible to have multiple instances of anti-trust enforcement that don't look like "we already fined you but you're continuing with the prohibited behavior", and the Android, Ads, and Shopping cases do all look really different. Plus they're covering overlapping time periods, which limits how much the regulator can say "you should have listened to us before". (Disclosure: I used to work at Google)
synu 4y ago
Wow, what country has three fines and you go to jail for a decade? That sounds intense.
- foepys 4y ago
  RICO laws in the United States work that way. > Under RICO, a person who has committed "at least two acts of racketeering activity" drawn from a list of 35 crimes (27 federal crimes and eight state crimes) within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering if such acts are related in one of four specified ways to an "enterprise." Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of "racketeering activity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru... The Wikipedia article also lists a few famous cases.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  In some places in the US, if you commit a felony 3 times, you go to jail for life. Usually it has to be a violent felony, but every state is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
draw_down 4y ago

by p-e-w 4y ago

esperent 4y ago

The 3 strikes law is a US thing.

Normille 4y ago
One of the few areas where I think the US has got it right. No-one should need more than 3 chances to stop being a dick.
- trasz 4y ago
  This law results in people landing in jail for being poor: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-92042/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an...
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    This law results in people landing in jail for being habitual criminals. Being poor does not excuse criminal behavior.
    - johnday 4y ago
      On the other hand, it appears that being rich does excuse criminal behavior - that is, if you hire a lot of people and get them to work in an office, and they commit crimes, the company gets fined and you don't go to prison (almost always).
      - trasz 4y ago
        If you hire a lot of people and then steal their wages you don't go to prison either. You can be proven to be a murderer (OJ Simpson) or a child rapist (DuPont, https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2019/06/14/how-a-du-pont-heir-avoided-jail-time-for-a-heinous-crime/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2019/06/14/how-a-du-po...) and you won't get punished if you're wealthy enough. If you are poor, you'll get life sentence for stealing socks. It's not a bug in US judiciary system, it's how the system was designed.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

We really need the equivalent of jail time for companies. Clearly after a certain size, fines do not cut it. Jailing executives is too hard, so laws should exist that remove the company from a market for x years or something, like if they were in a cell.

guitarbill 4y ago
> Jailing executives is too hard Do you mean "too difficult" or "too bigger punishment"? Either way, I disagree. If they reap the reward of huge salaries, they ought to take some of the risks.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Yup. And if you put Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg in jail for a year or two, watch the tech industry whip itself into shape in weeks. Hold people actually responsible for the damage they do and you'll see real change.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I doubt that giving the power to overseas nations to criminalise and incarcerate US citizens has no downsides.
    - cyphar 4y ago
      Believe it or not, committing a crime in a foreign country as a US citizen will result in you being incarcerated in said country regardless of your citizenship status.
      - einpoklum 4y ago
        Most crimes committed by US citizens in foreign countries are in the context of their military service: War crimes. And instead of being incarcerated for those, they just complete their tour of duty and go home. With any luck there's some public outcry about their crimes, but often not even that. The US is also not party to the Rome statute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute), and has even threatened to personally target International Criminal Court employees if they try to prosecute US citizens. ... but I suppose you're right about more mundane, non-government-sanctioned crimes.

otippat 4y ago

I don't think three-strikes laws exist anywhere other than in the US to be honest.

hemloc_io 4y ago
noone else is as beholden to baseball metaphors as us. There's even judges who love baseball so much they quote it in opinions lol.
- asddubs 4y ago
  when will the sport of baseball stop wreaking havoc on the justice system at last?
- justnotworthit 4y ago
  Whenever someone goes in a long baseball analogy to make a point, i start looking around the room uncomfortably.
p-e-w 4y ago
But whether it's a repeat offense is taken into account by almost every criminal justice system. A first-time thief might get off with a light sentence by claiming that they needed money and made a stupid mistake. That's not going to fly when it happens for the third time.
tzs 4y ago
New Zealand had one until last month, when it was repealed. Their ACT and National parties have said they will bring it back if they ever get a chance. I don't know enough about New Zealand politics to know if those parties have a chance of actually doing so.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  They're sleepwalking to a win in the next election, sadly[1]. [1] I say sadly, less because I like the current government, and more because they seem desperate to import Bannon-esque culture war nonsense like attacking women's rights.

dahfizz 4y ago

I don't believe Europe has three strike laws. Anyway, in the US, three strike laws only apply to criminal charges and not civil ones.

sgjohnson 4y ago
> Anyway, in the US, three strike laws only apply to criminal charges and not civil ones. And not even to all criminal charges. Three strike laws usually apply only to felonies.

jefftk 4y ago

While the EU doesn't use a "three strikes" model, they do use progressively higher fines and other consequences for repeat offenses. If Google had ignored the 2017 Google Shopping order, for example, they would have lost a repeat investigation relatively quickly and there would have been very large fines. But instead, they changed how the product works, in a way that looks like they're responding to the decision and trying to follow it. In a company with as many independent lines of business as Google has it's possible to have multiple instances of anti-trust enforcement that don't look like "we already fined you but you're continuing with the prohibited behavior", and the Android, Ads, and Shopping cases do all look really different. Plus they're covering overlapping time periods, which limits how much the regulator can say "you should have listened to us before". (Disclosure: I used to work at Google)

synu 4y ago

Wow, what country has three fines and you go to jail for a decade? That sounds intense.

foepys 4y ago
RICO laws in the United States work that way. > Under RICO, a person who has committed "at least two acts of racketeering activity" drawn from a list of 35 crimes (27 federal crimes and eight state crimes) within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering if such acts are related in one of four specified ways to an "enterprise." Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of "racketeering activity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru... The Wikipedia article also lists a few famous cases.
dahfizz 4y ago
In some places in the US, if you commit a felony 3 times, you go to jail for life. Usually it has to be a violent felony, but every state is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law

draw_down 4y ago