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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 exis

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.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        I do believe it. But that's not relevant, because OP is talking about an additional power.
        cyphar 4y ago
        In that case the argument should be about whether or not it should be a criminal offense at all (meaning whether European CEOs should be jailed in the case of malicious actions against their users). The fact it would theoretically extend to people in the US (good luck extraditing them) is IMHO not really an important thing to consider.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        Well, that was the example this thread was talking about. You could change the topic and make what we were talking about unimportant, but that seems a bit churlish to phrase it that way : - )
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      Both individuals have committed crimes (perjury, for starters) here in the United States as well. We can jail them here!
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        They can certainly be jailed for crimes, yes.
    - registeredcorn 4y ago
      I understand what you mean, but keep in mind that many nations do have extradition treaties with one another.
    - markdestouches 4y ago
      You are already eligible for punishment for crimes committed in foreign countries. I don't see how this makes things any different.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        Some crimes, yes. If it doesn't make things different, then there's nothing to change. If it does change things, then that's because the US would be allowing it for non-crimes.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do, and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy evidence. The cost of going after those companies is ridiculous already, once they are proven guilty, it would be simpler if we could punish the company as a person, than to find a real person to punish. After all, companies are very happy to be persons for other legal purposes.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do, and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy evidence. Make it illegal not to have a "custody trace" of how a decision came to be. Even if the CEO came up with it in the shower, for the thing to be implemented, it has to come across a lot of individuals. Make them having to keep all of that data around, and required to disclose how something came to be in case it's revealed as unlawful.
    - feanaro 4y ago
      Yeah, that surely wouldn't grind everything to a halt and effectively make the existence of non-megacorporations impossible. No, what should instead be done is prevent the existence of these megacorporations which have disproportionate influence on humanity in the first place. Prevent them to form and chop up the existing ones aggressively into smaller ones.
      - lioeters 4y ago
        I've long suspected that these "megacorporations" are nurtured for national security reasons, to consolidate and project power. The disproportionate influence is by design, a feature not a flaw. Especially since those who make the rules are owned by such powers themselves, including those responsible for intelligence (corporate spying, undermining workers unions) and regulation (not preventing Metalphabetamazons from dominating a wide range of industries).
- dahfizz 4y ago
  Proving guilt is difficult. Execs can and do go to jail when it can be proved they personally did something illegal. Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a crime, you shouldn't go to jail if your company commits a crime. You only go to jail if you commit a crime.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    > Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a crime Staw man. The only way that is comparable is if you oversaw your brothers career and received part of his income... if he then committed a crime (from which you benefited), then yes, you could be held part accountable. Execs are not merely "associated", they are responsible and receive excessive compensation directly derived from the actions of the organisation they oversee. If a corporate crime is committed on their watch they could be held accountable, if not through direct involvement, through negligence - allowing it to take place by not exerting enough oversight or management... to say otherwise would be similar to allowing people to drive cars negligently killing people without consequence, the analogy is not exact, since the car (the organisation) is not purely mechanical and has some degree of autonomy which is where these matters are not cut and dry, and those would be the finer points of a case exploring whether an individual subverted reasonable oversight or not - in the inexact analogy you could say, whether one of the wheels decided to ignore instructions, or whether the driver (exec) wasn't event bothering to steer.
darkwater 4y ago
But this would hit on workers who might be really innocent/unaware, depending on their roles. If you go this way, then just jail current/past executives, it would be more fair.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  On the short run, yes. But on the long run, that would be more effective. Once the customers and workers have been burned once, they will be very hesitant to give their trust to the company again. Companies would then have to get their things in order quickly, and win back the trust. A very effective deterrent. Imagine Google being out of the EU market for 3 months. How many youtubers would try and publish their videos on other plateforms? That would open competitions. People would boo google everytime they suck because they would fear for themself. It would create pain right now, but a sane pressure that would force companies to stop playing with fire because they know they can't get a bad burn.
  - everforward 4y ago
    Google exiting the market for 3 months would have enormous economic impact, in a bad way. They're too integrated into the economy to "just" close them out of the economy for 3 months. The world could tolerate YouTube being gone for a while. What about Android though? Is the entire world supposed to replace their phone while Play Services are down, and Android isn't getting security updates? What about GCP? How many businesses are also going to be shut down when GCP suddenly stops working? They might migrate, but that's not something you can do overnight. What about Gmail? Email communications would be shattered for a while, since so many people will need a new email provider and will have to distribute that out. God forbid anyone forgot their password and can't reset it because Gmail doesn't work. What about G Suite? Do all these other businesses just suddenly lose access to their documents? That would royally screw a lot of businesses. You can't "just" shut down Google without a whole host of second-order effects.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > Google exiting the market for 3 months would have enormous economic impact, in a bad way so too big to fail. Like with banks, they should be allowed to do anything with impunity and we should use taxpayer money to bail them out when they fuck up?
samwillis 4y ago
Rather than fine the company, fine the shareholders of public companies. If they can’t afford their share of the fine, then they have to sell their shares to pay it. That would immediately force them to comply. Edit: Although looking at that and this fine, if you own $1000 of google shares, you would owe $3…
- madsbuch 4y ago
  This is an absurd idea. That would be a complete detriment to one of the greatest innovations in financing: Seperation of capital and responsibility. When you buy a stock you know you can not loose more than the stocks value, so you dare to invest. Also, would bond holders also be burdened with this? what about derivatives?
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Not that absurd. People would start doing way more due diligences to invest. They would put pressure on the company to not do something stupid. You invest in bad actors and want to make money with it? Well you should pay the consequences for that.
  - bdefore 4y ago
    That great innovation is at the root of the market's disregard for negative externalities such as climate change. I'm not in support of jailing shareholders, but say a tax on the dividends of shareholders who front the capital for companies that impose a burden on civilization doesn't sound outrageous to me. Especially since fining the company directly doesn't necessarily discourage bad behavior at the tiers of power that have the ability to take a different path.
  - poizan42 4y ago
    Maybe a better idea would be to force the company to emit new shares by some percantage of their total number of shares and transfer those to the state. That way shareholders lose a bit of value by dilution. And after enough fines the state will eventually reach a controlling majority ownership and can directly stop the company from further transgressions.
registeredcorn 4y ago
Pretty much what I was thinking too! If your company has violated the law previously in the same or similar manner, you should not be permitted to sell to customers in that market for the equivalent amount of time an individual would be jailed for. I am not opposed to the concept of treating a corporation as a legal entity, but I think that if a corporation is going to be considered a legal entity, they should inherit the same legal consequences a human would incur, if they break the law. Realistically speaking, I don't see many politicians supporting this kind of change. I'm not even thinking of the issues around corruption, but merely the knowledge that hurting that company would in turn, also impact their own economy in the process. Imagine if no business of a nation were searchable in Google for a 4 year period. It would be devastating. Similarly, there are a lot of physical consequences to consider as well. If you lock out a company like Apple or Coke from operating in a country, suddenly there are a lot of related issues. If Apple could not operate in a specific nation for a set amount of time, suddenly any stores they have would presumably be closed. This would impact customers ability to get their devices repaired. I would also have to assume that all employees at each of those locations would be fired, leaving a sudden glut of unemployment, impacting people who had nothing to do with the situation. If Coke were to be banned for some set amount of time, it would make a lot of weird cases around things like Vending Machines and Grocery stores. The company might not be marketing or selling their products to distributors, but those distributors might still be selling that product. Once their stock ran out, if they were to attempt to purchase more from the company in a nearby country, who would be at fault? Coke, or the distributor? I imagine it would create a ton of issues with other things, like agreements to pay X amount of money over time. Stock trading would be another big one, not just in individual stocks, but in mutual funds and ETFs that might be heavily invested in that company. In one sense, it might make investors and day traders more weary and discerning from who they decide to trade with, but trying to figure out which company is breaking which laws, and how likely they are to get caught doing it, is practically impossible to determine, without inside knowledge on the matter.
perlgeek 4y ago
I agree that we need better enforcement mechanisms, but I'm not sold on a "time out". What would that even mean? If you aren't allowed to participate in the Maps business for, let's say, 2 years, does that mean you cannot offer the app for download? Then everybody stays on the old version, and cannot install security updates. Or that you cannot offer it as a new install? Then people changing their phones are screwed. Or that you cannot offer new maps? Then people rely on the old ones, running into permanently closed roads. Or that your servers must immediately stop serving map tiles? Customer's won't be very happy about that either. That you cannot make any revenue from the service? Kinda hard to do when your service is maps, but the revenue source is ads. And so on, ad infinitum. Consumers tend to switch apps pretty quickly, but what about b2b software? Switching over to a database from another vendor can easily be a 3 to 5 years project, so it's likely that many customers would simply sit out such a jail time.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  First, 2 years is too long, because the consequences are very heavy. But a 2 months of service interruptions of youtube, google doc and gmap wouldn't crash the world, but would be so painful people would find alternatives quickly and never rely just on one monopoly again.
- ignaloidas 4y ago
  I think just making so that for the next year a set % of revenues that are associated with the product in question get fined would be fine.
rodgerd 4y ago
> We really need the equivalent of jail time for companies. I would love this, but there are so many irritating practical problems with it that I'd prefer we expand the cases where we can "pierce the corporate veil"; we should absolutely shield people from personal liability from good-faith failures when we work for a company, but when we see fraud, wage theft, and so on, we should be a great deal more willing to chase personal liability for decision-makers. Something that's driven a big change in safety culture in New Zealand was allowing certain types of health and safety prosecutions to proceed against individuals, so that (for example) a site manager who decides that start-of-day hazard briefings on a building site are a waste of 15 minutes can be fined or even imprisoned if someone ends up hurt as a result.

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.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I do believe it. But that's not relevant, because OP is talking about an additional power.
      - cyphar 4y ago
        In that case the argument should be about whether or not it should be a criminal offense at all (meaning whether European CEOs should be jailed in the case of malicious actions against their users). The fact it would theoretically extend to people in the US (good luck extraditing them) is IMHO not really an important thing to consider.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        Well, that was the example this thread was talking about. You could change the topic and make what we were talking about unimportant, but that seems a bit churlish to phrase it that way : - )
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Both individuals have committed crimes (perjury, for starters) here in the United States as well. We can jail them here!
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      They can certainly be jailed for crimes, yes.
  - registeredcorn 4y ago
    I understand what you mean, but keep in mind that many nations do have extradition treaties with one another.
  - markdestouches 4y ago
    You are already eligible for punishment for crimes committed in foreign countries. I don't see how this makes things any different.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Some crimes, yes. If it doesn't make things different, then there's nothing to change. If it does change things, then that's because the US would be allowing it for non-crimes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do, and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy evidence. The cost of going after those companies is ridiculous already, once they are proven guilty, it would be simpler if we could punish the company as a person, than to find a real person to punish. After all, companies are very happy to be persons for other legal purposes.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do, and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy evidence. Make it illegal not to have a "custody trace" of how a decision came to be. Even if the CEO came up with it in the shower, for the thing to be implemented, it has to come across a lot of individuals. Make them having to keep all of that data around, and required to disclose how something came to be in case it's revealed as unlawful.
  - feanaro 4y ago
    Yeah, that surely wouldn't grind everything to a halt and effectively make the existence of non-megacorporations impossible. No, what should instead be done is prevent the existence of these megacorporations which have disproportionate influence on humanity in the first place. Prevent them to form and chop up the existing ones aggressively into smaller ones.
    - lioeters 4y ago
      I've long suspected that these "megacorporations" are nurtured for national security reasons, to consolidate and project power. The disproportionate influence is by design, a feature not a flaw. Especially since those who make the rules are owned by such powers themselves, including those responsible for intelligence (corporate spying, undermining workers unions) and regulation (not preventing Metalphabetamazons from dominating a wide range of industries).
dahfizz 4y ago
Proving guilt is difficult. Execs can and do go to jail when it can be proved they personally did something illegal. Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a crime, you shouldn't go to jail if your company commits a crime. You only go to jail if you commit a crime.
- tomxor 4y ago
  > Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a crime Staw man. The only way that is comparable is if you oversaw your brothers career and received part of his income... if he then committed a crime (from which you benefited), then yes, you could be held part accountable. Execs are not merely "associated", they are responsible and receive excessive compensation directly derived from the actions of the organisation they oversee. If a corporate crime is committed on their watch they could be held accountable, if not through direct involvement, through negligence - allowing it to take place by not exerting enough oversight or management... to say otherwise would be similar to allowing people to drive cars negligently killing people without consequence, the analogy is not exact, since the car (the organisation) is not purely mechanical and has some degree of autonomy which is where these matters are not cut and dry, and those would be the finer points of a case exploring whether an individual subverted reasonable oversight or not - in the inexact analogy you could say, whether one of the wheels decided to ignore instructions, or whether the driver (exec) wasn't event bothering to steer.

darkwater 4y ago

But this would hit on workers who might be really innocent/unaware, depending on their roles. If you go this way, then just jail current/past executives, it would be more fair.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
On the short run, yes. But on the long run, that would be more effective. Once the customers and workers have been burned once, they will be very hesitant to give their trust to the company again. Companies would then have to get their things in order quickly, and win back the trust. A very effective deterrent. Imagine Google being out of the EU market for 3 months. How many youtubers would try and publish their videos on other plateforms? That would open competitions. People would boo google everytime they suck because they would fear for themself. It would create pain right now, but a sane pressure that would force companies to stop playing with fire because they know they can't get a bad burn.
- everforward 4y ago
  Google exiting the market for 3 months would have enormous economic impact, in a bad way. They're too integrated into the economy to "just" close them out of the economy for 3 months. The world could tolerate YouTube being gone for a while. What about Android though? Is the entire world supposed to replace their phone while Play Services are down, and Android isn't getting security updates? What about GCP? How many businesses are also going to be shut down when GCP suddenly stops working? They might migrate, but that's not something you can do overnight. What about Gmail? Email communications would be shattered for a while, since so many people will need a new email provider and will have to distribute that out. God forbid anyone forgot their password and can't reset it because Gmail doesn't work. What about G Suite? Do all these other businesses just suddenly lose access to their documents? That would royally screw a lot of businesses. You can't "just" shut down Google without a whole host of second-order effects.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Google exiting the market for 3 months would have enormous economic impact, in a bad way so too big to fail. Like with banks, they should be allowed to do anything with impunity and we should use taxpayer money to bail them out when they fuck up?

samwillis 4y ago

Rather than fine the company, fine the shareholders of public companies. If they can’t afford their share of the fine, then they have to sell their shares to pay it. That would immediately force them to comply. Edit: Although looking at that and this fine, if you own $1000 of google shares, you would owe $3…

madsbuch 4y ago
This is an absurd idea. That would be a complete detriment to one of the greatest innovations in financing: Seperation of capital and responsibility. When you buy a stock you know you can not loose more than the stocks value, so you dare to invest. Also, would bond holders also be burdened with this? what about derivatives?
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Not that absurd. People would start doing way more due diligences to invest. They would put pressure on the company to not do something stupid. You invest in bad actors and want to make money with it? Well you should pay the consequences for that.
- bdefore 4y ago
  That great innovation is at the root of the market's disregard for negative externalities such as climate change. I'm not in support of jailing shareholders, but say a tax on the dividends of shareholders who front the capital for companies that impose a burden on civilization doesn't sound outrageous to me. Especially since fining the company directly doesn't necessarily discourage bad behavior at the tiers of power that have the ability to take a different path.
- poizan42 4y ago
  Maybe a better idea would be to force the company to emit new shares by some percantage of their total number of shares and transfer those to the state. That way shareholders lose a bit of value by dilution. And after enough fines the state will eventually reach a controlling majority ownership and can directly stop the company from further transgressions.

registeredcorn 4y ago

Pretty much what I was thinking too! If your company has violated the law previously in the same or similar manner, you should not be permitted to sell to customers in that market for the equivalent amount of time an individual would be jailed for. I am not opposed to the concept of treating a corporation as a legal entity, but I think that if a corporation is going to be considered a legal entity, they should inherit the same legal consequences a human would incur, if they break the law. Realistically speaking, I don't see many politicians supporting this kind of change. I'm not even thinking of the issues around corruption, but merely the knowledge that hurting that company would in turn, also impact their own economy in the process. Imagine if no business of a nation were searchable in Google for a 4 year period. It would be devastating. Similarly, there are a lot of physical consequences to consider as well. If you lock out a company like Apple or Coke from operating in a country, suddenly there are a lot of related issues. If Apple could not operate in a specific nation for a set amount of time, suddenly any stores they have would presumably be closed. This would impact customers ability to get their devices repaired. I would also have to assume that all employees at each of those locations would be fired, leaving a sudden glut of unemployment, impacting people who had nothing to do with the situation. If Coke were to be banned for some set amount of time, it would make a lot of weird cases around things like Vending Machines and Grocery stores. The company might not be marketing or selling their products to distributors, but those distributors might still be selling that product. Once their stock ran out, if they were to attempt to purchase more from the company in a nearby country, who would be at fault? Coke, or the distributor? I imagine it would create a ton of issues with other things, like agreements to pay X amount of money over time. Stock trading would be another big one, not just in individual stocks, but in mutual funds and ETFs that might be heavily invested in that company. In one sense, it might make investors and day traders more weary and discerning from who they decide to trade with, but trying to figure out which company is breaking which laws, and how likely they are to get caught doing it, is practically impossible to determine, without inside knowledge on the matter.

perlgeek 4y ago

I agree that we need better enforcement mechanisms, but I'm not sold on a "time out". What would that even mean? If you aren't allowed to participate in the Maps business for, let's say, 2 years, does that mean you cannot offer the app for download? Then everybody stays on the old version, and cannot install security updates. Or that you cannot offer it as a new install? Then people changing their phones are screwed. Or that you cannot offer new maps? Then people rely on the old ones, running into permanently closed roads. Or that your servers must immediately stop serving map tiles? Customer's won't be very happy about that either. That you cannot make any revenue from the service? Kinda hard to do when your service is maps, but the revenue source is ads. And so on, ad infinitum. Consumers tend to switch apps pretty quickly, but what about b2b software? Switching over to a database from another vendor can easily be a 3 to 5 years project, so it's likely that many customers would simply sit out such a jail time.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
First, 2 years is too long, because the consequences are very heavy. But a 2 months of service interruptions of youtube, google doc and gmap wouldn't crash the world, but would be so painful people would find alternatives quickly and never rely just on one monopoly again.
ignaloidas 4y ago
I think just making so that for the next year a set % of revenues that are associated with the product in question get fined would be fine.

rodgerd 4y ago

> We really need the equivalent of jail time for companies. I would love this, but there are so many irritating practical problems with it that I'd prefer we expand the cases where we can "pierce the corporate veil"; we should absolutely shield people from personal liability from good-faith failures when we work for a company, but when we see fraud, wage theft, and so on, we should be a great deal more willing to chase personal liability for decision-makers. Something that's driven a big change in safety culture in New Zealand was allowing certain types of health and safety prosecutions to proceed against individuals, so that (for example) a site manager who decides that start-of-day hazard briefings on a building site are a waste of 15 minutes can be fined or even imprisoned if someone ends up hurt as a result.