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by ska 2334 days ago
Fines don't have to be toothless.
4 comments

It depends on the perspective. Imagine an FCC shopping page for businesses that says something like: "Gain ability to sell customer location data for a year: $10,000,000"

"Fine" is a euphemism for market price. If the profits outweigh the fines and the poor PR can be controlled in a timely manner, then they'll do it every time.

Markets prices work the other way too; if fines are at least perceived to be more expensive than any benefit you'll see, they are a good disincentive.
What about an FCC shopping page that says the price is “throw one scapegoat to the wolves”?
Then you just increase the fines. That’s so much more trivial than throwing people into an already overcrowded prison system and destroying their life.
This is technically true but the odds of a fine being levied which is high enough to register on huge companies like this is exceedingly low, especially since everyone involved in that decision could walk away from a bankruptcy and still be fabulously rich. Punishing shareholders has a lot of collateral damage but personal liability has almost none.
I think fines should act against the shareholders who let it happen! FCC forces more shares and acquires them, decreasing shareholder value, which is the gold standard of publicly traded companies.
And they must be worse for repeat offenses.