[blitmap]

I don't like this but if a corporation is a person, they have the same right to it that the rest of the public has.

If the effort to USGS could be quantified in a cost, I'd expect Google to pay USGS to make the public data available?

It does sound awful. I don't know what the right answer is.

[kerkeslager]

> I don't like this but if a corporation is a person, they have the same right to it that the rest of the public has.

1. A corporation is not a person. Corporations don't have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have rights.

2. The problem isn't that Google has access to the data, it's that USGS and the rest of the world no longer have access to the data, except on Google's terms.

[deelowe]

Wasn't there a seminal surpreme court case that has been used as precident to show that corporations do have rights? Something tax related?

[kerkeslager]

The supreme court also decided in Dred Scott v. Sandford that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves were not included under the constitution and could never be citizens.

The supreme court was wrong on racism, and it's wrong on corporate personhood.

[deelowe]

What's right and wrong is a purely human construct and changes over time. The point was that, currently, in the eyes of the law, corporations hold many of the same rights as individuals. This could change, but would require special circumstances not considered previously or a change to the law by congress.

[xmprt]

Corporations aren't people. I can't get married to Google. If you can point to specific precedence of corporations being given access to certain data on grounds of their personhood then your argument makes sense but just because corporations are considered like people in the context of speech doesn't mean that applies literally everywhere else.

[hanche]

Corporations aren’t people, but from a legal perspective, they have some rights in common with persons, which is why you often hear statements saying they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

[kerkeslager]

The law is wrong.

[hanche]

I never said otherwise.

[kerkeslager]

Okay, but it's pretty tiresome to hear the supreme court opinion of corporate personhood brought up constantly as if it has any validity whatsoever.

[hanche]

I can sympathize with that. Unfortunately, the opinion of the supreme court is a force to be reckoned with, whether we agree or not.

[JetSpiegel]

> I can't get married to Google.

But they can still fuck you over, like when they banned my GMail account for no reason, with no warning nor explanation.