robkelk Wrote:Well, they don't seem to notice when we do that. If the point to punishment is to bring about a change in behaviour, then this particular punishment applied to this particular company isn't working.It's the same problem as the RIAA is facing. We might not be able to punish this in the way we want to and get the results we want. The problem here is corporate protection laws in general. The people who engaged in this behaviour should be held personally responsible for their acts. Google may be able to absorb a multi-thousand dollar fine, but Google Employee X will not be able to nearly as well. Make it clear that engaging in illegal acts while working for a corporation will get you punished severely. Then, if you can prove that the entire corporate structure was behind it, charge them all as a criminal conspiracy under anti-organized crime laws. Do that often enough and while the bigwigs may not hurt as much they'll find it very hard to get people willing to do their dirty work.
Or we could steal a page from the RIAA playbook. Make the charge for each count of privacy invasion some high fee (like $10,000) then just add up all the hundred of thousands of cases. Even Google will have pause when we start ceasing billions of dollars worth of assets.
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Epsilon