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When companies do this, they should be fully audited and fined 300% profit, split evenly between the harmed company and the government. If that puts them out of business, so be it.


That would certainly discourage _getting caught_ violating the law.

It would also tend to kill off the older companies (weak law of large numbers: if a company violates any of the laws that will kill it, and it exists long enough, it eventually gets caught and killed).

It might even lead to some efforts at counter-legislation. For example, companies might lobby to _broaden_ the "get killed" legislation, which would result in lots of sympathy cases where companies were killed for "minor" offenses. Eventually the whole "kill the company" idea would fall out of favor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law

(Companies will tend to view a government audit as a death sentence, since it would damage them so much even without a 300% fine.)


I'd support fines that are proportional to general revenue or profit. A fine must hurt.

Also, an audit and 300% fines would probably not kill companies.




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