[HN Gopher] Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it wen...
___________________________________________________________________
Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of
business
Author : cpascal
Score : 344 points
Date : 2021-01-05 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| intsunny wrote:
| What terribly worded and confusing as fuck title.
|
| In case anyone was wondering, who, specifically went out of
| business:
|
| > Court documents didn't identify the rival company, but Variety
| reported it was Songkick, which in 2017 filed a lawsuit accusing
| Ticketmaster of hacking its database. A few months later,
| Songkick went out of business.
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Wait, SongKick went out of business?
|
| What the hell is the app installed on my phone, then?
| jedberg wrote:
| Ticketmaster bought them in 2018 as the first part of the
| settlement.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Clicking through some of the links in the article, it looks
| like it refers to their ticketing operation which was
| apparently separate.
| Yourmama wrote:
| Google and ti ketmaster should be merged. Would be best for all
| fans.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I still can't believe regulators allowed Ticketmaster and Live
| Nation to merge
| giobox wrote:
| I was at law school during that merger and it was a major focus
| of the Competition Law course, one of the most obvious
| monopolies that was ever allowed to proceed in recent times
| really. I think entire academic staff expected the opposite
| outcome too!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I love law as a field, but the sad fact is that it's often a
| post-facto rationalization/repair of power politics.
| Sometimes it's like a conference of physicists trying to
| demonstrate that a fire in the room is not that hot instead
| of pouring water onto it.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| TicketMaster was a textbook example of a consumer-harming
| monopoly WAY before that merger. I've written to a few senators
| about it. Jack shit has been done, of course.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| There should be criminal charges to, otherwise, its just money.
| Take away your business license etc.
| ajsharp wrote:
| A $10 million dollar fine for this is hardly a disincentive for
| similarly minded actors to do the same. If you're a large
| incumbent company fearing a challenger, a $10 million worst-case
| scenario fine for taking them out is pennies compared to the
| saved revenue.
| smsm42 wrote:
| So they knowingly committed multiple felonies and got fined 0.1%
| of their annual revenue? That sure will show them!
|
| That would sting about as much as me getting a parking ticket. So
| somehow hacking a competitor is on the same level as parking on a
| wrong side of the street.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I hate the way this article is worded. Or perhaps the problem is
| the source documents.
|
| "Ticketmaster" didn't do anything. Ticketmaster is a company
| which cannot make decisions or take actions.
|
| - An employee at Ticketmaster stole a password (and financial
| documents)
|
| - Multiple other Ticketmaster employees abused that stolen
| information to actively attack a competitor.
|
| - Ticketmaster management was aware of this and rewarded that
| employee with a promotion and additional responsibilities.
|
| Both the thief and the managers who rewarded the the thief should
| be going to jail. Instead the company is paying a small fine. I
| guess at least _someone_ is going to prison, but I doubt all of
| the parties who were aware are. As usual, the executives in
| charge walk away.
|
| Hopefully there is a class action lawsuit by the shareholders/
| owners of this company against Ticketmaster.
| aqme28 wrote:
| If corporate management knew about and encouraged this
| behavior, how is that not "Ticketmaster" doing it?
|
| IMO both the individuals and the corporation should be held
| responsible.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I guess I wasn't as clear as I thought here.
|
| Corporations can't act, people inside the corporations act.
| If laws get broken, the individuals who made that choice
| should pay the price. This wasn't a defense of the company,
| I'm fine with the company getting fined here, so long as the
| people who did this get penalized as well.
|
| So long as we let companies be a sort of shelter for the
| people inside the company, this kind of activity will
| continue.
| s_dev wrote:
| >Corporations can't act, people inside the corporations
| act.
|
| I'm not really sure why you think this distinction is
| important. If a sufficient enforcement/punishment was laid
| on a company you can bet the employee responsible will feel
| it. Rather in this sense because there was no real
| punishment the employee was commended.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > If a sufficient enforcement/punishment was laid on a
| company you can bet the employee responsible will feel
| it.
|
| The employees most responsible are the executives who
| signed off on, were aware of and/or managed the criminal
| activity.
|
| What they felt was a gentle caress across their wrist,
| which some may pretend was a slap.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > If a sufficient enforcement/punishment was laid on a
| company you can bet the employee responsible will feel
| it.
|
| The fine was likely less than the cost of the C-Suites
| annual bonus package.
| jnsie wrote:
| Kind of like saying "the 49ers didn't lose, their players
| did"...
| swsieber wrote:
| No, the equivalent of this in the sports world would be
| fining a team some thousands of dollars for drug abuse
| instead of banning the offending players.
| spoonjim wrote:
| which they should, if the drug abuse was encouraged by
| team leaders and rewarded with promotions/contracts.
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| are you agreeing with the "instead of" in that post?
|
| Through symmetry if a player is expelled from a league
| for doping, a manager who arranged/encouraged it should
| face the same, probably.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| When Barry Bond got caught doping, nobody said "The SF
| Giants were doping". Barry Bond owned that.
|
| That's all I'm looking for here.
| fastball wrote:
| But this was a collective effort that involved multiple
| people within the company. When "the Astros" got caught
| stealing signs, we say it was the Astros, even though the
| majority of people involved with the team were not
| involved with the sign-stealing.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| You are arguing semantics (and apparently my first post
| focused too much on semantics). I am mostly concerned
| about accountability. The Astros cheating scandal
| resulted in:
|
| > "As a result, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and
| field manager A. J. Hinch were suspended for the entire
| 2020 season for failing to prevent the rules violations.
| The Astros were fined the maximum allowable $5 million
| and forfeited their first- and second-round picks in the
| 2020 and 2021 drafts. No players were punished because
| they had been given immunity by MLB in exchange for their
| cooperation.[1] The Astros subsequently fired both Luhnow
| and Hinch on the day their suspensions were announced"
|
| The individuals who made the decisions were held
| accountable, or at least some of them.
| naravara wrote:
| When accountants at Enron defrauded the State of
| California and the SEC, we didn't say "accountants at
| Enron." We said "Enron" and held Enron, the entity,
| responsible.
| MaysonL wrote:
| Also the CEO, COO and CFO were sentenced to prison.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Jeffrey Skilling served 24 years in jail
|
| Andrew Fastow committed suicide
|
| Ken Lay died of a heart attack before his trial
|
| Lou Pai walked away with $250 million and disappeared
|
| The litany of charges that were brought against the rest
| of the people involved have not been very successful:
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-ap-enron-trial-glance-
| sto...
|
| All of those sentenced in the above article were for
| reduced sentences since many of them testified against
| Skilling and others in order to get a shorter sentence.
|
| The only one who served any real prison time was
| Skilling.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Arguably, three people paid a heavy toll. Escaping prison
| because of suicide or having heart attack while waiting
| for your trial aren't exactly get out of jail free cards.
|
| Aside from that, totally agree. Many of the people who
| benefitted from the Enron disaster walked away without
| consequence. Very unsatisfying end.
| skylanh wrote:
| Fines are issued to players, coaches, and the team
| depending on the severity and type of offense.
|
| Examples:
|
| Mike Tomlin fined for blocking an on-field player, the
| team may have been penalized by forfeiting draft picks:
| https://www.nfl.com/news/mike-tomlin-fined-100-000-for-
| actio... They weren't: https://www.nfl.com/news/steelers-
| won-t-lose-draft-pick-for-...
|
| Coaches fined $100k for not wearing face masks, teams
| fined $250k: https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-fines-
| broncos-49ers-seahawks-fo...
|
| Saints fined $500k and stripped of draft pick:
| https://www.nfl.com/news/saints-fined-500k-draft-pick-
| patrio...
|
| Controversial team fines: https://www.nfl.com/news/draft-
| picks-that-have-been-stripped...
|
| - Falcons for fake crowd noise
|
| - Patriots for "deflategate"
|
| Saints were fined as a team, head coach suspended,
| players suspended for "bounty gate": https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/New_Orleans_Saints_bounty_scan...
|
| Team sports can be lost by a player, but must be won as a
| team. E.g. Kyle Williams of SF 49ers muffing two punts in
| the 2012-Feb-22 game against the Giants (off his knee,
| and the strip).
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Citizens United said otherwise.
| 8note wrote:
| The individuals in the corporation did it on behalf of the
| owners. The owners should be held accountable
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| 14 employees plus the employee with the stolen credentials
| were present for at least one of the felonies committed.
|
| There should be at least 15 conspiracy charges in addition
| to the CFAA violation charge.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Corporations absolutely do act, just as surely a person
| acts even though only their fingers or individual limbs may
| be moving. I agree the individuals should be subject to
| criminal penalties, but so should shareholders and board
| members, who hoped to profit and looked the other way,
| respectively.
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree that both the people involved and the company
| should be legally liable in this case.
|
| The important point to me about the company being liable is
| that a) the company itself benefited from the crime, and b)
| management knew about the crime happening; this wasn't a
| single rogue employee who did crimes and hid that fact from
| everyone else. (Contrast this to an employee using company
| resources, in secret, to commit a crime that only benefits
| the employee.)
|
| And no consequences for the people involved means there's
| no deterrence. In the future, employees with unethical
| management will realize that they can do this sort of thing
| with little risk to their own livelihood, so why not give
| it a try?
| CPLX wrote:
| It really is both. Corporations have corporate personhood and
| should be held accountable for criminal acts, as should
| individual criminals.
|
| Ticketmaster did do something. They clearly broke the law. So
| did the individuals. All should be severely punished this is
| egregious behavior.
| TwoBit wrote:
| Otherwise every illegal thing any company did would be played
| off as by rogue individuals.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| That is literally the standard dodge.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > - Ticketmaster management was aware of this and rewarded that
| employee with a promotion and additional responsibilities.
|
| At some point the employees involved were fired. So there was
| some short term reward, and long term... I don't know.
|
| Also, the article says that Zeeshan Zaidi, plead guilty to 26
| months ago. So obviously this is the last in a series of
| consequences.
| TwoBit wrote:
| Fired after the company was caught, or before?
| cbsmith wrote:
| I think from the context it is very clear that it was not
| before.
| icefrakker wrote:
| "Ticketmaster" didn't do anything. Ticketmaster is a company
| which cannot make decisions or take actions.
|
| It's sad that people can write things like this and still
| expect to have their opinions taken seriously.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| The last class action lawsuit against them resulted in people
| receiving unusable virtual tickets. I have hundreds of dollars
| worth. They're incredibly good at ripping people off.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > As usual, the executives in charge walk away.
|
| As usual, the DoJ has little appetite to prosecute non-weak
| people.
|
| It is the most maddeningly predictable outcome of every DoJ
| action against a corporation (w/ well funded lobbyists). We can
| thank every administration ever for this.
| foota wrote:
| It sounds like the person that was found guilty was at a fairly
| high level, not the top perhaps, but it sounds like it was
| quite possibly their idea.
| tareqak wrote:
| Could the $10 million fine be used by a future defendant to argue
| that the crime is not a big deal? What if members of FAANG+M
| decided to hack small startups or even each other?
| agilob wrote:
| > What if members of FAANG+M decided to hack small startups or
| even each other?
|
| You mean the way Amazon does it every day to successful,
| independent small sellers, copies their products and bans them
| from Amazon without providing a reason why? The way Google
| removed Tutanota from search results? Microsoft spread FUD
| about open-source? Or like Oracle acquired MySQL?
| g2entgroup wrote:
| This is sad that larger companies have a fear of the new kids on
| the block. When in fact, large companies should be embracing the
| young companies.
| inetsee wrote:
| Large companies often embrace young companies. They buy them to
| eliminate competition.
| RyanGoosling wrote:
| That idea is not in-line with a business mindset.
| throwawaysk wrote:
| I worked at Songkick. The business was not sustainable, there was
| no revenue stream in sight before the Crowdsurge merger.
| Crowdsurge effectively acquired us when they merged as Songkick
| had run out of funding, with no potential buyers or investors.
| Crowdsurge was not sustainable either, they lost money on every
| ticket sold, but mostly because TM would only allow 10% of any
| allocation at any TM venue. Crowdsurge were backed by Access (Len
| Blavatnik who owns Warner). The CEO and COO of Crowdsurge went
| after Ticketmaster as an exit. They built a corporate structure
| that made the employee share pool worthless. This meant that no
| employees ever saw any of the $110m "buy out" and they will never
| see any of this new $10m. The CEO and COO have a lot to answer
| for.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Probably related to the large amount of funding they raised
| compared to the exit,
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/songkick
| 247hustler wrote:
| What the hell lol
| ipqk wrote:
| Compare this slap on the wrist to Aaron Swartz:
|
| Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire
| fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse
| Act,[15] carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in
| fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and
| supervised release.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
| originalvichy wrote:
| "If the punishment for a crime is a fine, the law was written
| against the lower classes."
| learnstats2 wrote:
| I find this principle useful - that a fine is just permission
| slip for people who can afford it.
|
| But, in terms of environmental crimes as discussed in these
| comments, the reason corporation dump toxic waste in the
| river is to avoid the clean-up cost - it's an economic crime.
|
| So in that case, it's an appropriate solution to fine a large
| multiple of the total clean-up cost plus damages. The point
| is to not make it an affordable option, no matter how rich
| you are.
|
| Separately, fines which rise in proportional to wealth can
| work in a progressive way, e.g.
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8446545.stm
| nathanyz wrote:
| It is one of the great imbalances in the justice system where
| technically corporations are people, but criminally don't face
| anywhere near the same levels of punishment.
| marricks wrote:
| That's one way to look at it, but I think the deeper truth is
| just systems are pretty much always controlled by the
| powerful and benefit only them. Any new rules will be
| enforced as such. I think the HN threads discussing blue
| state concealed carry laws on how they can end up just
| leading to pay offs to police departments for concealed carry
| permits is pretty revealing. [1]
|
| Senators make millions on insider relief package info? Who
| cares. You challenge the powerful by revealing embarrassing
| secrets? Enemy of the state, you're gonna lose everything or
| at the very least many years of your life in legal limbo.
|
| The power balance in many cases could be the real issue,
| everyday people just need to be somehow get way more powerful
| and have their demands and needs met.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193861
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| IMO everyone related to a corporate crime should be
| responsible. If a company dumps toxic waste in to a river,
| the person who pressed the dump button, the person who told
| them too and any management that signed off on the idea
| should all be personally as responsible as if I just took a
| bucket and walked down to the local river.
|
| Perhaps some exceptions for people who could not be expected
| to understand the law, for example an untrained retail staff
| being tricked in to violating laws usually only understood by
| management or legal teams.
| Escapado wrote:
| And with (financial) protection for those who refuse to
| partake and report the crime. I guess the person pressing
| the dump button would usually make just above minimum wage
| and would be considered unimportant enough to fire if he
| stood up for what's right so there is no incentive except
| for a moral one which I would argue is not enough for most
| people.
| ljm wrote:
| They get all of the benefits of personhood but literally none
| of the drawbacks.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| And other benefits too: Disney trying to shirk its royalty
| paying responsibilities
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25143926
| akudha wrote:
| It is news like this that makes me want to go back to puppy
| videos on YouTube. In what universe 35 years in prison can be
| justified for Aaron's alleged crime?
| f430 wrote:
| and then 10 years later web scraping is fully legal and CFAA
| cannot be abused to go after them.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| It's fairly frustrating that no one is going to prison over this
| 100% greed-motivated, brazen corporate crime.
| roywiggins wrote:
| At least one actual human has plead guilty: "The charges
| against Ticketmaster come 26 months after Zeeshan Zaidi, the
| former head of Ticketmaster's artist services division, pled
| guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack the rival
| company and engage in wired [sic] fraud."
|
| He appears to be awaiting sentencing.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| > At a San Francisco meeting attended by at least 14
| employees of Ticketmaster or its parent company Live Nation,
| the employee used one set of credentials to log in to an
| account to demonstrate how it worked.
|
| I think 15 conspiracy charges are appropriate, bare minimum.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Let's say this guy gets 2 years for conspiracy. Not even
| doing the crime. He loses 2 of about 45 years in the
| workforce, or vaguely 5% of his lifetime income.
|
| For this to be proportional, ticketmaster should lose either
| 2 full years worth of income, or 5% of all profits in
| perpetuity. The amount they were fined for actually doing the
| crime was a rounding error by comparison.
| snakeboy wrote:
| Discussing the length of a prison sentence strictly in
| terms of income lost is also greatly understating the
| actual severity of the punishment.
|
| I would gladly give up say 10% of my lifetime earnings for
| all sorts of things, but I wouldn't trade 4.5 years of my
| healthy adult life for anything.
| ohyes wrote:
| > I wouldn't trade 4.5 years of my healthy adult life for
| anything
|
| But you probably do, just not on purpose. It's smaller
| decisions that you don't realize involve trading 'healthy
| adult life' for money/convenience/pleasure/release. And
| of course, the work hours you put in are very directly
| trading healthy adult life for money.
|
| Opportunity cost is not something that we, as humans, are
| particularly good at. It is of course possible that you
| are exceptional, in which case you can assume I'm
| speaking from my own fallible experience of existence.
| snakeboy wrote:
| You're correct, I should have been more precise. 4.5
| years lost all at once is what is unacceptable. I
| recognize work and all of life's "chores" take time, and
| that every decision I make cuts off an infinitude of
| other choices. Though most chores have a positive reward
| for doing them, while prison has very little.
|
| The larger point I intended was that for most people
| (especially handsomely-paid professionals like software
| devs) time is a more constrained resource than money.
|
| Lastly, time lost all at once is worse than time loss
| incrementally, i.e. if I could serve my 4.5 year sentence
| 40 hours a week, that doesn't sound so bad, or that
| unfamiliar... ;)
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| No, marginal cost of free time gets very expensive for
| most people.
|
| While I'd be willing to do my current job for X, if you
| wanted to double my hours, you'd need to pay me than 2X.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I agree, but unfortunately, bribery, I mean, _lobbying_ has
| a great ROI. It 's cheap to buy your way into Congress.
| spoonjim wrote:
| And nobody will change their behaviors because all but one of
| them suffer no personal consequences. They got the benefit of the
| crime and have to pay no price.
|
| Corporate crime needs to be prosecuted like personal crime, with
| 20-year-jail sentences in a jail full of Crips and Bloods and
| Aryan Brotherhood. Your Harvard MBA dude truly knows that he
| doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a place
| like that.
| markovbot wrote:
| sounds like the system is working as intended
| Nacdor wrote:
| > Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine
|
| Live Nation is worth $16 Billion. This is like a person with a
| $100k net worth having to pay a $62 fine, basically an expensive
| parking ticket.
|
| They might as well tell them to write "I will not hack my
| competitors" on the blackboard 100 times.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| A street cleaning ticket in SF is $79 and is probably one of
| the cheapest fines you'll pay.
| whalesalad wrote:
| A parking ticket in Chelsea, Michigan is $8. I forgot to pay
| it for 6 months and they didn't even care.
| enkid wrote:
| Some places parking ticket is revenue, some places it's
| just a reminder.
| codereflection wrote:
| ... and they'll call it "The cost of doing business".
| Disgusting.
| xmprt wrote:
| Are fines tax deductible?
| jedberg wrote:
| No, fines aren't deductible.
| CerealFounder wrote:
| LOL A criminal fine. Is there anything more insane than nobody
| being personally responsible for committing a crime. Like an
| institution woke up and developed cognition.
| byset wrote:
| But per the article, a Ticketmaster employee has pleaded
| guilty to a criminal offense related to the hacking
| soupson wrote:
| Your point still stands, but a better comparison I think is
| cash on hand, since valuation doesn't mean much in terms of
| paying fines. You can't pay the government in stock.
|
| LYV had $2.6b on hand last quarter.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You totally can pay the government in stock, you just have to
| sell it or set it aside in a trust.
|
| There's prior art, this is what the IRS makes folks who are
| attempting to renounce their citizenship (or give up a green
| card held for over 8 years) do for illiquid assets when
| paying the expatriation tax.
| brokensegue wrote:
| but LiveNation doesn't hold stock worth $16B and cannot
| easily issue new stock.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I didn't realize paying criminal penalties was supposed
| to be fun and easy ;) this is literally restitution for a
| crime.
|
| "Uh, no Judge, I don't think I should be forced to go to
| prison, that's _hard_ "
|
| [edit] Maybe this is controversial, I dunno, I might just
| be old fashioned that way, but my opinion is if you find
| the punishment too onerous maybe _don 't do crime_.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is not restitution if the money doesn't go the harmed
| party
| arcticbull wrote:
| You are correct, I misspoke. Thanks!
| munk-a wrote:
| Restitution is one of the comparably less important
| facets of our legal system (IMO), the important strength
| of a good legal system is deterrence. Restitution should
| (again IMO) in fact be severed from judgement, harmed
| parties should be reimbursed by the government and the
| government can excise penalties on the offending parties.
| There are a lot of cases where defendants should be hit
| with serious fines due to the potential and foreseeable
| damages of their actions but the claimants suffered
| comparatively little - in these cases an imbalanced
| judgement where the defendant is hit with a strong
| penalty that is only partially awarded to the claimant is
| fair... Then again (in the US at least) the legal system
| is essentially privatized with very little government
| intervention in cases so this would require some other
| changes to do properly.
|
| The other side of the coin is quite damaging to our
| society as well - a defendant being judgement proof
| (having nothing to penalize or fine) can deprive
| claimants of funds needed to repair the damage of the
| crime - this, again, is a case where the government
| awarding funds and then regaining those funds from the
| defendant independently would be quite beneficial.
| nickff wrote:
| Aren't people constantly arguing that deterrence is
| ineffective against individuals, and that rehabilitation
| is best? I don't take a personal view on these things,
| but I would imagine that the people arguing for more
| severe 'punishment' of corporations and white-collar
| criminals are the ones arguing for lenience in violent
| and other individual crime.
| hansvm wrote:
| It's possible for both of those views to coexist. I have
| no idea if the data fits such a model, but off the top of
| my head here are a few factors which might matter.
|
| 1. White-collar criminals might be more significantly
| deterred by the threat of any prison time, perhaps
| because they have more to lose or because such crimes
| have more premeditation.
|
| 2. Prison might work as a deterrent in general, but if
| 20yrs will already ruin your life then the additional
| threat of another 80yrs might have little to no impact.
|
| 3. Rehabilitation might have a stronger effect than
| deterrence, which could point to hybrid solutions
| leveraging both effects, supposing they mix
| appropriately.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| At a high level, I think it would be silly to say that
| deterrence is entirely ineffective. I think most
| individuals making serious arguments against it state
| that it is only effective in certain circumstances, it
| has diminishing returns, and as a country, the US errors
| on the side of sentences which are much longer than
| necessary.
|
| For example, If a crime is punished with incarceration,
| it seems unlikely that a person would make a calculated
| decision that 5 years in prison is an acceptable risk but
| 10 is not.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People say all sorts of things. How often do you drive 90
| mph on the highway?
|
| Most people learn over time when they are young that it
| is a losing proposition.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The parent post was talking about restitution. I was
| addressing this point.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I think there are some extradition lawyers who would
| agree with this
| james-skemp wrote:
| Punishment is meant to deter others from doing the crime
| (whether or not that works is another issue), so I think
| you're correct.
|
| If people/organizations are committing a crime, then one
| reason may be that the punishment/deterrent is too lax.
|
| (There's of course other reasons, like the law making the
| act a crime is bad in some way, or the
| individual/organization has no, or knows of no,
| alternative.)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This was a deferred prosecution agreement between
| Ticketmaster and a DOJ lawyer, not the court's decision.
| In the US, courts have limited power to review these
| agreements and generally judges just approve them every
| time. In other countries that allow DPE's, courts may
| have the power to limit their use.
|
| The agreement might state what Ticketmaster must do or
| refrain from doing after the effective date to avoid
| being prosecuted in the future. Paying a fine might be
| only one part of the agreement.
|
| One can only make assumptions about what the court might
| have found regarding the CFAA claim. The fact is, it did
| not get the opportunity.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Maybe this is an opening for a new startup: Frictionless,
| delightful resolution of criminal charges for the
| ultrawealthy. Simple automated payment of slap-on-the-
| wrist fines, and with the optional Uber-for-inmates
| premium add-on we'll find somebody to serve any jail time
| in your place.
| hhggfdss wrote:
| I don't think that's what the person you are replying to
| meant by not easy, I think they meant blood from a stone
| not easy.
|
| The stone might've committed a crime for which it should
| bleed, but that doesn't mean you can make it do that. Get
| it?
| paxys wrote:
| It isn't even an expensive parking ticket. Traffic fines in the
| Bay Area are in the hundreds even for minor offenses.
| nOObie1 wrote:
| The Bay Area and expensive are already synonymous
| cbsmith wrote:
| This is the not-quite-last (there's a deferred prosecution
| agreement that is part of this) in a series of consequences in
| a case that goes way back in time.
|
| I'm not sure I follow the logic of looking at the net worth of
| a conglomerate when assessing a fine. If someone parks the
| corporate car in a no-parking zone, or spits out chewing gum on
| the sidewalk, you're not going to fine them x% of net worth. At
| least in terms of consequences for the corporation, you'd they
| would be (punitively) proportional to the economic impact of
| the criminal activity.
|
| What was the impact of this conduct? It's not mentioned in the
| story. If they paid a $10 million fine on criminal activity
| that gleaned them a $1 billion advantage, then yeah this is a
| slap on the wrist. If it's a $10 million fine on something that
| gave them a $10 advantage, it's arguably overly punitive.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Some countries actually do this, charge variable fines
| depending on net worth. The fine in this case is to de-
| incentivize bad behavior like reckless driving.
| jobu wrote:
| Fines for corporations should be a percentage of revenue,
| otherwise massive companies will keep doing heinous shit and
| write it off as a cost of doing business. The GDPR penalties in
| the EU are done this way (up to 4% of revenue).
| hansvm wrote:
| That still just seems like a band-aid (sorry, I don't have a
| constructive alternative in mind).
|
| If Massively-Evil-Plan(tm) increases profits from 10% to 20%
| then even after a 4% fine on revenue, real profits are still
| 15%. A company only motivated by profits and fines (which
| seems like a reasonable assumption if we're using laws like
| GDPR to deter "heinous shit") would be crazy not to continue
| with MEP(tm).
|
| It's really the same kind of calculation as with fixed fines
| or fines based on damage done. When profitable, they're still
| written off as the cost of doing business. The only material
| difference would be that a fixed fine effectively allows
| large companies to do "heinous shit" while imposing fines so
| large that a small company can't compete, whereas with a
| revenue calculation you instead just need to make sure that
| your "heinous shit" is scalable. That doesn't apply in
| practice though, since GDPR has an alternative EUR20M fine
| which would go into effect, so in reality GDPR just says that
| to do "heinous shit" you need to be able to do a lot of it
| scalably and profitably.
|
| The natural direction one might take this is just to say that
| the fines must not be big enough, but until you approach 100%
| of revenue the potential always exists for a new form of
| profitable "heinous shit" to crop up. If fines of that scale
| are on the table then that brings us to the other side of the
| coin: A single violation of any anti-MEP(tm) law will nearly
| certainly end the business. If a violation of an anti-MEP(tm)
| law necessarily meant that a corporation was doing "heinous
| shit" then that could plausibly be acceptable (definitely up
| for debate), but merely not appointing a data protection
| officer in the EU violates GDPR and potentially subjects a
| business to a 2% of revenue fine. The law will not perfectly
| align with what a reasonable person would consider "heinous
| shit," and too severe of a penalty in such situations seems
| prone to abuse.
| femto113 wrote:
| Worth noting that TicketMaster also paid $110MM to "acquire"
| SongKick in order to settle the original (civil) lawsuit.
| m463 wrote:
| This could be a business model.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| The world is turning more and more into neuromancer /
| shadowrun everyday..
| ct520 wrote:
| Sounds like some solid DD to me
| [deleted]
| pedalpete wrote:
| I had always thought Warner bought SongKick, but further
| investigation shows they did not buy the pending lawsuit or
| the ticketing business.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Why are the people who did the hacking and those who ordered it
| not being brought up on criminal charges? How the heck is it that
| we have a legal system that shields criminals so long as the
| crime is in service to a large corporation?
| dvtrn wrote:
| The article, when we read it tells us:
|
| _The charges against Ticketmaster come 26 months after Zeeshan
| Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster's artist services
| division, pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack
| the rival company and engage in wired fraud. According to
| prosecutors, the former rival employee emailed the login
| credentials to Zaidi and another Ticketmaster employee._
| NeverFade wrote:
| A corporation criminally hacked a rival for profit and got away
| with a small fine.
|
| A person doing the exact same thing would be heading to prison.
|
| Seems like the same crime has a very different outcome when a
| corporation commits it.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The article notes that Zeeshan Zaidi, a Ticketmaster exec,
| plead guilty to violating the CFAA and to wire fraud in 2019,
| and is apparently still awaiting sentencing.
|
| You can read the criminal complaint:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > still awaiting sentencing
|
| Aside from the usual explanation (white collar crime), any
| idea why someone can be found guilty and then still not given
| a sentence for more than a year. AFAICT he isn't even
| incarcerated at the moment.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| A corporation regular committing crimes is a good revenue
| stream if they pay the fines consistently. So yes, the outcome
| is expected to be different, this shouldn't be mind blowing.
| maedla wrote:
| They should be nationalized to become an even better revenue
| stream
| buran77 wrote:
| While superficially a good idea, it would probably punish
| shareholders more than the actual perpetrators and would
| most likely lead to a far lower performing company, so a
| weaker economy. How many state run companies do you know
| are performing great?
|
| Tesla may do any number of shady or illegal things but
| without Musk and his vested interest in the company it
| would probably be a footnote in some corporate obituary.
| 8note wrote:
| The shareholders are the right people to hold accountable
| though.
|
| Otherwise you incentivize hiring fall guys to do a crime
| and go to prison, while the shareholders profit off of
| their crimes
| newen wrote:
| Why? It's not like shareholders are the ones doing the
| work inside the company.
| xwdv wrote:
| Because the company's growth story which much of the high
| valuation is built on is instantly eliminated, sending
| prices plummeting while the people working inside the
| company just go on to get new jobs somewhere and make
| more money.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's as if you've never been told "you should incorporate to
| limit your liability" before.
| Railsify wrote:
| Crime pays for the already rich.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| This is why the public should never support self driving cars:
| the corporation will kill people without consequences.
| gruez wrote:
| >the corporation will kill people without consequences.
|
| ...except the corporation being fined and/or sued in civil
| court, along with the executives/engineers responsible facing
| criminal charges.
| buran77 wrote:
| Except they rarely punish individuals, and as long as they
| are large enough or with plenty of government contracts
| companies rarely get a punishment that's more than "the
| cost of doing business".
|
| Look at the GM ignition switch scandal where executives
| knew explicitly the likely consequences of their decision
| and yet no real punishment was enacted even after
| repeatedly lying about the death toll (initially by at
| least one order of magnitude) that eventually officially
| reached 124 deaths and likely much higher in reality.
|
| Look at Boeing's 737MAX scandal where executives also knew
| the likely consequences and worked to go around rules,
| regulations, certification in order to pretend those
| consequences won't happen. Both Boeing and authorities
| either buried or turned a blind eye to reports that this
| happens. No real punishment here either.
|
| Autonomous cars or not, as long as corporations pay for
| your laws you will always be on the lower rungs of the
| ladder.
| pacamara619 wrote:
| It's gonna be the same thing as it is now:
|
| "Tragic. Thoughts and prayers. Software problem. Nothing we
| could do."
| gruez wrote:
| That literally describes the situation now with human
| drivers. The only difference is that human drivers get
| more sympathy because most voters are also drivers.
| babycake wrote:
| Remember not long ago when Uber killed a pedestrian?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359
|
| > Ms Vasquez was charged on 27 August, and made her first
| appearance in court on 15 September. The trial is now set
| for February next year.
|
| > Despite the decision not to levy criminal charges against
| Uber itself, the company did not escape criticism.
|
| > Days before the crash, an employee had warned his
| superiors that the vehicles were unsafe, were routinely in
| accidents, and raised concerns about the training of
| operators.
|
| > Following the crash, authorities in Arizona suspended
| Uber's ability to test self-driving cars on the state's
| public roads, and Uber ended its tests in the state. It
| received permission to carry out tests in the state of
| California earlier this year.
|
| So despite all the safety failures by the company, just the
| hired driver was charged...
| gruez wrote:
| >> Days before the crash, an employee had warned his
| superiors that the vehicles were unsafe, were routinely
| in accidents, and raised concerns about the training of
| operators.
|
| >So despite all the safety failures by the company, just
| the hired driver was charged...
|
| A thought experiment: if a municipality was warned about
| safety failures about its streets (high speed limits,
| poor lighting/signage, lack of pedestrian crossings), and
| some kid got killed in a car accident, should the
| municipality be liable? What if everything that uber/the
| municipality did was within the law, and the only thing
| they're guilty of is not taking _additional_ safety
| measures? eg. dropping the speed limit to 20mph in
| suburbs will probably eliminate all pedestrian deaths,
| should the municipality be liable if it set the speed
| limit to 30mph and the kid died?
| andrewzah wrote:
| There are an insane amount of car accident-related deaths &
| injuries every year. At least 30,000 deaths/year in the USA
| alone. Because humans drive tired, drunk, while texting, etc,
| and sometimes just make mistakes.
|
| With fully automated driving the number of crashes (and
| therefore injuries & deaths) will go down -dramatically-. So
| you can argue all you want about the ethics & morality of the
| ~100 deaths/year or so from automated car crashes. But that's
| far preferable to the current situation. Even if we still
| have 10-20k deaths/year from automated driving systems,
| that's still a large improvement.
|
| This argument about the ethics of contrived car accident
| scenarios totally misses the boat. In my opinion the only
| ethical argument is to move over to fully automated driving
| systems as soon as -safely- possible.
| jonathanyc wrote:
| > With fully automated driving the number of crashes (and
| therefore injuries & deaths) will go down -dramatically-.
| So you can argue all you want about the ethics & morality
| of the ~100 deaths/year or so from automated car crashes.
| But that's far preferable to the current situation.
|
| Why do people (in particular people without robotics
| experience) keep assuming this will happen any time soon
| without any evidence whatsoever? "We must move over to self
| driving cars as soon as they are safer" is fair but it's
| almost tautological.
|
| The only numbers we have so far show that _despite_ only
| testing in near ideal conditions (e.g. Waymo choosing to
| test in suburban Arizona rather than Manhattan or rural
| snowy Midwestern areas), the accident rate for autonomous
| vehicles is actually _significantly_ higher, _not even_
| counting "interventions" which every company measures in
| its own inscrutable way.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Nothing in my comment implied this will happen soon. I
| don't think a safe, fully automated system will arrive
| anytime soon.
|
| What I was discussing was the supposed ethics of fully
| automated driving vs human driving when crashes happen.
|
| I'm tired of seeing these contrived, hypothetical
| examples about what an automated car may or may not do in
| a very specific scenario, that completely ignore the fact
| that crashes & deaths will go down by orders of
| magnitude.
| jonathanyc wrote:
| But the other commenter's "corporations will kill people
| without consequences" isn't a contrived example. It is
| just an extrapolation of what happened already when
| Uber's self driving car killed a woman because the
| management and executives decided to manually disable the
| automatic braking on the car.
|
| Maybe crashes and deaths will go down by an order of
| magnitude one day. But my point is that that's hardly an
| argument in favor of not worrying about the ethical
| implications of self driving cars _today_.
| kelnos wrote:
| I feel like you're moving the goalposts, though.
|
| My view is that even if self-driving car corporations
| kill people with zero consequences (due to poor laws and
| poor oversight), as long as they're doing so at lower
| rates than human drivers are, that's still a net win.
| It's still not an ideal scenario, because those deaths
| could be _further_ reduced under the threat of real
| consequences. But by and large, it 'd still be better
| than what we have today.
|
| If they're killing people during testing of experimental
| tech that hasn't been approved for general use (like the
| Uber case you mentioned), they need to be smacked down
| hard. If they're killing people at a higher rate than
| human drivers, they should not be approved for general
| use in the first place. If they're approved, but release
| an update that ends up killing more people, they again
| need to be smacked down hard, with the update immediately
| reverted.
| paulgb wrote:
| > Why do people (in particular people without robotics
| experience) keep assuming this will happen any time soon
| without any evidence whatsoever?
|
| As someone who spends more time cycling than driving,
| watching videos like this[1] give me more confidence in
| _today's_ self-driving technology (assuming good
| conditions) than in most drivers on the road, even
| knowing that any internal video is bound to have a dose
| of propaganda. It's not entirely even that drivers are to
| blame; our infrastructure puts cyclists at risk as does
| the human limitation of only having two eyes.
|
| https://youtu.be/sliYTyRpRB8
| rantwasp wrote:
| you answered your own questions. people that don't
| understand the nitty gritty details of technology (any
| technology) will put more faith in it than people that
| understand it.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Because humans drive tired, drunk, while texting, etc,
|
| But I don't. I don't care about 30k deaths a year if I'm
| killed by a floating point exception or an image
| reconnaissance glitch making my car think the truck in
| front of me is part of the sky.
| andrewzah wrote:
| And I care about dying from being hit by lightning and
| airplane crashes. It's statistically so unlikely that
| it's ridiculous to worry about it.
|
| If you die from a car crash it doesn't matter if it was
| from a drunk driver or an ai glitch. What matters is
| which is more likely- and humans are assholes. It will be
| orders of magnitude more likely to die by a human's hand
| than a random glitch.
|
| > "But I don't"
|
| I'm glad. Crashes still happen even when 1 party
| practices defensive driving techniques. Driving sucks.
| rantwasp wrote:
| nah. it sounds like you're arguing what the odds are but
| let me ask a question: what are the odds that a self
| driving car has a "glitch"?
|
| At what threshold should one be willing to bet their
| lives in this probability every time they drive?
|
| Right now we are speculating what the odds a self driving
| car has to make a mistake. But there aren't any truly
| self driving car out there. So how do you determine the
| actual odds? If you replaced all the cars with self
| driving cars how many accidents would we have?
| andrewzah wrote:
| We're not there yet, but at some point we will be. It
| probably won't be within the next 5 years, maybe even 10.
| All that matters is that the # of deaths from automated
| driving ends up less than the # of deaths from human
| driving.
|
| If 1,000 people a year die from software glitches, that's
| still a 30x+ improvement from the current situation.
|
| I really don't see how people focus so much on "potential
| glitches" and not the current reality: drunk drivers,
| angry/hostile road-ragey people, people on the phone,
| people texting while driving, people on medication,
| people driving while sleepy, etc. A few glitches here and
| there is objectively superior to the current state of
| affairs.
| xmprt wrote:
| > If 1,000 people a year die from software glitches,
| that's still a 30x+ improvement from the current
| situation.
|
| This isn't true. The odds of me dying in a car crash is
| lower than the average as a result of precautions I take
| to be safe. For me 1,000 deaths/year _might_ be a
| improvement (or it might not) but to say it 's a 30x+
| improvement just by looking at the total number of deaths
| is just false.
|
| The focus on potential glitches is because it's something
| the driver has no control over. Is there a similar
| measure for number of completely accidental deaths (eg.
| someone swerving into your car or t-boning you at an
| intersection)?
|
| Finally, until we have better laws that ensure companies
| are liable for their mistakes, companies won't take all
| the precautions to ensure vehicles are safer than a good
| driver (not just the average driver). Does anyone
| remember the Ford Pinto explosion issues because the
| company decided to use a cheaper gas tank and figured
| they would save more than they would pay from settling
| the few lawsuits that might emerge as a result?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _The odds of me dying in a car crash is lower than the
| average as a result of precautions I take to be safe._
|
| I'm not specifically accusing you of this, but consider
| that more people than is numerically possible believe
| that they're better/safer than the average driver. There
| are a _lot_ of people who believe they are much safer
| drivers than they actually are.
|
| Regardless, just because you believe that you personally
| will be a safer driver than a computer, we should scrap
| the whole thing? What about all the people who _aren 't_
| better drivers than the computer? Let's assume for a
| moment that you actually are safer than the eventual
| self-driving systems that are approved for general use --
| which is by no means a certain assumption to make -- then
| maybe you just don't use or ride in a self-driving car?
| It's your choice, after all (especially in a place like
| the US, where I imagine manual-drive car ownership in a
| self-driving world will end up nearly as closely
| protected as firearm ownership). And sure, maybe someone
| else's self-driving car might hit you and kill you, but
| someone else's human-driven car might do the same. And if
| self-driving cars are doing that at lower rates than
| humans are, it's still a net win.
|
| I think many people are taking this weird view that even
| though a self-driving car might make fewer mistakes (and
| cause fewer deaths) overall, it's somehow a worse
| situation that they'll likely make _different_ mistakes
| than a human would; that is, a self-driving car might
| kill you in a situation where a human driver would save
| you. And that somehow makes the whole thing not worth it.
| I just find that line of reasoning to be flat-out wrong.
| It 's an emotional appeal to some illusion of control.
| (Of course, unfortunately, logic doesn't write laws when
| it comes to contentious issues... emotion does.)
|
| > _The focus on potential glitches is because it 's
| something the driver has no control over._
|
| This is pretty short-sighted, because there are a ton of
| things that you have no control over when you drive your
| own car, and yet you've decided (in many cases likely
| unconsciously) that those things are acceptable risks.
|
| I'm not saying you should ignore the possible risk of
| glitches, but focusing on a number that we don't even
| know yet, and immediately assuming that it will be too
| high for your risk tolerance is... a bit weird?
|
| And that's the thing: I don't expect self-driving systems
| that have equal or worse crash records than humans do
| will be approved for use. And if they are, people will
| (rightly!) reject them. So any approved, accepted self-
| driving system will end up causing fewer deaths. Some of
| those deaths will be caused by outright bugs, and others
| will be caused by situations that a human driver would
| not be able to recover from either. All deaths are
| tragic, but fewer deaths overall is what we should be --
| must be -- aiming for. Not playing games with control
| illusions. Not arbitrarily deciding that certain failure
| modes are somehow less acceptable than others when they
| cause the same (or even fewer!) deaths.
|
| My position -- and what I believe to be the only logical,
| community minded position -- is that the glitch rate does
| not matter one bit. The only thing that matters is the
| overall death rate, and if self-driving cars have a lower
| death rate than human drivers, that should be enough. And
| if they don't, they should not be approved for use, and
| people will rightly reject them anyway.
|
| I do agree with you that companies building self-driving
| systems need to be liable for mistakes and negligence to
| the same degree as human drivers are. Unfortunately
| that's harder to prove, but it's a necessary thing to
| figure out.
| kelnos wrote:
| But you do make mistakes. All humans do. Maybe you had an
| argument with a family member earlier in the day, and
| your mind wanders and you don't notice a red light. Maybe
| it's night, and raining, and some unexpected glare
| combined with debris in the road causes you to crash.
| Maybe you do drive tired, just once, even though
| generally you're strict about not doing so. Having a
| perfect driving record requires both luck (that no one
| else around you screws up) and constant vigilance on your
| part. Blemishing that record only takes the tiniest
| mistake, just once. No one, literally no one, is immune
| to these factors.
|
| As much as I dislike the term "accident" when talking
| about car crashes (because, to me, the implication of the
| word is no one has to take responsibility), sometimes
| things just happen, because we are imperfect beings with
| imperfect nervous systems and imperfect perceptions and
| imperfect reaction times.
|
| Self-driving cars will be better at a lot of things, but,
| yes, possibly worse at others. They have the potential to
| eliminate many causes of crashes, but might add a few new
| ones.
|
| When you're on a plane, you're trusting not only the
| pilots, but a ton of complex avionics software. Why is
| that ok, while trusting self-driving isn't? I get that
| the two tasks are very different, and self-driving will
| require more sophisticated, nuanced software, but in both
| cases you're turning your safety over to a computer. That
| didn't work so well with the 737-MAX, but no one is
| talking about scrapping modern aviation because a bunch
| of people died due to bad software decisions.
|
| The problem is the illusion of control. People think that
| driving their own car means they're in control of nearly
| every possible outcome, but in reality, they're not.
| Plenty of things can happen in a car that are out of the
| driver's control, even without another vehicle involved.
|
| Another part of it is that people (Americans especially)
| can be excessively individualistic. Many people will balk
| at a solution that will result in (just making up numbers
| here) 25% fewer deaths if it means they personally will
| have a 0.001% greater chance of dying. Frankly, I find
| that mindset really worrying in a society, even if it can
| be understandable.
|
| (Somewhat relatedly, I recall an episode of Star Trek TNG
| where one possible solution to the problem du jour was to
| give the computer full control over propulsion in order
| to save the ship. And we're talking about a futuristic
| computer that could probably flawlessly simultaneously
| self-drive every car currently on Earth without breaking
| a sweat. But in the end, blatantly pandering to our
| "human control is always superior" biases, the computer
| was found to be not good enough, and humans saved the
| day. Even more telling, I believe it was Captain Picard
| who took manual control; they didn't even have Data, the
| android, do it!)
| riffic wrote:
| you've described crimes and bad decision making processes
| (humans drive tired, drunk, while texting, etc, and
| sometimes just make mistakes).
|
| The outcomes of those choices are known and have causes
| which are preventable; they are by definition not
| accidental in nature.
|
| I know it's not intentional but words matter. Crash is a
| better word 99% of the time than "accident".
| chipgap98 wrote:
| An accident is just something that occurs without
| intention. In the cases you're describing people don't
| intend to hit another car or person. That makes accident
| a reasonable label.
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree with that, but I think "accident" in this
| particular context has the undesirable property of
| allowing people to weasel out of taking responsibility.
| Just because you didn't intend to do something, it
| doesn't make it not your fault if you do. But the system
| and culture around this is set up to try to disclaim
| blame, even to the point that insurance companies tell
| you to never ever admit you were at fault after a crash.
| riffic wrote:
| Behaviors and design are themselves an intention.
|
| This post addresses "The Semantics of Intention":
|
| https://laist.com/2020/01/03/car_crash_accident_traffic_v
| iol...
|
| excerpt:
|
| Drivers aren't out there aiming for pedestrians and
| cyclists, so how does intention factor in?
|
| UCLA's Madeline Brozen argues it can be traced back to
| both failure to follow road safety laws and a lack of
| understanding about how dangerous driving a car is --
| especially since unsafe speed is the top contributing
| factor in L.A. traffic deaths.
|
| Research shows that a pedestrian struck by a driver going
| 20 mph has an 80% chance of survival. If that driver
| accelerates to 40 mph and hits a pedestrian, the victim's
| chance of surviving drops to just 10%.
|
| "The act of going above the speed limit or going fast [in
| unsafe] road conditions...that is an intention," Brozen
| said. "When someone is driving in a way that can kill
| someone, they are creating a risk."
|
| According to John Yi, another "degree of intention" in
| traffic deaths falls on car-centric society and L.A.'s
| leaders, who are "intentional about what we're building
| and what we're not building."
|
| City officials have stated clearly that L.A.'s mission to
| eliminate traffic deaths is informed by the fact that
| "underserved communities are disproportionately killed in
| traffic crashes." But Yi argues that the historic neglect
| of those communities can be viewed as intentional.
|
| "To take that away, I think, is really not looking at
| some of the most disinvested communities and what they're
| going through," he said. "To put it squarely on the
| shoulders of drivers and say it's their fault and they're
| the ones who should be moderating behavior is overlooking
| the situation altogether."
| triceratops wrote:
| Going by that logic transportation of any sort should never
| be provided by any corporation.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Vehicular homicide is already rarely punished. I don't know
| if it would make that much practical difference.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Drivers often do not face any consequences for killing people
| as it is. Unless the driver was intoxicated, it is generally
| written off as an accident.
|
| If only the people who get outraged about self-driving cars
| were as outraged by this fact and applied pressure to improve
| street design and speed limit enforcement.
| Eridrus wrote:
| And to be clear, this largely makes sense: humans are not
| good at preventing long tail failures that require constant
| vigilance and are not responsive to unlikely punishments,
| no matter how severe. The thing we have to do is improve
| the systems in which people operate.
| unreal37 wrote:
| A lot of car fatalities are accidents that don't involve
| alcohol - around 70%.
|
| One time I lost control of my car while driving on the
| highway and hitting a patch of black ice. Luckily, nobody
| died. But that happens all the time.
|
| Presumably, a self-driving car will drive slower in adverse
| weather than a human might, as well as being able to
| control the car if it hits an ice patch better than an
| untrained human can.
|
| Also, the car can notify other cars on the same road of the
| ice patch, instantaneously.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Surely someone performed the hacking. Would this person(s) not
| be criminally liable?
| na85 wrote:
| >Seems like the same crime has a very different outcome when a
| corporation commits it.
|
| Of course it does. There's a separate justice system for the
| rich and powerful.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Some of the "sovereign citizen" folks have a whole mythology
| based on "incorporated people", it has some appeal in that it'd
| be nice if there was just one law and it applied to all.
|
| Why can't we have our own personal corporations, which can
| stiff our creditors, cheat customers, etc etc with impunity?
| Surely all the social benefits of allowing this behavior from
| groups would only multiply if these liberties extended to
| individuals as well.
| gruez wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa.
| ..
|
| >Factors that a court may consider when determining whether
| or not to pierce the corporate veil include the following
|
| >[...]
|
| >Was the corporation being used as a "facade" for dominant
| shareholder(s) personal dealings; alter ego theory;
| moftz wrote:
| Right, if they think your "corporation" is just a shell to
| shield you from justice, they will just prosecute you
| instead of going with the charade of trying to punish your
| shell company. The feds rarely have trouble prosecuting
| someone when they want to, they've got somewhere between
| 95-99% conviction rate.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| That's only for really obvious cases. Part of the problem
| is that a corporation can effectively distribute
| liability across different people/groups, so no single
| individual can have a really good idea, or is even aware
| of what's happening collectively, to facilitate bad
| behavior, so to speak.
|
| Doing this allows them to effectively engage in the same
| bad behavior an individual can, but without the risk
| associated with a single individual doing all of those
| things themselves. It also may allow them to scale better
| too. :/
| 8note wrote:
| Isn't that conviction rate based on not pursuing cases
| that aren't a sure shot?
| kelnos wrote:
| Well, sure, conviction rates only cover cases when
| charges were filed, so we'll never know when they decided
| not to bring charges in the first place because the
| strength their case didn't meet some internal threshold.
|
| But I think the Feds are pretty good at building cases.
| Since it's a crime to lie to a federal investigator, all
| they have to do is find some fact they can prove about
| you that you'd be likely to lie about, and get you to
| lie. (Technically the lie has to be material to the
| investigation, but in practice any vaguely related lie
| seems to do.) Apparently it's often not that hard to do;
| they're trained to exploit the psychology of the
| situation to their advantage.
|
| And once you've lied, they have something on you, and
| they can use that as leverage to get more.
| singlow wrote:
| I am not sure if I disagree with your main point. But the
| conviction rate is only proof that they don't prosecute
| cases when they do not have the evidence to win.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I have a certain sympathy for the SovCit people, because
| while 99 times out of 100 they're trying to evade their legal
| responsibilities, they are making a valid point that such
| evasion is in many ways institutionalized in our society as
| long as you can throw some money at the problem ahead of
| time.
| kelnos wrote:
| I have sympathy for the concept, but not the people. All
| the videos I've seen of them arguing their cases are so
| mind-numbingly _stupid_ that it pisses me off just that
| they 're wasting taxpayer money taking up law enforcement
| and court time with their bullshit "tactics".
|
| Reality doesn't fly out the window just because they want
| something to be true.
| mmaunder wrote:
| So Anthony Levandowski got 18 months in prison for stealing self
| driving car secrets from Waymo (Alphabet) and passing them to
| Uber. Live Nation did $10B in revenue in 2017 and they're fined
| 0.1% of annual revenue for a CFAA violation which has sentences
| up to 20 years for individuals.
| hsod wrote:
| The individual who did the hacking was criminally prosecuted
| and pled guilty to a CFAA violation
| https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451...
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| What was their sentence?
| Triv888 wrote:
| In China, the CEO would probably disappear for a few months
| mhh__ wrote:
| Only if you stole it from the CCP
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