
AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Companies - grellas
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-19/at-t-case-asks-high-court-to-assign-privacy-rights-to-companies.html
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redcap
In the last year or two I remember reading about a UK company who sucessfully
argued for either a right to privacy or a right not to have specific
information published. This information was about some horrendous pollution
that the company was responsible for in Africa, and iirc only came to light
because it was picked up by a member of parliament and read into Hansard where
it was subsequently picked up by social media.

I tried searching but couldn't come up with anything as I don't remember the
name of the company or who was involved.

If my memory serves me correctly, this was an example of exactly why
corporations shouldn't be granted the same rights as actual humans.

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joe_the_user
Actually,

Neither a corporation nor an individual should have the right to cover up
something like that.

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_delirium
That's one of the controversies with English libel law in general, which is
fairly strong, applies a burden of proof to the person accused of libel, and
doesn't have truth as an absolute defense.

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arethuza
Upvoted for not saying "UK libel law" :-)

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bitskits
For a second, I thought this was an Onion article about a spicy TMZ story or
something...

A publicly traded company could have a "right to privacy"? What a country.

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yuhong
Well, many of them have confidential info about stuff like products in
development.

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yardie
So if your secret recipe contains 11 herbs, spices, and a pinch of dioxin that
should be confidential?

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bitskits
That's a different issue than what is described in the article. What AT&T
seems to be asking for is a "freedom from embarrassment", rather than a
protection of trade secrets.

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ck2
With all these privileges corporations are seeking and getting, I want to know
when CEOs and other decision makers will also get the responsibilities of
society enforced on them?

ie. going to prison for things like killing a bunch of people on the BP
platform and tons and tons of wildlife. I mean even for a few months? Why are
they sleeping comfortable in their beds every night plotting their next
dollar?

BP, Worldtrans, Haliburton, not a single person has served a single day.

But try pouring a quart of oil off your curb while the neighbors watch and see
how many months you serve in prison.

Blackwater, DynCorp, CACI and Titan Corp, not a single day in prison.

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_delirium
Technically corporations can be convicted of criminal offenses just like
regular people can, but the penalties don't make much sense. They end up just
getting fines, since it's difficult to send the corporation itself to jail.

There was a 1980s case where a company (Allegheny Bottling Co.) was convicted
of an offense with jail time, and the judge imposed a suspended sentence with
probation, with a probation condition being that top executives spend their 40
hours a week doing community service. That was overturned on appeal, though,
with the appeals court recognizing that the trial court had something of a
dilemma (the corporation had been convicted of a crime with a sentence that in
practice could not be imposed), but said that that form of "corporate
probation" was too much of a stretch, and that it was up to Congress to figure
out what to do about it.

People also occasionally propose a three-strikes equivalent for corporations,
where three criminal convictions leads to revocation of the corporate charter.
The fundamental problem is that criminal penalties are supposed to have both
deterrent and incapacitating effects: the threat of jail time is supposed to
be a strong enough sanction to deter people who wouldn't be deterred by mere
fines, and actual incarceration physically restrains people from committing
more offenses during the time they're locked up. How does one both deter
corporations from violating laws, and incapacitate those that do?

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ck2
So basically the formula is, if you are going to commit a crime, make sure you
form a corporation around it first. It literally shields you from prison time.

I wonder just how many people have to obviously die from someone's risky
decision, hiding behind a corporation, for someone to serve even one day. The
BP disaster sets the bar pretty high for everyone to walk away scot-free, the
idea that one day there will be some other kind of event even worse than that
is pretty scary.

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jamesaguilar
Oversimplification. You obviously cannot form a corporation then commit any
arbitrary crime and escape judgment. And there have been a number of cases
where a corporate executive has committed criminal misconduct that they have
been sent to jail for. It's what there is no particular person to whom blame
can obviously be assigned where the problem we're discussing comes to pass.

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cynoclast
>It's what there is no particular person to whom blame can obviously be
assigned where the problem we're discussing comes to pass.

Actually, it's rather easy. The CEO collects the biggest paycheck, nail the
responsibility to them. Greatest profits should come with the greatest risk.

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cynoclast
Very related post/discussion I made (no link karma for it, as if reddit karma
were worth anything):
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/f1l79/instead_of...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/f1l79/instead_of_blaming_faceless_corporations_why_dont/)

tl;dr: For fuck's sake, nail the responsibility to the CEO. If they don't like
it, they can steer the company into the moral high road. Secondly, Yes, the
CEO. They take credit for when the company does well, so let them take credit
for when it does reprehensible things.

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Magnin
So they want "Corporate Free Speech" and now "Right to privacy".....

If corporations are people, and you can't own people... then every stockholder
is a Slave owner and the Stock exchange is the largest slave market ever.

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jamesbritt
If corporations are so much like people, how come they can be bought and sold?

