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Supreme Court Rules On Corporate Privacy
heptapod writes "The Supreme Court unanimously decided (PDF) Monday that AT&T can't keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; 'personal privacy' rights do not apply to corporations. 'We trust that AT&T will not take it personally,' concluded the ruling."
we still have quite a few other personal rights that have been given to corporations that shouldn't have
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
About frakking time. Corporations should have no more access to human rights than a tree or rock or building. If an entity can not vote, then it should not have rights.
Privileges like trademarks and advertising? Sure. But such privileges should be strictly regulated and limited (unlike individual speech rights which should be unlimited).
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
First off: "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally"
Hahahaha! That's like a big middle finger stuck right into the ruling. Nice!
Now that I got that out of my system...the whole corporate personhood thing is such a farce anyway. A corporation is nothing but a group of people. It could be one person or 100,000 people. But if you remove all the people from the corporation, can it make a decision? Can it sign a piece of paper? Can it continue to function at all? NO.
What's worse: the idea that people do things "on behalf" of corporations. Such as the fallacy that a corporation is to blame and not the person who does the wrong thing and rationalizes "I'm not a sociopath because I decided to pollute that river with toxic waste then obstruct justice during the investigation by shredding all those documents on behalf of the corporation."
Corporations don't commit crimes. People do. Maybe it's "on behalf of" the corporation. But it's always a person doing the deed.
Again, a corporation is its people. It's not its own person.
If corporations were individuals they would be sociopaths as this 2003 Canadian documentary endeavors to show. In D&D they would be considered either lawful evil or chaotic evil (depending on the corporation). They are narrowly selfish and greedy to such an extent that as an individual they would almost certainly be criminals. Profit trumps every other concern without exception. So corporations are an evil institution, but are they a necessary evil? The price we pay for economic prosperity. Perhaps, but that doesn't mean we have to give them any more power than necessary to get what we (as a society) want from them (inexpensive, innovative, useful products).
I consider myself a Libertarian, but I would argue that even in a free society corporations-as-individuals should be prohibited. It simply does not make sense to grant them the same rights as an individual not only because they clearly are a group of individuals, but because corporations need to have limitations on their power and on their predictably ruthlessly selfish/evil behavior. Corporations are the only institutions that can even remotely compete with governments in terms of power and abuse of power and they should be treated warily because of this.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Folks here are already saying things about this ruling diminishing the "person" aspect of corporations. The ruling doesn't really do that. Instead, it rests on a question of statutory construction. In particular, the court says that "personal privacy", a phrase used in FOIA, does not merely mean the privacy of a person, as AT&T argued, but instead refers to particular elements of privacy that only carry meaning when you're talking about an actual human being.
Has a company ever been put in prison?
No, it would be much easier as we would have to charge individuals with crimes and therefore, individuals in the company would have real personal consequences for their actions instead of having the company take the fall. It also wouldn't have to be a single person; a group of people in collusion would be just as effective.
-SaNo
Many countries make a distinction between natural persons (i.e. humans) and a legal person (entities, corporations). I have to assume that there must be some distiction between the two in the US too, though it is smaller than elsewhere. If not, a corporation being a natural person would have a nationality, and if it is a US nationality, it would have the right to vote in elections, which is not the case.
Sure they can. For instance, if corporations are property, thanks to asset forfeiture it's possible for the government to charge property with a crime and confiscate it.
Or alternately, assume they are neither property nor persons. That means that Congress can pass whatever laws about corporations they like (since they nearly always fall under interstate commerce), and the state where the corporation is incorporated can also exercise unchecked control. Either of them could pass a law that states something like "Corporations who commit criminal offenses will be tried as criminal defendants."
One could argue whether either of those is a good or bad thing, but it's hardly a situation where they can't be charged with a crime.
I am officially gone from
Which typically amounts to a slap on the wrist.
Problem is, "the public" is not what you think it is. that does not mean you or me but "major shareholders" which is the top 1% of the population. Liability to you or me, even if we hold 1,000 shares is nothing. liability to the guy that owns 20% is there.
the public was sold a bag of goods that was rigged from the start to protect the riches of the top 1% and NOT that of the public.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You have summed up the problem pretty effectively. All the execs have to do is pass the buck and they know they can basically get away with whatever they want. And if they are caught, the harshest penalty is monetary - not even personal fines, but rather the corporation. It is like legally removing your conscience.
"But this one goes to 11!"
When a company is fined, who pays the price? For public companies (most of the companies we care about), the answer is basically shareholders -- almost all of whom had no part in the wrongdoing. So the main effect is that some people in the company do something wrong, then all shareholders get fined. I think more fines should be leveled on the people who actually did the wrongdoing (although fining the company is still somewhat useful as it does provide an incentive not to break the law -- it's just that the burden of the fine is mostly misplaced).
Corporate personhood is not invented to protect 'natural', 'constitutional' or 'legal' rights of persons.
For one thing, the concept originates from before the US constitution. It at least dates back to the Dutch East Indies company (1608 IIRC). Separating investment from liability (other than the invested sum) is a means to allow a multitude of people to invest in a company without the risk of being taken down in a bankruptcy (for more than their invested sum). It is a pure tradeoff between the the security of the investors and the rights of creditors and has nothing to do with enforcement of pre-existing rights.