Did you freeze or lock your credit with Equifax? Have you ever checked your credit report with Equifax so you knew it would be in advance?

Congratulations. You no longer have access to the court system.

Cool, I have never done any of those things with equifax! Where do I sign up for the class action lawsuit?

Why would you? To get $10 and a year of free credit monitoring, and thus indemnify them for any further damage resulting from the breach? Better to opt out and wait until/if you actually suffer identity theft. Even if you're forced into arbitration you'll probably get more for your individual damages.

To punish Equifax?

The problem with the snarky, knee jerk response to class actions that you have is that most class actions are instances where individuals aren't harmed for much, but together it's quite significant.

And I have absolutely no faith in private arbitration to do anything but find for the entity paying their fees.

That's the rumor floating around, but there is no evidence behind it. If I buy a license to of Windows, with an arbitration agreement, and then Satya Nadella hits me with his car, I don't have to go to arbitration for the car incident.

You're not.

Actually, you're a provider to Equifax, in the form of the data trail they're ingesting.

A pretty good WashPo item (by way of Outline because fuck WP's nagwall) spelling this out:

https://outline.com/aKwW2y

> fuck WP's nagwall

Funny how "Fuck you, pay me" is an acceptable sentiment when you're a freelance software dev, but now when you're a journalistic institution.

As to the article: I've already read it. I'd clicked through to the link (from my Reddit blog) to confirm it addressed what I'd remembered. And I'm sharing it here which may drive slightly more clicks to washpo's site. But, because I got smacked by the nagwall (and again, having already read the article), no.

NY Times has a similarly annoying practice of disabling copy/paste from articles (trivial to get around on various browsers, but not Chrome/Android), so I frequently point to Outline for that as well.

I sympathise with the problems of publishers. But I've also done a lot of research and thinking on this, and they're fundamentally fighting a losing war.

Either go fully behind a paywall (and suffer the consequences of that), go nonprofit (see ProPublica, ICIJ, NPR/PBS), find a patronage option, or ... well, I don't know.

But the system we've got (and which a great many HN folk are directly participating in, as I have myself) SIMPLY. IS. NOT. WORKING.

(It's one of a bunch of things that aren't working presently, though it ties in to many of the others in particularly distressing ways.)

Information and markets fundamentally do not work.

A topic I've addressed (and cited people who do not manifest on the Internet as Space Alien Cats, including Joseph Stiglitz) numerous times. And you can read for free!

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=information+ma...

Or this yesterday on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15540536

Ok. How do those journalists, web devs, publishers, photographers, etc pay their bills?

That's addressed at length in the links provided.