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Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by whatshisface on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @10:13AM (#22181343)
What if the organization is one person in an LLC? Do they get rights? If so then a big company can hire a bunch of little LLCs to act as rights-having proxies for any task that requires them.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @10:20AM (#22181431)
I'm going to assume you're asking in good faith and try to address the confusion here.

The human does get rights, the organization doesn't.

In some cases, believing that humans have rights and believing that organizations have rights might lead one to the same action. In those cases, I'd take the action. I wouldn't want to violate a human's rights out of some vindictive dislike of organizations: that's not the point. The point is that I'd take that action because I believe in human rights, not because I believe that the organization has rights.

And with organizational transparency: the entire point of organizational transparency is to protect human rights. In cases where organizational transparency would trample human rights to privacy, I would go with human rights every time. Violating the privacy of humans to achieve organizational transparency would defeat the entire purpose.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by whatshisface on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @10:43AM (#22181730)
Let's say that individual humans have the right to keep secrets. Let's also say that they have the right to keep secrets with their associates, and to tell them to who they please. Now, doesn't that make it legal for a group of people to keep secrets about you? What about selling them? I just don't see what doing away with the legal fiction of corporate personage would do about Facebook.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @11:52AM (#22182680)
It may not be your intent, but you're using some very vague, inapplicable terminology to make some screwed up behavior sound normal.

If you can tell secrets to who you please and sell them on the internet, they aren't secrets. Somewhere in the middle of what you're saying, the secrets stopped being secrets, but you kept using the word as if it still applied.

Facebook isn't a group of associates trading anecdotes about their friends: the server guy has never met Mark Zuckerberg, and they are not "associates" in any meaningful way. They're not friends, or even really allies: Facebook certainly has shown inconsistent concern for the well-being of its workers. So let's also drop the "associates" terminology: these aren't "associates", they're employers and employees. Employees aren't acting as individual humans on their own behalf, they're acting on behalf of an organization.

Putting aside the rights conversation for a second, let me ask you a question: if you tell your friend a secret in confidence, and they turn around and sell it to anyone on the internet who will pay a low fee, that would be pretty screwed up, no? We don't even have to talk about rights here: this is just screwed up behavior, regardless of the rights conversation.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by RockIslandLine on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @12:16PM (#22183053)
"Now, doesn't that make it legal for a group of people to keep secrets about you?"

A group of people sure, but corporations are not people.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by whatshisface on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @02:28PM (#22184791)
Corporations are groups of people.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by RockIslandLine on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @02:31PM (#22184827)
Corporations are a power of attorney document. They are golems that sometimes act on behalf of people. They are not people.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kazagistar on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @12:26PM (#22183196)
Are contracts allowed in your worldview? Contracts must be signed by individuals, but when they act as representatives of a company, they are legally binding for that company. If they only have individual rights, then all individuals who didn't physically sign a contract cannot be held to it.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @02:19PM (#22184696)
Correct.

At a small scale, it makes sense for people to appoint another person whom they trust to represent them in negotiation. But in a lot of cases, that's not how representatives are chosen. Particularly in corporations, the leadership of a corporation was not chosen by the employees to represent them, and in fact often doesn't even have the best interest of the employees in mind. A lot of the largest problems in our society arise from this fact.

Consider the case of a company that agrees to sell to a larger corporation, under the condition that they lay off half their workforce in advance of the sale. Surely we can agree that the laid-off workers were not fairly represented by the person signing the contract.

One could argue that the workers agreed to give up some of their rights in their employment contract, but I'd argue that they did so under duress: their option is sign the contract and work for the company, or starve and let their families starve. Sure, they can go work for another company, but other companies will require them to similarly sign away their rights.

This shouldn't be taken as a recommendation to blithely break contract law. Corporations don't have rights, but they do have power, and it would be unwise to behave as if they can't make your life miserable if you decide to cross them.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by anticensor on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @01:49PM (#22184351)
> The human does get rights, the organization doesn't.

Organisations are (usually) legal persons, too; they just have fewer responsibilities, get fewer rights in exchange.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @02:24PM (#22184751)
That's how things are, not how they should be.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by anticensor on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @03:11PM (#22185261)
No rights, full liability would be a bad deal too.
Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @05:03PM (#22186357)
A bad deal for whom?

It's a bad deal for corporations, but I do not care. Lack of liability is the cause of a ton of problems in our society.

Just to pick two stories of corporate sociopathy: Probably the reason people at State Farm are unconcernd about forging signatures[1] is that they know that the worst case scenario is that State Farm loses some business and maybe gets a fine: they are unlikely to go to jail for forgery or to have fines exacted from their personal bank accounts. Similarly, when Practice Fusion literally killed people[2], their execs had little to fear: nobody went to jail, nobody was fined: shareholders who had no visibility into the decision paid the fines.

When banks tanked the economy with irresponsible lending most were bailed out and gave their workers bonuses, while the people who were unable to pay their mortgages were ignored.

A little more liability for destructive behavior would be great for most people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22177812

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22165946

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by anticensor on Thursday January 30, 2020 @01:53PM (#22194134)
> they are unlikely to go to jail for forgery

Forgery is criminal regardless of private or official document is concerned. Even in a military setting, forgery of business-related documents are illegal.

> A little more liability for destructive behavior would be great for most people.

Why not full rights, full liability? Replace imprisonment and death by temporary and permanent suspension of company (including re-establishment of a sequel organisation out of a subset of stakeholders) respectively; and voila.

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kerkeslager on Thursday January 30, 2020 @02:23PM (#22194472)
That's an optimistic theory, but read the link I posted and decide for yourself if you think anybody is going to end up in jail for it.

It seems like you're just picking out one aspect of each of my posts to disagree with. Do you have any disagreement with my overall point?

Re:Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent) by kijin on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @10:24AM (#22181491)
The person and the LLC are legally separate entities, although an LLC is often passed through for tax purposes.