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Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by refurb on Friday February 21, 2020 @11:43AM (#22384468)
So individuals should be afforded certain rights, but when they work together as a group, those rights should be taken away?
Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by salawat on Friday February 21, 2020 @12:07PM (#22384697)
A business as a legal fiction != a union of all of its members.

People don't realize that. A corporation is a standalone entity. And yes, there is nothing inconsistent about a business being held to a more strict standard of disclosure than an individual. I.e. You can plead the Fifth. A Corporation cannot. When a search warrant is issued for all documents of/relating to/pertaining to X created or transacted between dates Y and Z, you don't get to withhold them because it might seem to incriminate the company. That's the price of the corporate superpower of the corporation being able to die/fold/be punished and everyone else being able to go home unharmed except for needing to find a new job; possibly at a new company already established, funded and poised to buy out the assets of the old corporation that's being liquidated.

Corporations are not people in the Constitutional sense. You can't take the HOV lane just because you are carrying the Articles of Incorporation for your company. Check with a lawyer by all means, I'm not one, but I've read enough case law and other stuff to feel confident I've at least got this part right.

Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by buckminster on Friday February 21, 2020 @12:22PM (#22384837)
A group of people working together is a partnership. And those people have all the usual rights and liabilities that people have generally.

Larry and Sergei could have founded Google as an unlimited liability partnership, but they preferred to incorporate. So Google has to follow the rules that come with incorporation.

Incorporation was a free choice. There was an alternative. Nobody's rights are being infringed.

Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by kick on Friday February 21, 2020 @11:54AM (#22384578)
The entire concept of the corporation is to make it less likely the people involved will be imprisoned or directly take risk based on their mistakes. They willingly take the advantages that come with incorporation, they should lose something. As it stands, anyone in a corporation is a first-class citizen while everyone else is treated as lesser under the law.