> According to this article the DMV is making 50M

That was $50M in revenue, not profit. I blame the Vice headline; it said "makes," but in the article clarified that it's revenue.

That's a lot of revenue

It's really not. Think about what this information is used for: It's probably pulled by your insurance whenever you take out a new policy. There's 40 million people in California. If 5% of them change insurance each year (2 million), and that report costs $25 (A reasonable filing fee for a sensitive government document), there's your $50 million right there.

For comparison, it costs $50 for a tax return from the IRS with a Form 4506-T (usually used when getting a mortgage or for other income tax verification purposes).

Really? This seems like a pretty clear explanation to me.

They are required by law to provide information. That's not selling... that's just complying with their obligation to provide certain data.

And they charge a fee for it.

In other words, if you want to prevent them from providing information, you need to change the laws requiring they share information.

Sort of?

Is Amazon not "selling" retail products because they aren't really making a profit on it? In fact, they aren't always even recouping their full cost of selling products, those losses are offset by other revenue streams like aws.

Doesn't make complete sense to me. If they are complying with their obligation but they can charge a fee why wouldn't they be able to increase the fee enough to get out of actually providing the information?

EDIT: I think I got it - I am hearing the fee is equal to the amount it costs them to provide it.

> seems like a lie

Also known as doublespeak.

If we allow lies to be spoken in our presence, we are complicit.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?10449-1/doublespeak

false dichotomy