Match Group owns Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, and PlentyOfFish as well as a metric fuck ton of niche sites.
> The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission was set up on 1 January 1949
was for, now the Competition Commission. How well that works is debatable.
The entire point of capitalism is to acquire as much capital as possible, not to be the best at what you do. It's not a meritocracy. The best idea doesn't win - the best FUNDED idea wins, which means whichever dumb idea that benefits the rich the most is what you're going to get.
And if the rich people who own Match.com decide that buying up every competitor and rolling them into their platform is what's going to make them the most money, that's what they are going to do.
Don't view it as a flaw of capitalism that needs to be fixed, think of it as a feature of capitalism that necessitates a conversation about alternatives.
How about this: Improving what is there IS an alternative, and one that must be seriously considered.
LYV had $2.6b on hand last quarter.
There's prior art, this is what the IRS makes folks who are attempting to renounce their citizenship (or give up a green card held for over 8 years) do for illiquid assets when paying the expatriation tax.
"Uh, no Judge, I don't think I should be forced to go to prison, that's hard"
[edit] Maybe this is controversial, I dunno, I might just be old fashioned that way, but my opinion is if you find the punishment too onerous maybe don't do crime.
If people/organizations are committing a crime, then one reason may be that the punishment/deterrent is too lax.
(There's of course other reasons, like the law making the act a crime is bad in some way, or the individual/organization has no, or knows of no, alternative.)
The agreement might state what Ticketmaster must do or refrain from doing after the effective date to avoid being prosecuted in the future. Paying a fine might be only one part of the agreement.
One can only make assumptions about what the court might have found regarding the CFAA claim. The fact is, it did not get the opportunity.
The other side of the coin is quite damaging to our society as well - a defendant being judgement proof (having nothing to penalize or fine) can deprive claimants of funds needed to repair the damage of the crime - this, again, is a case where the government awarding funds and then regaining those funds from the defendant independently would be quite beneficial.
1. White-collar criminals might be more significantly deterred by the threat of any prison time, perhaps because they have more to lose or because such crimes have more premeditation.
2. Prison might work as a deterrent in general, but if 20yrs will already ruin your life then the additional threat of another 80yrs might have little to no impact.
3. Rehabilitation might have a stronger effect than deterrence, which could point to hybrid solutions leveraging both effects, supposing they mix appropriately.
For example, If a crime is punished with incarceration, it seems unlikely that a person would make a calculated decision that 5 years in prison is an acceptable risk but 10 is not.
Companies can not be rehabilitated because they aren't moral beings. They only understand one thing: profit. Thus for companies the financial deterrent is effective and appropriate.
We really need the "death penalty" for companies: dissolve the corporation after a certain number of offenses, sell the assets off to raise money to compensate the victims.
Most people learn over time when they are young that it is a losing proposition.
Debt is ahead of stock. The stock is now “worth” a few billion. No new stock issued.
The Nobel prize in economics was won for this concept in 1990 iirc: the value of the firm is independent to how it’s financed. Just like how the value of your house has nothing to do with what interest rate you pay in your mortgage.
I'm not sure I follow the logic of looking at the net worth of a conglomerate when assessing a fine. If someone parks the corporate car in a no-parking zone, or spits out chewing gum on the sidewalk, you're not going to fine them x% of net worth. At least in terms of consequences for the corporation, you'd they would be (punitively) proportional to the economic impact of the criminal activity.
What was the impact of this conduct? It's not mentioned in the story. If they paid a $10 million fine on criminal activity that gleaned them a $1 billion advantage, then yeah this is a slap on the wrist. If it's a $10 million fine on something that gave them a $10 advantage, it's arguably overly punitive.
> They might as well tell them to write "I will not hack my competitors" on the blackboard 100 times.
Not even. I bet a person with a $100k net worth will probably rather pay $62 than have to do the blackboard punishment.
If Massively-Evil-Plan™ increases profits from 10% to 20% then even after a 4% fine on revenue, real profits are still 15%. A company only motivated by profits and fines (which seems like a reasonable assumption if we're using laws like GDPR to deter "heinous shit") would be crazy not to continue with MEP™.
It's really the same kind of calculation as with fixed fines or fines based on damage done. When profitable, they're still written off as the cost of doing business. The only material difference would be that a fixed fine effectively allows large companies to do "heinous shit" while imposing fines so large that a small company can't compete, whereas with a revenue calculation you instead just need to make sure that your "heinous shit" is scalable. That doesn't apply in practice though, since GDPR has an alternative €20M fine which would go into effect, so in reality GDPR just says that to do "heinous shit" you need to be able to do a lot of it scalably and profitably.
The natural direction one might take this is just to say that the fines must not be big enough, but until you approach 100% of revenue the potential always exists for a new form of profitable "heinous shit" to crop up. If fines of that scale are on the table then that brings us to the other side of the coin: A single violation of any anti-MEP™ law will nearly certainly end the business. If a violation of an anti-MEP™ law necessarily meant that a corporation was doing "heinous shit" then that could plausibly be acceptable (definitely up for debate), but merely not appointing a data protection officer in the EU violates GDPR and potentially subjects a business to a 2% of revenue fine. The law will not perfectly align with what a reasonable person would consider "heinous shit," and too severe of a penalty in such situations seems prone to abuse.
Live Nation is worth $16 Billion. This is like a person with a $100k net worth having to pay a $62 fine, basically an expensive parking ticket.
They might as well tell them to write "I will not hack my competitors" on the blackboard 100 times.