Source I have experienced this with my own business, and saw it happen to other commercial as well as non-commercial entities with previously implemented acts and directives.

It's not dissimilar to how the tax authorities always seem to pick small timers for a random extensive audit.

Won't someone think of the poor oppressed small business owners.

It's not like they're the cause of half of regulations or anything due to all the scummy small business owners...

You are missing the point entirely.

Yes think of smaller entities - which are not all commercial, mind you - just don't think of them more often and more thoroughly than the multinational megacorporations that have been racking up endless violations, most of which they are continuously worsening rather than fixing, and are in many cases actively trying to litigate into oblivion.

there is nothing in history that could be used as a precedent to predict how this will be enforced. big companies will be in the news very hard for violating these laws. no-name small timers might get a slap on the wrist. but pretty sure fines will be proportional. about time companies are held accountable

As previously implied this does not conform to my own observations

The idea is good and I'm all for it, but mostly due to said observations I'm not convinced its practical implementation will be very effective at all

That is the modus operandi of US regulatory apparatus. Example: Glaxo Smith Klein !knowingly! killed ~150,000 Americans by pushing Avandia for a purpose that it was not approved for. They knew that it would kill a lot of people before they launched it, and they started bribing and coercing medical professionals and institutions, including top names in the US to lie about it. They kept an information siege of lies up until whistleblowers protected by Qui Tam principle blow the cover, protected by the government.

The result?

GSK paid $4 bn in fines. They made $11 bn in profits from that drug. Net $7 bn even with the fine.

...

This is the way regulation works in the US. And this is why the Americans dislike it: Small businesses can never risk that. Big businesses dont need to care about that. Its designed to kill the small for the sake of the big.

The Eu used to be different. But judging from how this law is crafted, it might be changing.

this is "GOOD BUSINESS" and bad (evil) everything else. oh the humanity

Yep. One person among the US authority that led this prosecution explained very well what GSK was did in an Al Jazeera documentary. He said: "This wasn't a mistake. This was a good business plan."