Well, well. It's harder and harder every day to argue with the legal opinion offered by former SCOTUS justice Kennedy, which seemed hilariously corrupt at the time, that corporations are effectively people.
A defining trait of an awful lot of people is that they accuse what they're guilty of.
In this case, Facebook accusing other websites of trademark violations is the very definition of hypocrisy. Facebook in particular, but Twitter as well, are absolutely littered with t-shirt vendors selling other people's logos and brand names, logarithmically generated with ad data.
If you fill out your movies, music, and books "likes" as they tell you to do, within 2 days tops you'll be able to buy a Pink Floyd t-shirt from virtually anyone on the planet... except Roger Waters or David Gilmour.
The fact that Facebook refuses all search indexes makes policing Facebook's infringement on the copyrights of others impossible. At least with Napster any musician could log in and see how many users were giving their content away for free. Not so on Facebook, you can't ever know how many pirated logos of yours that Facebook sold.
> Well, well. It's harder and harder every day to argue with the legal opinion offered by former SCOTUS justice Kennedy, which seemed hilariously corrupt at the time, that corporations are effectively people.
I hate this meme. That's not what the decision said.
First "corporate personhood" means that corporations are allowed to sue and be sued like they were individuals. Along with being taxed and regulated.
Citizens United, the decision you are referencing did not involve this concept.
Rather it said that the rights of individuals to free speech is not diminished if they act collectively as opposed to individually.
If I'm allowed to say, "RNCTX doesn't understand the issue" and so is my friend, then us saying it together doesn't make it illegal because we acted in coordination.
Likewise if I'm allowed to purchase a billboard that says it and so is my friend then there should be no issue with us pooling our money to purchase one together.
And that's what Citizens United said. Corporations are one such mechanism through which we could pool our money to purchase that advertisement but others such as unions, non-profits, and all other forms of collective groups are covered.
It's actually a very common sense extension of the first amendment.
Corporations are "people" because their owners are people and people get to work together and corporations are how they work together.
Corporations are allowed free speech because their owners are allowed free speech as a group; the corporation is the tool for organizing it. Corporations are not allowed to vote, because people are not allowed to vote as a group.
This is not new. This is not Kennedy's fault. This has been the case since the beginning of the United States, and it has been Supreme Court precedent since 1819, when the New Hampshire Legislature said they could take over a private university because it was a corporation, and therefore had no rights, and they could take its property and change its rules at will, ant the court said No. (Dartmouth College v. Woodward)
If corporations were not treated as people and not afforded civil rights, it would be legal for the government to censor newspapers at will because they have no First Amendment rights (News Corp, NY Times, etc are corporations). It would be legal for the President to order a warrantless search of the DNC headquarters, for the DNC is a corporation, and the Fourth Amendment would not apply. It would be legal to impose a trillion dollar fine on Planned Parenthood, a corporation, for any minor paperwork infraction, for the Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive fines would not apply. It would be legal for the government to sue them for this infraction without a jury, for the Seventh Amendment would not apply.
> First "corporate personhood" means that corporations are allowed to sue and be sued like they were individuals. Along with being taxed and regulated.
A person doing business face to face in a store cannot hide the nature of their business from their own 'customers' for lack of a better word. How long would it take the police to show up at a business that wouldn't let anyone including the people buying things from it see inside the doors or windows? Everyone could only buy things from them in the parking lot, with payment made to anonymous intermediaries, and the product delivered later by a third party. Every customer walks out holding a fake Rolex, talking about how great a store Facebook is.
See how ridiculous Facebook is when compared to the scam 'businesses' of the 80s and 90s that it emulates?
> Citizens United, the decision you are referencing did not involve this concept.
I've read the case, thanks. It equated speech with money. Individuals (only) had that right prior to it, now money has speech. Corporations are money; they hoard it and do all of the bad things that it can do with it.
> It's actually a very common sense extension of the first amendment.
Sure, if corporations can also go to prison and/or be executed. When Facebook lies to their own customers about their ad performance for the 13th month in a row, no more fines and civil suits, the board will go to prison. When a random nutjob goes and shoots up a nightclub or a school based on his political radicalization on Facebook, we'll just send the police over to arrest those same board members and management as accomplices to murder. After all, a getaway driver can be charged with a murder in a lot of US jurisdictions if the bank robber shoots the teller, and in the relationship between terrorists and victims compared to robbers and banks, Facebook is serving basically the same role as the getaway driver in the terrorist's case.
Alternatively, if Facebook refuses to hand over a board member or senior management member for prosecution in these cases we will simply 'execute' the company. Its assets will be seized and spent by the state, just like we do to the property of individual street drug dealers, for example. There's no need to convict them, just as there's no need to convict the street drug dealer. Take the money first, and if Facebook chooses to ask for it back they can hire their own legal representation and ask the courts for the money back, with their own money not the corporation's money... because they don't have that anymore.
Oh wait... corporations don't want that. They just want the rights, not the responsibilities, of personhood. They want to keep the individual indemnity.
Which is my point, in a roundabout way the decision justifies itself by becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If money is speech then money is a person, and if money is a person then money has rights, and if the whole society is based on money, then money is not only a person but the best person.
Yes, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don't disagree with your reasoning. Do you agree with my observation that superpacs are destroying (even more) democracy?
Something should be done about these sorts of things. I'm not saying that law needs to be removed, but something should be done. There's plenty of precedent around the world that democracy can work pretty fine without Coca Cola buying superpacs.
“Corporations are people” was first inserted into the Supreme Court’s findings by an railroad baron that was for some reason acting as the court reporter.
A defining trait of an awful lot of people is that they accuse what they're guilty of.
In this case, Facebook accusing other websites of trademark violations is the very definition of hypocrisy. Facebook in particular, but Twitter as well, are absolutely littered with t-shirt vendors selling other people's logos and brand names, logarithmically generated with ad data.
If you fill out your movies, music, and books "likes" as they tell you to do, within 2 days tops you'll be able to buy a Pink Floyd t-shirt from virtually anyone on the planet... except Roger Waters or David Gilmour.
The fact that Facebook refuses all search indexes makes policing Facebook's infringement on the copyrights of others impossible. At least with Napster any musician could log in and see how many users were giving their content away for free. Not so on Facebook, you can't ever know how many pirated logos of yours that Facebook sold.