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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

What surprises me more is how blatant it was. These rules were around for at least a few years before the initial charge in 2014, and it's not like WB had a fresh marketing team. They didn't give products, licenses, free showings of films, or anything of the sort (which I believe under the rules is still wrong). They actually gave cash. They should've known this would have been wrong.

Which begs the question: how much was the fine? If it was trivial, that would explain why WB did it; the marketing benefit would've more-than-offset the costs, fines included.

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I think the problem is that when you're dealing with numbers like these the fines are always less than the gain from disobeying the regulations in questions.

Reminds me of the rumor (debunked by Snopes) that Coke willingly lies about its calorie count and simply opts to repeatedly pay the fine than correct their label: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/1calorie.asp

  the fines are always less than the gain

It's still surprising, because you can buy positive coverage without breaking the letter of the law. You simply don't explicitly say that good coverage = more money, but make sure everyone knows that's how it works.

For example, you take out a monthly deal for some standard normal advertising, and if their coverage is negative you stop renewing it.

Or you call a press conference at an exotic location and provide free flights and accommodation for select journalists. Who happen to have given you consistently positive coverage in the past.

That's why we need fines that are based upon a percentage of revenue or profit within, say, the past year. A fine of, eg, 15% yearly revenue over FY2015 would make any company sit up and pay attention.

IANAL but that sounds an awfully lot like Apple can break the same regulation CompuTechSoft, LLC can break and Apple gets nailed with a 9+ figure fine just because they have a lot of revenue. I can't see that holding up in court.

There's a difference between equal and equitable.

And almost entirely irreversible.

That's not what begging the question means.

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