Hacker News Reader

Comment by OnlineGladiator | Hacker News Reader

How much do you think they should be fined?

I'd like to see them make their customers whole by forcing them to refund the monthly payment for every month that a customer with an "unlimited" plan was capped or throttled.

Some multiple larger than one of the estimated amount of money they made by lying.

return the money that was taken unfairly from the customer would be a start.

And then a sizable fine over that, let’s say an additional 100%

These companies need to feel pain for unethical practices. Not a slap on the wrist.

Next where does that money for the fine go? It shouldn’t just disappear into the ether.

Using the money from the fine perhaps a third party committee should be formed that regularly audits this known exploitive behavior. Maybe 50M could get that off of the ground and moving.

That could be 36 months of auditing from a third party.

All of this of course isn’t how things work. It’s just what I think is ideal.

A refund for anyone affected and asks for one. At $100/mo, 60 million dollars translates to 25,000 pay periods. AT&T has 25 million subscribers. I think its fair to say they got away with lying here.

> At $100/mo, 60 million dollars translates to 25,000 pay periods. AT&T has 25 million subscribers.

I am failing to see how these numbers add up. What is the explicit formula you are using?

24 months at $100/month leads you to 25k subscribers at $60M.

Thank you. I was doing mental math and I think I was lazily confusing 24 with 25 and noticed my zeros were off and after a few tries decided to just ask.

The 24 months explains it. I figured a pay period was a month because I think of it as how often I have to pay.

they think a pay period is 24 months (it may be). 60 million / (24mo * $100/mo) = 25,000

Triple the amount of money reasonably attributable to the misrepresentation.

So I agree with this idea, but how do you calculate the amount? I'm not asking for a rule, I'm asking someone to calculate me a number for how big AT&T's fine should be.

You'd have to have the rule going in and have the parties present evidence on the amount attributable in the appropriate phase of the trial. Intuitively, the actual number awarded seems far below the minimum plausible if the treble-gains rule proposed were used, but I'll freely admit I don't have hard data to set what the likely actual damages should be under that rule.

Take the gross revenue collected by AT&T for all of the "unlimited" plans that were sold and multiply that by 2.

That's not the formula used when copyright violations are involved...

LOL

6 months of revenue would probably get the message across without bankrupting them.