Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Regarding the legal merits of the case, I notice that don't see any coverage of a proposed theory of liability in the article. The lawsuit text is more informative, pointing at a bunch of sections of US Code about forced labor, trafficking, and sale into voluntary servitude — for instance, 18 U.S. Code § 1589 which notes, "(b) Whoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of the means described in subsection (a), knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the venture has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of such means, shall be punished as provided in subsection (d)."

But I'm not at all certain the court is willing consider the purchase of goods on the world market to be equivalent to "participation" in this venture, even if the suit asserts that "The Cobalt Supply Chain Is a “Venture”". Is there meaningful precedent for interpreting a supply chain in this way?

Just for the sake of completeness, "knowingly" is a specific legalese term. It means you know the goods are coming from the prohibited source, but still decide to buy it.

The total spectrum looks like this:

- purposefully: you won't buy cobalt, unless it says "mined by slave children" on the tin

- knowingly: you buy cobalt even if it says "mined by slave children" on the tin

- recklessly: you know that 90% of world cobalt is mined by slave children. You hope that yours comes from the remaining 10%

- negligently: you know that 10% of world cobalt is mined by slave children, so you decided to take a chance and bought yours without checking

Not sure I understand the difference between recklessly and negligently? Don't both amount to you not knowing and not wanting to find out?

Negligent means you didn't know and didn't want to, reckless meant you didn't know but accepted the possibility that it could happen or the possibility was extremely high.

Isn't there another level which is only sufficient for crime if it is a Strict Liability law?

- accidentally: you know there's a risk of buying cobalt mined by slave children. So, you took the actions of a reasonable person to avoid that risk, but you failed.

A quick search shows that past lawsuits against Nestle and other companies for child labor in their supply chain listed consumers as the plaintiffs claiming damage from false advertising and non -disclosure [1]. These cases have ended up being dismissed.

The difference is that in this case the children and their families are the actual plaintiffs which presumably changes the legal merits. I still suspect that this case will also be dismissed.

I think the point is that these lawsuits are intended to raise public awareness of the issue which will ideally put pressure the companies being sued to institute voluntary policing of their supply chain. Nestle, for example, has done a lot over the last decade to eliminate child labor in their supply chain.

(Edit) It looks like there is a supreme Court precedent related to the Nestle case that held that child/family plaintiffs did have standing to sue for child labor in the supply chain [2]

[1] https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2018/02/13/Nestle-...

[2] https://news.yahoo.com/u-supreme-court-gives-boost-child-sla...

Raise public awareness? I think they are seeking remedy.

Sad that the courts are so slanted in the favor of corporate interests. Why do these cases get dismissed?

Because they are seeking remedy from the wrong parties in a fungible market without proof of more direct involvement. It being in "corporate interest" doesn't mean it is wrong. To be frank they are acting a lot like extortionists.

The legal system needs to catch up with the laundering effects of global and fungible markets. There are "know your customer" rules for other things. Eventually we need to get serious about goods' provenance.

That's pretty harsh language to use against families whose children died mining the materials for your smart phone, electric bike and green energy grid.

A "fungible market" does not make slavery ok, nor does it excuse child labor. Indeed, the availability of alternative sources would seem to make patronizing companies that support this type of bevaior more inexcusable.

Slavery is, of course, not okay. But tell me this: Are you confident that all your home electronics have zero slave-produced cobalt in it? If not, why not? The availability of alternative cobalt sources would seem to make this type of behavior inexcusable.

What's this you say? You don't have a direct relationship with the cobalt mine? You buy your phone from some company, and you don't know their exact sources of components, or whether they switch suppliers from time to time? Gasp!

> Are you confident that all your home electronics have zero slave-produced cobalt in it?

I am confident that my electronics do indeed contain some cobalt from the exact same sort of mines referenced in the article and I do feel culpable. I wish there was an organization that tracked the degree to which the electronic companies that I purchase products from make an effort to source ethical cobalt and other sources (hence my prior question elsewhere in this thread.) I wish that Fairphone sold their products in my country. I wish that I, as an individual consumer had the level of market power that a company like samsung or google has over their supply chain and could incentivize the cobalt mining companies to behave more ethically.

You sarcasm doesn't make any actual point and to me it indicates that the reason that you are so willing to argue against the culpability of the electronics, battery and cobalt mining companies that make so much money from this is because you are unwilling to acknowledge your own culpability in the deaths of these children and the suffering of their families.

The point is that you are not criminally liable for trafficking in slaves under 18 U.S. Code § 1589 because you have some quantity of cobalt, and neither are the companies in question, in all likelihood. This is important because the lawsuit seeks to say that the companies are criminally liable for trafficking in slaves under 18 U.S. Code § 1589 and the lawsuit will be rendered on the merits under 18 U.S. Code § 1589.

The point is a limited one. Besides this point, reform efforts are a great idea.

> Sad that the courts are so slanted in the favor of corporate interests.

The courts are in favor of upholding the law, not about exacting righteousness from all people.

Cobalt is a commodity which fungible and generally available on the world market. It may be refined at several steps, purchased by one company, put in storage with cobalt from other suppliers, and resold to another company. There may be general purchase records, but there are no specific records of how the physical cobalt ore was stored in a mineral silo. There is also the possibility that records that do exist could be faked for the purpose of fraud.

It is thus not common for the law to mandate that the manufacturers know exactly what has happened to every ounce of the substances that make up their product, or for the law to make this criminality contagious, such that anyone who does business with anyone who does business with anyone who does business with slave labor goes to jail.

> It is thus not common for the law to mandate that the manufacturers know exactly what has happened to every ounce of the substances that make up their product, or for the law to make this criminality contagious, such that anyone who does business with anyone who does business with anyone who does business with slave labor goes to jail.

That is a strawman argument. The article quite clearly states the the claim lawsuit aims to prove is this:

"knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children."

Specifically, they claim there is evidence of a direct links in the supply chain:

"Certainly the supply chain is opaque. It is complex. But the plaintiffs all were injured and killed at mines owned by companies that have been publicly disclosed as sellers of cobalt to our defendants.

There is quite a bit more evidence contained in the complaint linked in the article. It is pretty clear that any "opaqueness" that does exist in the sourcing of Cobalt is a deliberate attempt to limit the perception of culpability.

This is not a strawman argument, this is an argument of the merits of the suit. It is relevant insofar as the structure of the suit is a thing. If you sue a company for trafficking in slaves under 18 U.S. Code § 1589, the question is whether they trafficked in slaves under 18 U.S. Code § 1589, and not whether they're morally culpable. It is possible the plaintiffs will overcome the opacity, but "being injured at a company that you bought stuff from" remains, to the best of my knowledge, a highly unusual form of contagious liability, and not a feature of our current jurisprudence.

When this suit is resolved and the company is found not to be liable, as is likely, then we can talk reform efforts and opacity all day long, and we can draft new laws, and discuss the extent to which they actually help.

> I think the point is that these lawsuits are intended to raise public awareness of the issue which will ideally put pressure the companies being sued to institute voluntary policing of their supply chain.

Beyond the legal merits, tech companies have been talking about "conflict minerals" for a while. You could certainly doubt how seriously committed they are to resolving the minerals-sourcing issues, or even what their motivations are: my unconfirmed assumptions are that "conflict minerals" https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/policy/policy-confli... was conceived by Intel as an adaptation of the "conflict diamonds" campaign, and that the "conflict diamonds" campaign was in turn something contrived by De Beers as a marketing effort. But what's remarkable is how little consumers seem to have cared or responded even when manufacturers made the running on the issue. It seems it's much easier to get consumers on an ethical-sourcing bandwagon when the product is a luxury good bought for social-signaling purposes (like fur coats or diamonds) than when it's something they look on as a quotidian expense or something to get the most bang for the buck in. Which is unfortunate, I think: consumers probably should get off their arses and on the likely-somewhat-sleazy "conflict minerals" bandwagon, because it's likely the best chance to meet our responsibilities and effect real change in the sourcing of minerals for electronic devices.

Are you aware of any organizations that rate electronic companies or battery manufacturers supply chains based on the use of child labor and or other morally questionable behavior? I would like to direct my purchasing power to companies that act ethically to source their materials. It doesn't seem like we can trust companies' own assertions in these areas.

Fairphone [1] has been doing some good work in this area, so you could take a look at which organisations rated them.

[1] https://www.fairphone.com/

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