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Comment by sleepybrett | Hacker News Reader

$35M seems like a parking ticket. Has anyone done any studies on fining based on % of income/wealth? Like a traffic violation might be fined at 0.001% of income or something.

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It is based on income; just not Amazon's global income. It's based on their income in France.

The total revenues of Amazon's activities in France were over €9 bn in 2022. So we're at about 0.3%. A warning shot IMHO

Yeah, it seems a little murky which years' income is the basis for the fine. I was reading another article[1] which compares their fine to their 2021 revenue but doesn't explicitly say whether the 2021 revenue is the basis for the fine.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/23/amazon-fined-fo...

Revenue is a weird number to talk about in an operation with margins as thin as Amazon's.

According to the official document that CNIL provided [1] (translated with google translate):

> The company AFL, a simplified joint stock company registered in the trade and companies register on January 3, 2000, is located at 67 boulevard du général Leclerc in Clichy (92110). Its turnover amounted to 1.135 billion euros in 2021, for a net profit of 58.9 million euros.

AFL is Amazon France Logistics. Which seems to be the entity that got fined. So the fine is more than 50% of their (the logistics part of Amazon in France) net profit.

[1] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/cnil/id/CNILTEXT000048989272

Indeed, but courts in France have the habit of always firing warning shots. Non-compliance can trigger another court decision with forceful consequences.

So far GDPR has only yielded symbolic amounts. But the legislative cap is at profit-destroying levels.

For traffic violations I think Finland has already implemented such system.

Also, iirc: Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland. Not all the same for all types of infractions, but all have some types of scaled-to-income/whatever fines for individuals.

Here in Germany we only have flat fines for standard traffic infractions. If you make it all the way into crime territory we have the concept of Tagessätze (lit. day fines). The court sentences you to X amount of Tagessätze. The actual fine per day is determined based on your income, usually equal to the amount you make after taxes per day. The judge is free to either estimate your income or can require you to declare it.

There is something similar in France : "jours amende". The key point is that if you don't pay the fine, you go to prison the number of days indicated in the "jours amende". It's for criminal court, not for traffic infractions.

For at least one country on the list the scaling is only for egregious violations.

Regardless of how this was calculated, it is a parking ticket to Amazon.

It's a GDPR fine above 20M€, so it's already based on their income.

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