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Comment by rtb | Hacker News Reader

Because you can't prove damages. If you suffer loss that you can directly link back to Equifax, and you manage to get your day in court, you'd get damages just like if you had a faulty steering wheel.

The problem for the law is that things are much more indirect in this case.

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Somehow difficulty of proving damages is not so problematic when someone is prosecuted for downloading movies.

You don't have to prove damages with movie downloads, the high punitive fine is written into the statute.

Now if you wanted to sue for $1 million per copy instead of $10,000 or so, then you'd have to take it to court and prove those damages.

It would be good to have such standardized fines for breaches of private data.

Yes, yes it would. I've been saying the same since at least the Target breach.

Not that I'm anybody, but the idea is out there.

Very few of those cases make it to court for good reason.

This is the correct answer. The tort system is designed to make people whole. If you haven't suffered damages then there's nothing to sue about. Copyright infringement is a red herring, IP is an entirely separate area of law from torts.

If you've been harmed by Equifax but it is difficult for you to legally prove the chain of causation, that's a problem that tort law needs to solve. The law is flexible enough to come up with such solutions, albeit slowly. See for example the doctrine of market share liability.

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