Everything from slave laws to miscegenation laws to gay laws had to be broken first before they could be changed. The one of the central aspects of the civil rights movement was breaking laws - ie rosa parks.
Also, this is hacker news and the hacking community generally isn't fond of restrictive laws and regulations.
The fact is that all the examples in the grand parent post involved businesses that could have operated legally but chose not to because they could make the economic decision to break laws to profit from fast expansion. In my view laws should be written with penalties to prevent people from breaking them, not as some sort of toll booth.
The fines, by contrast, seem to be working pretty well: how many other companies get busted by the FCC for violating satellite launching regulations? The fact that it is so rare is a testament to how effective the deterrent has been in regulating companies in this space.
I’m all in favour of civil disobedience when laws are stupid but breaking laws just to make a fast buck isn’t the same as defying inequality.
One is clearly immoral and no one would question the validity of civil disobedience as a method to over throw immoral laws. The comparison here is not a good one at all, these are two different things.