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Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

They're US companies and I've heard that it requires intent according to US penal law. I find the article's claim that intent is established dubious. Since this is hard to prove without a whistleblower, it seems that they only have to fear civil lawsuits, and given that we speak of trillion+ USD companies they might feel confident to be able to fend these off or simply pay out the victims in settlements.

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Man if only there were laws governing something you own (i.e. a cow) that covers when that thing you own does damage to someone's property (destroys your neighbor's fence) but didn't have ill intent as it doesn't have sentience.

If only that sort of thing had been dealt with in the past......

While US penal law does not have the roman equivalent of culpability, you still have a mixture of liability/criminal negligence/recklessness, etc.

We speak of "potential" trillion dollar companies over indeterminate timelines.

I was referring to their current market valuation. Of course, it could be inflated, yet it's a fact that they could easily spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lawsuits and settlements. I'd think they'd offer some settlements to some the companies that were attacked already. Perhaps I'm wrong, though.

technically, there is no current market valuation. These are all private companies. They have no reason to give anything but trillion dollar valuations.

You're technically right but the point was merely made to illustrate that these companies have plenty of money to deal with civil lawsuits and offer settlements. I hope you don't doubt that.

Given that we have had journalists prosecuted under criminal hacking statutes for discovering personal information in the rendered HTML of a web page, or publicly available attachments on a WordPress installation, I find the suggestion that intent is required to be dubious.

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