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0 pointsjimnotgym1y ago0 comments

Yes companies do this kind of thing to try and shield themselves from risk all of the time.

However it probably wouldn't work for a profit seeking company in this case. Big Corp owns Web Corp, and Web Corp owns the site. Which company is operating the site? If it is Web Corp. So when Web Corp gets fined, you lose your site. This is a problem for a profit seeking company, because it lost its value. If Big Corp owned the site, and Web corp operated the site, you may be OK. Your accountancy costs just went through the roof though. Not sure about this law, but some compliance laws treat the group as one whole entity to stop this sort of thing.

Since this applies to laws in general, are you arguing that corporations are a farce? I may be inclined to agree.

Edit: answering your other point, the company could not have no assets, if it owns the site then it has the site as an asset. If it runs the site then it will have cash etc. Etc.

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akoboldfrying1y ago

I see, thanks.

>So when Web Corp gets fined, you lose your site.

My mind immediately goes in the direction of "Maybe you lost that server, but just buy a new one and change some DNS entries", which isn't free but a lot less than £18M. But maybe there are protections against this kind of scheming? I'd like to think there were.

>If Big Corp owned the site, and Web corp operated the site, you may be OK.

I don't follow -- if Big Corp owns the site, won't it lose everything?

>Since this applies to laws in general, are you arguing that corporations are a farce? I may be inclined to agree.

I think I am actually. They do seem like a way to get something for (almost) nothing (and they seem like they were probably engineered to be this way deliberately).

jimnotgymOP1y ago

> Maybe you lost that server

Everything, ownership of the domain, codebase, digital assets for instance.

> I don't follow -- if Big Corp owns the site, won't it lose everything

Good question If Big Corp owns the domain, codebase, IP etc. and lets Web Corp operate a site using those assets, Big Corp is not responsible for Web Corps transgressions.

A simpler analogy. Big Corp owns a pub, rents it to Web Corp. Web Corp plays music too loud, opens too late and gets fined and loses its alcohol licence. Web Corp is insolvent, but Big Corp still owns the pub.

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