RE: Charging the Charger [was: GPL v3 public performance idea?]

Let's get real here... nobody is going to do that to Microsoft. Besides,
they'd just move off shore... You can only kill a corporation in a
particular jurisdiction, which in the case of Microsoft would be kind of
meaningless. If New York revoked Microsoft's corporate charter (kind of
tricky if they are incorporated in Nevada or Delaware), what would that
even mean? New York state troopers at every port of entry in New York
state confiscating copies of XP purchased surreptitiously on EBay ;-)

If 1.55 billion dollars isn't enough to change Microsoft's behaviors,
this kind of fancy footwork would just move all of Microsoft's profits
into the Canadian Revenue Service's coffers. 

-Kelly 

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Behlendorf [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 6:48 PM
To: Anderson, Kelly
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Charging the Charger [was: GPL v3 public performance idea?]

On Mon, 16 May 2005, Anderson, Kelly wrote:
> The only way to tell a corporation that they have done something 
> "wrong" is to punish them financially.

Technically, they can have their charters revoked.  The concept has its
fans:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1810
http://www.sherrystoll.com/grow_democracy/reclaim3.html

Apparently it hasn't happened since 1890:
http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=822

Though this was interesting:
http://www.duhc.org/rethinking_revoking.html

   The New York Attorney General's office has shown surprising
leadership
   in challenging corporate charters. The previous Republican AG (Dennis
   Vacco) successfully revoked the charters of two non-profit tax-exempt
   front groups for the tobacco corporations (Tobacco Institute and
   Council for Tobacco Research), and seized and distributed their
assets
   to two public institutions. The current Democratic AG (Eliot Spitzer)
   proposed - in a pre-election speech - a "death penalty" for
corporations
   that cause serious harm, though he has failed to take any action
since
   his election.

 	Brian








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