This only serves to allow firms to erect effort barriers to keep rent seeking fro their customers. The "gotcha" that the Khan FTC didn't "follow the rules making process" is parallel construction.
The blame here belongs to the FTC for its rushed and sloppy process that put the rule on shaky ground legally.
HN guidelines ask that you say "The article mentions that".[0]
The reason they have to do studies is so they can't rush things through. We don't want them to be able to rush things through. They're creating law.
You can appeal to the system that I am actively saying is not working but you get the benefit of “well the law/eatablishment says so.” You can lean on your opinion or the results, whichever serves you better, in a way I can’t as you cite the case itself. The entire discussion is poisoned out the gate.
The FTC didn’t make that rule.
Who do you think created that rule that anything that lost money for advertisers? I’ll give you one guess
The fact that you’re indignant that someone doesn’t agree with the argument is absolutely absurd.
The law/rule constraint was corrupt from the outset in order to provide multiple avenues for capital to ensure they don’t lose their profits.
And you'd find such sentiments to be completely worthless, except insofar as they act as cover for a ruling on a technicality in favor of the same corporate interests that fund the politicians that appointed these judges.
Sorry bro I had to
I'm hardly going to do that research myself, so I have no opinion. There are legal bloggers whose opinions I'd respect. I assume comments on Hacker News are no more informed than my own, unless they show they have relevant expertise.
What's more interesting to me is the court is basically admitting that doing the right thing for customers will cost unscrupulous businesses more than $100M they're currently fleecing those customers for, so they won't let this go ahead.
If they are worried about this… either mandate some third party do the estimate, or mandate the study. This is just confusing.
() - of course I haven’t read the actual law or ruling yet…
Believe me, I'm incredibly disappointed that this didn't work. I paid a Planet Fitness membership for a year after I had moved to a place too far away from any PF location to reasonably use it, just because the cancellation process was so convoluted that it took me ages to figure out how to cancel. I think that companies should be held liable when they employ predatory business practices like this. I agree with your premise, that the limit is too low and there's nothing to stop companies from lying about the cost to implement the rule. But the law is the law is the law is the law. Courts exist to interpret the law, and in this case, the law they were asked to interpret was whether the FTC had abided by the $100M cap. They found reasonable justification to rule that they had not.
Again, I get the desire to be up in arms over this. But recent events have shown just how fragile our legal system is when people decide that the rules can just be ignored, and I wish that people would be more hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even when doing so would mean I wouldn't have to pay planet fitness $20/mo for a year.
It really seems like a weird line in the sand that the court will just randomly decide on a case by case now, with the FTC having no way to know if the court will agree with their estimate or not.
This is quite correct. The FTC estimated that there are 106,000 businesses offering subscriptions to Americans. Those are the ones that would have to comply with the new rules.
A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, but divided by a hundred thousand businesses it suddenly is only $1000 each. Not actually that much! Since the new rules proposed by the FTC include a lot more than just a button on a website, complying with the rules would in fact require every one of these companies to do a fair amount of work. They’ll have to review all of their existing marketing material, and all of the forms that they use to sign up customers. They must ensure that all material facts are disclosed to every prospective customer, and that consent is obtained from the customer correctly.
Certainly these are good rules for businesses to follow, but the question now is the cost. Can your business review all of its marketing material for less than $1000? I doubt it. So the judge rightfully noted that the FTC’s estimate of the impact was insufficient.
And all they have to do as a result is to allow additional public comment on the proposed rules, with the specific intent to find alternatives. If these alternative rules would be just as effective but cheaper to comply with then the FTC is supposed to drop their own proposed rules and adopt the alternatives. They had already done some of this in the earlier phases of the process, and the result was that several unworkable rules were indeed dropped. They could have spent a few more months doing the final review and analysis, but they decided to rush it through instead.
> What's more interesting to me is the court is basically admitting that doing the right thing for customers will cost unscrupulous businesses more than $100M they're currently fleecing those customers for, so they won't let this go ahead.
I’ll say it again that this has nothing to do with how much the unscrupulous are getting away with, or whether it would cost the unscrupulous businesses anything at all. This is entirely about the cost to the legitimate businesses.