The governing of society requires laws to clarify the right from the wrong for both businesses and individual members of the society. These laws are made to protect the rights of consumers, individuals, businesses, and anyone else affects.
Shortly after the Olympics ended, China made the news with their milk scandal. Milk powder containing Melamine, a toxic chemical found in plastics and fertilizers, had been the cause of 432 kidney stones in Chinese infants. Milk provides essential nutrients to infants, and poisoning it with Melamine in order to stretch out the baby formula is considered wrong. Prior to Food and Drug Administration laws were in place within the US, thinning out milk had been occurring here too. While this may not be as sever as the addition of Melamine, thinning the milk required infants to consume much more in order to receive the nutrients they need. Having laws in place on a national level AND enforcing them places companies responsible for their own wrong doing.
In John Lewis's book Computer Science Illuminated an article addressing ethical issues and digital rights management (DRM). One controversy addressed within this article illustrated Sony BMG's applying rootkit programs to their products. As defined by Wikipedia, rootkit "is malware which consists of a program designed to take fundamental control of a computer system, without authorization by the system's owners and legitimate managers." One of the primary reasons behind Sony's action had been the increase in pirated materials through Internet exchange (i.e. bit-torrent sites like Napster and Piratebay). Owning a CD or movie provides the owner with rights to that particular copy. However, uploading it to share with others takes away profit from the companies that developed the materials. This had been what Sony was reacting to.
Were the methods they applied as a solution right? No. Just as milk contamination placed infants in danger of death, Sony exposed their consumers to a security hole that could have caused a lot of damage via identity theft, etc. However, companies in ownership of intellectual property should have some governmental forces protecting them. This would require an entity to take charge of the Internet, as it is a nearly governless force. Until this happens many online theft will continue through sites like Piratebay.org.
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I agree with some of your response to my post, but I think you missed the point on some others. First of all, I feel I should inform you that I am in no way a proprietor of free market capitalism, just to set the record straight and make sure you don't get the wrong impression. Walmart's policy on its employees is a huge part of this ideological disagreement, as its poor treatment of its workers is a direct result of that capitalist mindset. The capitalist model says that companies should be as efficient as possible, both mechanically and fiscally. If they are able to have wages so low and still have people willing to work there, then it's all good with Adam Smith.
But this is still besides the issue. I was talking about producers in my original post. Walmart is a supplier, not a producer. They don't actually make anything they sell. What i was saying is that, theoretically, the product that sells the most has the most features that people want of its particular kind, and that has been largely true. Something that no one likes will not be bought, while something that everyone likes will be bought by everyone. Simple, right?
Now, on to my next point, that the government has no sway over the companies that make these products. I explained this very poorly, so I could see how you could have misunderstood what I was saying. We'll say that the government approaches the two main producers of OSs, Microsoft and Apple, and asked them to place backdoors in their programming to let them access people's computers. If Microsoft and Apple told the government to go fuck themselves, what could the government possibly do? Fine them? Arrest them? Absolutely not, and if they did do something so daft, can you not imagine those companies sending legions of lawyers after them?
So my question was, if the government was powerless to do anything if the producers refused, and their consumers would be unequivocally against it, then why would they choose to side with the government?
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