[blitmap]

I don't like this but if a corporation is a person, they have the same right to it that the rest of the public has.

If the effort to USGS could be quantified in a cost, I'd expect Google to pay USGS to make the public data available?

It does sound awful. I don't know what the right answer is.

[kerkeslager]

> I don't like this but if a corporation is a person, they have the same right to it that the rest of the public has.

1. A corporation is not a person. Corporations don't have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have rights.

2. The problem isn't that Google has access to the data, it's that USGS and the rest of the world no longer have access to the data, except on Google's terms.

[deelowe]

Wasn't there a seminal surpreme court case that has been used as precident to show that corporations do have rights? Something tax related?

[xmprt]

Corporations aren't people. I can't get married to Google. If you can point to specific precedence of corporations being given access to certain data on grounds of their personhood then your argument makes sense but just because corporations are considered like people in the context of speech doesn't mean that applies literally everywhere else.

[hanche]

Corporations aren’t people, but from a legal perspective, they have some rights in common with persons, which is why you often hear statements saying they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

[JetSpiegel]

> I can't get married to Google.

But they can still fuck you over, like when they banned my GMail account for no reason, with no warning nor explanation.