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‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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That's because big businesses are hugely protected in multiple ways.
First of all, if you or even your government opens a case against them, they will have large and talented legal teams capable of shutting down or at the very least delaying indefinitely most cases against them. Second of all, they are usually huge lobbyists for all major parties in most countries they operate in. That is, they are effectively able to buy access to legislation and protection against them. But third, and the final protection is that even if a case is opened against them, even if it has criminal ramifications with jail time, they will use one of the following to ensure those at the top stay safe. 1: You cannot prosecute a company beyond fines. Fines to a rich company just become a new line in their COGS report. 2: If they are pushed to find someone to prosecute, they will find some operational level sacrificial lamb to throw under the bus. "The buck stops here" doesn't mean at the top. It means at anyone they can sucker into taking the fall.
So, why should they care? What can any of us do about it?
Luigi
Creepy use of AI.
You know if government is pissed enough, they can make a law that fines Google a suitable amount. And prevent them from using the land they cleared, and even prevent them from building data centers in Finland at all.
The idea that these giant companies are more powerful than a country is a joke. Of course they aren't, but government can use that way of thinking as an excuse.
Well, they can create a law to properly fine such things in the future. If current law doesn't allow imposing a proper fine, it's not possible to amend in a way that allows fining after that.
At least in Finland you can only get punished according to the law that was in place when you did the act. Not any laws that were passed later. AFAIK the same is true in the US as well.
False, it's just not customary.
I don't know how it goes in the US, but in Finland the concept of lex praevia is set in the Finnish constitution.
While the Finnish constitution is not set in stone, and can indeed be amended via a supermajority, there's practically no government that would actually allow that kind of change to legislation. It's obvious to anyone what breaking said principle would mean and strive for, and doing so would require at least four different parties to agree.
IDK why you think USA is relevant? USA is a shithole country that is in no way representative of how democracies work.
Doesn't mean a fine can't be increased, and a permission to use the land can be withdrawn.
So it was already illegal, and increasing the punishment because of especially egregious circumstances would be within what is legally possible.
Also a government can administratively fine a company, Italy does that all the time. In EU the fines against companies like Google were determined by a political council like this for example:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEMENT_17_1806
This fine of €2.42 billion was issued purely by politicians on an administrative basis for breaking EU regulation. Since Finland is a member of EU, this is also legal in Finland.
Sure. Now tell me how often that happens? I never said a government couldn't stop it. I made it clear that these companies have the governments in their pockets. The government could stop it, but they won't. They like the money these corporations give them, far more than they like us.
That i can remember only Iceland after the 2008 housing crisis did anything.
Good on them I say. I wish people were the focus of government more.
This is true it doesn't, but it's not because the government doesn't have the power, my point is they choose not to do it.
Exactly.
Well this was more or less my point. I said there's nothing WE can do. The reason being, in the USA a minuscule number of people vote for people not affiliated with the main two parties, and it's much the same in the UK (albeit with the split of the right recently among two/three parties). People vote one of two ways. It's the same over and over across western countries. Outside of that, there's often direct bribery options available anyway.
You could run on providing pure utopia in most places in the west and no-one would even hear you. Because no-one is going to fund a genuine politician. Without funding, you're not even an also-ran.
No, the paid stooges always win. They will ensure their corporate paymasters are well looked after once they get into power. This is just the way of things. It will take a revolution to fix it, and historically they don't go so well in the long term either. But, frankly there's only so far we can go down this road before that happens.
There's not enough people that can see this going on and having a will to stop it. More than that, there's just too many stupid people that worked out how to vote. The proof of this, is the absolute lowest common denominator US president right now.
Corporates are a law unto themselves. It's not a new idea, look at the original robocop movie, and indeed any 1980s dystopian movie. They're stories about how corporations got too much power and the world went to shit. We're just seeing the realisation of what those movies foretold.
Good thing the goverment is right wing corporate people. They'll surely get very pissed off.
Absolutely, which is why we shouldn't make excuses for governments being accomplishes of cooperations based on traditional practices.
Compared to the insanity around the world, the Finish government is mostly sensible though.