Yes, it is—gp’s point being we do that all the time and often agree that it makes sense.
A baby doesn’t catch a sex pest charge for running around naked, but it also can’t get a gun license. A mom-n-pop doesn’t have to hire an auditor and file with the SEC, but it also can’t sell shares of itself to the public.
Why? The bigger you are, the more responsibility you bear: the bigger the impact of your mistakes, the subtler the complexities of your operation, the greater your sophistication relative to individual customers/citizens—and the greater your relative capacity to self-regulate.
But the conditions aren't here to annoy big companies but because we want to shape society in a specific way. Why would I allow small companies to disrespct author rights and steal, or gather more private information about citizens?
The problem is that an intellectually consistent position of being against "different rules for different people" means everywhere, in everything.
For instance, poor people should not have any tax breaks: everyone should pay exactly the same percentage of their income, like 15% all across the board or whatever.
Such ideas often have regressive effects.
However, I get it. When it comes to handling personal information, you simply can't say that the "little guys" don't have to follow all the rules, and can cheerfully mishandle personal information in some way.
Small operators have simpler structures and information systems; it should be easier for them to comply and show compliance, you would think (and maybe some of the requirements in the area can be simplified rather than rules waived.)
Almost any corporate rule I am aware of has differences in how they apply depending on the size of the company. And as an entrepreneur and startup consultant I think that is a good principle. I don’t even see how society could function without it.
In almost every developed country the rules are exactly the same. No hairnet, no licence? Lemonade Stand Ltd can and will be shut down. The main difference is lenience in punishment which tends to tail off and disappear at the lemonade stand scale, and be stricter for large multinationals.
Seen house building regulations recently? Most countries will let the home owner do things they'd never let a contractor do without a permit. There's a lot of different laws for home or very small scale selling of various goods, brewing, canning, single person doing business as companies, etc.
But in this analogy, we aren’t talking about a person doing coding at home only for their own use, are we? Isn’t this about small companies - I.e. whether there should be different applicable laws if you hire a small construction company vs a large one to rewire your kitchen, etc?
I'm not sure how you got to this conclusion. The answer is a simple google away: smaller companies face lower taxes, lower standards of documentation on health & safety, don't need work councils, less reporting on workspace/financials, etc etc etc.
My point is these societies have the rule of law, and the vast majority of laws don't have a "unless you have 50 employees or less" or "unless your revenue is under $1 mil" qualifier. The difference in treatment is often a complex precedent of leniency in enforcement or punishment, but ultimately the rules are the same for everyone, even if you have to upset the 8 year old selling lemonade.
I think most people agree that the state should be subject to harsher rules than you are, because it is large and powerful.
But you would actually prefer to be subject to the same rules as the state? I.e. typically nothing which isn't explicitly allowed is forbidden for you to do, you are forced to hand out copies of documents you produce, and so on?
That’s how efficient market works. The bigger are the players, the higher are the chances they will distort the market. You need to apply the force proportional to size to return market back to equilibrium at maximum performance. We have anti-trust laws for this reason, so nothing new, nothing special.
It could, however, be good policy independent of personal preference.
I like folks who have to work for a living and dislike billionaires relaxing on yachts bought on their generational wealth, but in addition sociology metrics of the United States in the past 100 years suggest that the highest levels of happiness correlated pretty heavily with marginal tax rates as high as 100% based on wealth.
Compliance has fixed costs. And smaller operations have a smaller blast radius when things go wrong. Reducing requirements for smaller operators makes sense.
Different rules for different people huh?
Just because you like the group you're benefiting and dislike the group you're harming doesn't mean that is good policy.