Since your edit seems to be taking the jail suggestion seriously:
I think the data-money analogy isn't unreasonable, but you're overloading "swindle" pretty heavily here, in a way that defeats your point. Companies and people "swindle" others out of money all the time with dark patterns, and this predates computing by ten thousand years. Caveat emptor exists for a reason: the legal system is just too inflexible a tool to cram a person's view of "honesty in business" into.
Defining "making one side of an option an iota more of a hassle than the other" as criminal is broad enough that you're pretty much guaranteed to catch many honest transactors too. The law is a really blunt instrument.
I agree. I’m certainly taking it from my own point of view, and I might be overloading “swindle”. It’s probably a bad choice of a word here. It would have to be on case by case basis anyway, but even with the inflexibility of the system and the impossibility of jail time for every theft case, I think it would have to be at least an option when the intent on scamming for the purpose of selling the data (like those mailing lists) is clear.
There are certain patterns that are illegal though, and presumably have legal penalties (maybe not jail time, but presumably at least fines). False advertising is the obvious example. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to support strengthening the laws around these things.
If memory serves me, the EU does not
Operate on the same legal framework as the US, so the assumptions I hear here: that the exact letter of the law they’re suggesting is worrying, is not
How it works in the EU. They also don’t use case law to define exactly how something will be dealt with.
It’s a lot more fluid and ‘spirit of the law’y there.
I think the data-money analogy isn't unreasonable, but you're overloading "swindle" pretty heavily here, in a way that defeats your point. Companies and people "swindle" others out of money all the time with dark patterns, and this predates computing by ten thousand years. Caveat emptor exists for a reason: the legal system is just too inflexible a tool to cram a person's view of "honesty in business" into.
Defining "making one side of an option an iota more of a hassle than the other" as criminal is broad enough that you're pretty much guaranteed to catch many honest transactors too. The law is a really blunt instrument.