Weird that the people who actually produce these things get let off the hook though, right? So you build it and don't get in trouble, just that mean ol' CEO.
Nothing to do with "mean". There's no need to emotionalize.
It's about focusing on people with (1) the most leverage over the decision-making process and (2) perfect visibility into the consequences (legal and otherwise) of their actions.
That is -- when you're dealing with the mob, you doing go after the delivery boy. You go after the foot soldiers and kingpins.
I would argue that when it comes to developing software, usually the one with the most leverage is the worker who develops it. If she says no, then it doesn't get developed. Maybe in team environments it's a bit trickier when you're looking at a feature as a whole, but each individual has full leverage over the code they produce. That they don't have leverage over the decision-making process seems like a cop out.
The mean ol' CEO has several orders of magnitude more resources in his control than the person that builds it, hence must be considered responsible to a greater degree.
I can agree that he needs to be punished to a greater extent due to his broad responsibility. But nothing at all for the ones who actually performed the work to build these illegal sites?
