Bro, "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" is a pretty common saying in business circles. A lot of enormous businesses, such as Uber or AirBnB, were founded completely on operating without permission, regulatory approval, or insurance, until those things were absolutely forced upon them, and even then they didn't always comply with the law. It's also common that companies assume they will be sued, and go ahead anyway because they know they'll make more money than they'll be sued for. And if you do get sued... there's a good chance you can just never pay up, which I'm seeing more and more often.
The real world is certainly not your optimistic "corporations won't do anything wrong because they're afraid they'll get in trouble".
You mean like Microsoft and Apple stealing intellectual property from Xerox? Or more recently, like Cambridge Analytica?
Those are the ones that you can read about on Wikipedia. There's plenty of corporate theft happening all the time that never makes it into the public eye.
I mean bro, Boeing just murdered a whistleblower. It's not like criminality is inherently a barrier for companies.
The real world is certainly not your optimistic "corporations won't do anything wrong because they're afraid they'll get in trouble".