Cen$oring Google

[Mismoyled Jiblet.]

Seems like this is pretty much just a money grab but given how we can just cut and paste from an article anyway (thereby limiting the original source the ad revenue), it makes some sense.

We can just steal? I guess that’s the libertarian answer.

Now back to Tom screaming at himself in the void.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

Australia's Confused Tech Regulators Are Cracking Down on Google for Using Links
 

The response from Facebook brings to mind the old saw that the internet views regulation as damage and routes around it.

Not quite as obsolete as your brain Tomasito but close

People who uses these new entry points into the Net may be in for a shock. Unlike the family-oriented commercial services, which censor messages they find offensive, the Internet imposes no restrictions. Anybody can start a discussion on any topic and say anything. There have been sporadic attempts by local network managers to crack down on the raunchier discussion groups, but as Internet pioneer John Gilmore puts it, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html

 

[MR.CLEAN]

 Seems like this is pretty much just a money grab

by whom?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

That's an interesting concept.  A user in Facebook links to MSNBC.  Someone clicks and goes to the MSNBC website.  The MSNBC website notes that as a hit and uses it to charge advertisers on the MSNBC website.  AND they get paid by Facebook for clicking the same link?  So they get paid twice or one clik.

Seems like this is pretty much just a money grab but given how we can just cut and paste from an article anyway (thereby limiting the original source the ad revenue), it makes some sense.

The big mystery is where the 'original' content actually comes from - just like the music industry, the original content tends to be from a remarkably small pool of sources - the rest is performance art.  Is MSNBC going to flow through "royalties"?  I tend to doubt it.

Sounds like no one will really get paid at all, since FB and Google will just stop service instead.

Funny because people go to all kinds of expense and trouble to get others to link to their articles, especially if the "other" is a biggie like Google. Trying to force Google to pay for "including" them by linking will just eliminate the linking.

At least from that source.

But what about the Fediverse?

 

[BeSafe]

Sounds like no one will really get paid at all, since FB and Google will just stop service instead.

Funny because people go to all kinds of expense and trouble to get others to link to their articles, especially if the "other" is a biggie like Google. Trying to force Google to pay for "including" them by linking will just eliminate the linking.

At least from that source.

But what about the Fediverse?

I'm not buying that Google/Facebook will pull em down.  They'll do the cost benefit and go from there.

Youtube is an interesting case study.  The application of 'copyright' has been pretty fascinating to watch.  The original material holders often benefit - rather dramatically - from the sharing of copywritten material so 'don't ask, don't tell' are the words of the day, because it promotes their brand.  There's an entire infrastructure that's sort of grown up around 'reviews', 'reactions', 'etc  Which works great until it doesn't.  The only enforcement is the 'youtube strikes' which is sort of nuclear - so creators have to decide what they'll tolerate and have been known to sick google on people who they don't like. not necessary who are doing anything particularly out of the norm.  As they say, "if you think 'makeup tutorials videos are about makeup, you're just not getting it."

I read the article.   I suspect that the only 'alternatives' that are going to really survive and grow are services that exist in countries that have a cultural (or financial) motivation to do so.  I look at VPN service providers and maybe TOR as the most applicable models. At the end, the very wires and servers of the internet are controlled by governments.  But they have to 'live' somewhere and that will always be at the sufferance of (and risk of co-op by) authoritarians.

Starlink will be curious.  How governments interact with that will be an cool cultural experiment.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Ooops forgot the actual link.

Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek is a corrupt oaf.

Germany leads the world in censorious oafs
 

...

"Germany's Network Enforcement Law, or NetzDG … requires social media companies to block or remove content that violates one of twenty restrictions on hate and defamatory speech in the German Criminal Code," Diana Lee wrote for Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. "In effect, the NetzDG conscripts social media companies into governmental service as content regulators," with millions of euros in fines hanging over their heads if they guess wrong.

That model of delegated censorship has proven to be as infectious as a viral outbreak, taking hold in over a dozen other countries.

"This raises the question of whether Europe's most influential democracy has contributed to the further erosion of global Internet freedom by developing and legitimizing a prototype of online censorship by proxy that can readily be adapted to serve the ends of authoritarian states," Justitia, a Danish judicial thinktank, warned in a 2019 report.

It's no surprise when countries like Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela emulate intrusive legislation from elsewhere—they don't need much encouragement. But we've already seen that French legislators followed in Germany's lead, and lawmakers in the U.K. are poised to do the same.

...

Austria is also considering a NetzDG-inspired law that would require the removal of "content whose 'illegality is already evident to a legal layperson'" explains Martin J. Riedl, a native Austrian and Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media. The law would further encourage compliance by "forbidding their debtors (e.g., businesses who advertise on platforms) to pay what they owe to platforms" that don't conform to the law.

That's expected to encourage even more "overblocking" by platforms worried that they'll face a financial death penalty if they guess wrong as to content's legal status.

...

The U.S. faces its own speech- and privacy-threatening legislation in the form of the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020. The legislation, which was introduced in the House of Representatives last month, invokes children and the dangers of child pornography on its way to threatening platforms with the loss of Section 230 protection against liability for content posted by users if they don't adopt government-dictated "best practices."

"The EARN IT bill would allow small website owners to be sued or prosecuted under state laws, as long as the prosecution or lawsuit somehow related to crimes against children," warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We know how websites will react to this. Once they face prosecution or lawsuits based on other peoples' speech, they'll monitor their users, and censor or shut down discussion forums."

...

A small website owner just never knows when some nutty user will call a politician a corrupt oaf, causing major liability, so...

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

We've achieved blessed bipartisan unity on the antitrust suit against Google.
 

...

"It will be a heavy lift for the DOJ to show real consumer harm," said Jessica Melugin, associate director of Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "That this bar is unlikely to be met is precisely why so many antitrust enthusiasts are calling for a fundamental rewriting and expansion of U.S. antitrust laws. Those proposed changes sacrifice the primacy of consumer welfare and insert competitors and broader socio-economic goals in its place."

This has been a progressive goal for a while. After a "liberalization trend" that saw consumer welfare emerge as the main goal of antitrust law enforcement, "it's being tugged back to form a support system protecting 'competitors'—guarding against low prices, escalating quality, and market rivalry," explained Thomas W. Hazlett for Reason last year.

One of this movement's biggest proponents has been Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "America has a long tradition of breaking up companies when they have become too big and dominant—even if they are generally providing good service at a reasonable price," Warren wrote in 2019, citing Gilded Age forebears as a guide for how to "restore competition to the tech sector" and promising to use antitrust law against Google and Amazon.

The new lawsuit against Google also echoes the ethos of an early October report from the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. The American Prospect's David Dayen suggested the report uses "tech as simply a case study on what an invigorated legislative body can do to rein in the corporate power of any type."

Oddly enough, Republicans are celebrating these moves.

"I applaud this suit as desperately needed and long overdue," tweeted Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) this week. "Google is a monopoly and I think they have been abusing their monopoly power," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) on CNBC.

The 11 states joining in the Google lawsuit are all states with Republican attorneys general.

But the Google antitrust suit is a profoundly anti-free market document, wholly in line with modern progressive and leftist conceptions of heavier government intervention in today's marketplace. Ultimately, the government is going after Google for being bigger and more capable than others, not to stop some consumer harm, but to try and level the playing field.

As usual, it makes me long for gridlock and partisan bickering.

 

[shaggy]

We've achieved blessed bipartisan unity on the antitrust suit against Google.
 

As usual, it makes me long for gridlock and partisan bickering.

Like Ma bell, If it is proven that they are a monopoly, well break em up...  Sundar would probably go for it as there will be massive opportunities for growth with the offshoot companies.  They will just rebrand.  The platform won't change one iota just like your phone did not get ripped out by the commie govt when Bell was broken up.  Simple really, No liberal bias, no liberal leanings.  If they are proven to be a monopoly and a harm to the consumer.  Break em up.  

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Like Ma bell, If it is proven that they are a monopoly, well break em up...  Sundar would probably go for it as there will be massive opportunities for growth with the offshoot companies.  They will just rebrand.  The platform won't change one iota just like your phone did not get ripped out by the commie govt when Bell was broken up.  Simple really, No liberal bias, no liberal leanings.  If they are proven to be a monopoly and a harm to the consumer.  Break em up.  

If you have been harmed by Google, maybe you can help out with the "heavy lift" referenced above.

 

[shaggy]

If you have been harmed by Google, maybe you can help out with the "heavy lift" referenced above.

Why would you think I have been harmed by Google??  We are integrating some of their products into our infrastructure.  Also, I make my living on AWS, so the Big Boys do not bother me one bit.  What assumptions are you making here Tom??  It's simple, they deemed too big, break em up...  It'll prob drive the cost of my inets access down.  Win win...  

 

[Mismoyled Jiblet.]

It’s funny in the typical parochial Tom way, that Tom doesn’t get it ain’t the us internet and the world don’t give a fuck. Kinda like his gun dumbfuckery

 

[shaggy]

What ever happened to the forced TikTok Sale??   Inquiring minds and all that.  

 

[Mismoyled Jiblet.]

What ever happened to the forced TikTok Sale??   Inquiring minds and all that.  

Still owned by China (well, whatever the fuck it’s structure is) still not banned in the us.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

Why would you think I have been harmed by Google??  We are integrating some of their products into our infrastructure.  Also, I make my living on AWS, so the Big Boys do not bother me one bit.  What assumptions are you making here Tom??  It's simple, they deemed too big, break em up...  It'll prob drive the cost of my inets access down.  Win win...  

When it comes to the DOJ, past performance is a good indicator of future performance.  What's their record on anti-trust actions lately, hmmm?  I'm going out on a limb to say that the Google action will be anticlimactic at best.  At middle, it will be at least as humiliating for DOJ as the ass pounding they took on the ATT/Time-Warner merger reversal.  At worst, there will be scandals, sanctions from judges, and resigning anti-trust division staff. 

Here's some light reading on the recent history of anti-trust.

But antitrust policy and enforcement declined during the fourth cycle (late-1970s–mid-2010s) with the rise of the Chicago School of Economics in the late 1970s, which the Reagan administration endorsed with its enforcement priorities, judicial appointments, and amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. By the Obama administration, we had neither a popular antitrust movement nor many significant antitrust prosecutions. Cartel enforcement remained robust, but otherwise antitrust enforcement waned. The government rarely challenged mergers among competitors. Challenges of vertical mergers were even rarer, with the last one litigated in 1979.

During this fourth cycle, some enforcers viewed the political and moral cases for antitrust as insufficiently rigorous and somehow diluting antitrust policy. Antitrust’s increased technicality and the use of unappealing, abstract neo-classical economic concepts broadened the gap between antitrust enforcement and public concern. Antitrust’s noneconomic goals were jettisoned for an amorphous “consumer welfare” standard. Also discarded was the historic concern about halting the momentum toward concentration in an industry, in order to arrest the economic, political, and social harms from concentrated economic power in their incipiency.

Antitrust during the fourth cycle also relied on an incomplete and somewhat distorted conception of competition. Adopting the Chicago School’s assumptions of self-correcting markets, composed of rational, self-interested market participants, some courts and enforcers sacrificed important political, social, and moral values to promote certain economic beliefs. Competition, for them, was innately effective. Thus, there was no need for robust antitrust enforcement to create or maintain the conditions necessary to make competition effective. Market forces could naturally correct the episodic instances of market power, and could do so far better than the messes caused by government intervention. The authorities accepted the increased risks from concentrated telecommunications, financial, and radio industries, among others, for the prospect of future efficiencies and innovation.

 

[AJ Oliver]

If you have been harmed by Google, 

Y'all need to understand that a central part of the libertarian creed . . 

is that all monopolies are caused by government. 

It is one of their more ludicrous articles of faith; 

totally unsupported by any kind of honest research into economic history. 

 

[Rain Man]

https://brave.com/download/

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Y'all need to understand that a central part of the libertarian creed . .

is that all monopolies are caused by government.

It is one of their more ludicrous articles of faith;

totally unsupported by any kind of honest research into economic history.

Well, if AJ Oliver, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz all agree, I guess political science has rendered a result. Google is a monopoly. Search for it on Duck Duck Go and you'll see.

But it's my desire to call politicians corrupt oafs that brought me back to this thread. That's considered naughty in censorious European countries and they want to deputize Facebook to stop me from doing it.

Fuck them. Buncha corrupt oafs. Especially that Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek. As corrupt as an oaf can get.

People in the UK might also be allowed to say so for a bit longer, if the powers that be are disposed to allow it. This is why we had to kick them out and we led the Bill of Rights with it.

...
"If the Online Safety Bill passes, the U.K. government will be able to directly silence user speech, and even imprison those who publish messages that it doesn't like," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Joe Mullin cautioned in August. "The bill empowers the U.K.'s Office of Communications (OFCOM) to levy heavy fines or even block access to sites that offend people."


That would seem to be a feature, not a bug, as far as the bill's sponsors are concerned, so civil libertarian objections gained little traction. The turning point, such as it is, came when members of the ruling Conservative Party pointed out that the legislation's advocates had failed to do a vital bit of due diligence in the creation of an authoritarian law: that is, imagining its enforcement in the hands of your worst enemies. Since the floundering Conservatives are trailing the opposition Labour Party, that's a very real likelihood.

"The online harms Bill could allow a future Labour government to clamp down on free speech, says Lord Frost and senior Tories," The Telegraph's Charles Hymas reported in July. "The former Brexit minister is among nine senior Tories who are demanding [then-Culture Secretary] Nadine Dorries ditch plans to regulate legal but harmful content online because of fears a future Labour government could use it to censor free speech."

When you're poised to lose the next election, it's wise to refrain from empowering state officials to muzzle their critics.
...

Actually, that's a wise policy any time. Even Barbara Boxer finally figured this out when she realized what kinds of powers she trusted in the hands of Donald Trump.