France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Globally 337
Lauren Weinstein writes: I've been waiting for this, much the way one waits for a violent case of food poisoning. France is now officially demanding that Google expand the hideous EU 'Right To Be Forgotten' (RTBF) to Google.com worldwide, instead of just applying it to the appropriate localized (e.g. France) version of Google. And here's my official response as a concerned individual:
To hell with this ... Weinstein's page links to the paywalled WSJ coverage; you might prefer The New York Times or Politico. Related: a court in Canada, according to TechDirt, would like to do something similar, when it comes to expanding its effect on Google results for everyone, not just those who happen to live within its jurisdiction.
To hell with this ... Weinstein's page links to the paywalled WSJ coverage; you might prefer The New York Times or Politico. Related: a court in Canada, according to TechDirt, would like to do something similar, when it comes to expanding its effect on Google results for everyone, not just those who happen to live within its jurisdiction.
Good Luck (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll have to pry it from the NSA's cold dead fingers.
Re:Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet this is misreported and what they demand is that all searches originating from France be censored, regardless of whether a Frenchman goes to google.fr or google.com -- this easy Google to implement. This does not affect anyone outside of France.
" France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Globally " -- rubbish
" France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Locally " -- corrected
Also, even if true, US-Americans are not really allowed to cry about it because "US Claims Right To Wiretap Globally".
Re:Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct, that is exactly what it is. They are simply saying that Google should obey French law when serving French citizens, which isn't particularly unreasonable considering how much effort Google themselves put in to geofencing French users. For example, French users can't get in to the US Play store or install apps that have been set to "only available in the US". More over, Google serves google.com to European users from servers located in the EU anyway.
Re:Good Luck (Score:4, Informative)
I find it very interesting that you are siding with France on this when on Microsoft you had precisely the opposite stance. There the USA was demanding that Microsoft's USA employees follow USA law and in that case your feeling was the the EU / Ireland had an obligation to be involved and regulate because of where the servers were physically located regardless of the status of the data.
Re:Good Luck (Score:5, Informative)
It's really simple. It's down to where the company is based.
Google has a subsidiary in France. That subsidiary is responsible for handling the French version of Google services, like search and the Play store. Even google.com is served from within France for performance reasons, and it gives location based results using language settings and geolocation of IP addresses. Google France needs to comply with French laws, including the version of google.com it serves up.
Microsoft's subsidiary is based in Ireland. It needs to comply with Irish law. US law enforcement doesn't have jurisdiction over it. Just like French courts don't have jurisdiction over Google's US operation.
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If a foreign consumers orders a product from you and it is legal in your country, than it is the problem of the foreign consumer for illegally importing it.
So the action is, the French resident (can be citizen, can be tourist) dislike the locally served product and instead, THEY CHOOSE, to flout the law and seek a foreign product instead. The individual that seeks it, is the one that is required to be penalised as they are illegally importing the data.
Does not matter what is legal or illegal, it is nev
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Too many sites are impossible to get to. Google isn't.
It's nothing to do with censoring opinions. This is a right to be forgotten.
A right.
Your concept of free speech, that you are implicitly defending, is just another right. It's not more important. It just happens to be one that the US considers a higher priority. The US isn't the arbiter of the universal scale of which right is more important. Though Americans's often implicitly assume this.
Dancing Monkeys and Lawyers (Score:2)
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You have to understand that Free Speech is only the most important right of the US. It's not the most important right in the rest of the world, where there are other rights at play.
That doesn't make the rest of the world wrong. It just means that the US isn't the sole arbiter of rights and wrongs that it thinks it is.
"Worldwide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are simply saying that Google should obey French law when serving French citizens,
That is not what it sounds like to me:
"For Google, the answer is worldwide," said Ms. Falque-Pierrotin, when questioned late last year about the scope of the European privacy ruling. "If people have the right to be delisted from search results, then that should happen worldwide."
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France is free to implement its own Ligne Maginot de l'Internet if it chooses to, just as the Chinese have done. But because French taxpayers can't just be clubbed and dragged off the corrective labor camps like their Chinese counterparts, they are not going to pay out a huge amount of state revenue just to make life worse within France.
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Greek Nationalist, eh?
I don't understand. You seem to be anti-socialist, yet without the Poles and the Turks, would anyone do any work at all in Greece? I'm just wondering.
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Does every slashdot thread have to become about Greece?
> Post about France ....
> Involves international law
> Possible clickbait headline
>
> Greece?
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Until such time as arianastassinopolousblowupdoll (or whatever his name is) gets his karma banged down into the two posts a day zone then I fear that yes, it does.
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They are unrelated.
They're related in the sense that both countries are trying to apply their local laws on a global stage. Beyond that aspect though you're right, they're unrelated.
Though its not quite the same. While the US is claiming the right to retain information about citizens of other countries, they aren't attempting to force companies in those countries to feed them the data (though I wouldn't put bribery past them) -- they're only claiming collection rights of stuff that they can get their hands on themselves.
As
Re:Good Luck (Score:4, Informative)
From the NYT
The authorities want the ruling to apply to all of Google’s domains, including Google.com, although the company contends that Europe’s privacy legislation should apply only to regional domains like Google.de in Germany.
In effect they want it removed World Wide, if it's "all of Google's domains".
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Note that the ruling only applies to Google's subsidiary in France. They don't have jurisdiction in the US. They can only force Google in France, and possibly the whole of Europe if they take it far enough, to comply.
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Personally I think a far better situation is to do something like flag ships. There are no international corporations. Every corporation registers with a single county and that country regulates. Then at the WTO level the countries can cross negotiate with one another.
That way Google is regulated by the USA primarily with only its French specific version regulated by France and Orange is regulated by France with only its American specific MVNOs regulated by the USA.
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That's basically how things work already, even if the definitions aren't as strict as you're suggesting.
The problem with this particular is that the internet gives approximately zero fucks about your national boundaries and national laws, no matter who makes the judgements.
Stupid as this decision is, and horrible as the precedent it could potentially set is if Google complies, it shows a remarkable amount of technological awareness (for a pile of politicians at least) in that they recognize the only way to
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Methinks you are kinda nuts. Saudi Arabia is an independent country with independent policies on many many issues. Certainly they are an ally of the USA but not an extension of the USA.
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May France fart a few Rafales in your general direction.
Looks like (Score:3)
France finally decided to get rid of Google with "Right to be forgotten" in France. (If you can't comply with part of a rule, why comply with any of it.)
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Hideous? (Score:5, Insightful)
France is now officially demanding that Google expand the hideous EU 'Right To Be Forgotten' (RTBF) to Google.com worldwide, ...
Hideous? Speak for yourself.
Remember the Duke LaCrosse player scandal years ago? To make a long story short, on 60 Minutes one of he geezers yasked the parents why they were fighting so hard to clear all the charges and not cut a deal.
One responded, "The Internet." They didn't want their kids coming up on Google searches over false charges. And they were false. The prosecutor got fired and disbarred. [wikipedia.org].
And considering how employers these days demand to know every little dipshit thing about you, and considering how the smallest thing can be blown out of proportion (people ALWAYS assume the worst), you bet your ass I want this. And Google, Bing and every other advertising/search company can STFU.
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I suppose it's completely impossible to imagine that they fought the charges because they were innocent?
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I suppose it's completely impossible to imagine that they fought the charges because they were innocent?
You don't remember it, do you? How drawn out it was and in the beginning, it really looked like those kids were guilty. If it weren't for the Internet, I bet those parents would have taken the deal.
And most folks just cave to prosecutors and take the deal regardless of their innocence because they will bury you in legal fees, intimidate you and really screw you over. See, this guy [wikipedia.org] for an idea of the BS prosecutors put you through.
Luckily, the Duke kids parents had the means to fight for the truth when most
Re:Hideous? (Score:5, Informative)
So you are saying that we should screw the Internet because our legal system is already screwed up? I have a better idea: what about getting rid of plea bargains?
In any case, this doesn't apply in much of Europe, because there, often, the press is not allowed to name defendants until they have been found guilty.
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In the UK and many other European countries defendants are named before being found guilty. There is currently some debate over whether people accused of rape should be anonymous until they are charged (not convicted, merely charged with a crime), but at the moment even suspects are routinely named in the press.
Naturally, when a suspect is cleared of a crime, that fact is rarely reported with equal prominence, if at all.
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Well, they did explicitly say that at least part of the reason was because of the internet, so I imagine it was a bit of both...
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And when some court in some majority Muslim country demand's that all Google results world wide be purged of results that reference Charlie Hebdo will France be okay with that? or does Google just need to obey EU courts and can ignore the courts everywhere else?
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And when some court in some majority Muslim country demand's that all Google results world wide be purged of results that reference Charlie Hebdo will France be okay with that?
As long as the ban is only enforced for searches originating from that country, which is what France is asking for, then yeah, I'm sure they will be fine with it.
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... because in the ridiculous example provided ... they would certainly model it exactly after the EU law ... because Muslim extremist countries are so thoughtful and considerate ...
What they would do is 'Google is not allowed to exist anywhere in the world because they know of Charlie Hebdo'
Thats the point. Do you want this sort of thing happening where countries think they can tell other countries what to do, more so than already happens?
In reality, Google will just invade France with something as powerf
Re:Hideous? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tiananmen incident would go out of existence, as well as anything that offends any dictator or anyone with access to a friendly court.
If they push forward, they should just do like they did in China, leave. The bad part is that, like in China, it would leave the market open for others who are more willing to comply with worldwide orders.
It's funny that while it is common to criticize China, I don't see them trying to give orders outside of their country. It seems they have more respect over other people's laws than the west.
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It has nothing to do with respect for other people's laws. It has everything to do with practicality. It's not feasible to force people in other countries to obey your laws, so the Chinese rulers don't bother (except in places they can bully/cajole local lawmakers into making nice with China (like the USA)).
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Also, since the mainland is respecting Hong Kong's decision to keep Google, I think that's something to consider on the debate on whether they respect jurisdictions only out of practicality or some respect also.
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Alas, while the Chinese rulers are pragmatic enough to accept things they don't really like but can't control, the French rulers are idiots who believe nothing is beyond their power, because, after all, they're French....
And everyone (in France) knows that the French, as a people, are ALWAYS right....
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Alas, while the Chinese rulers are pragmatic enough to accept things they don't really like but can't control, the French rulers are idiots who believe nothing is beyond their power, because, after all, they're French....
And everyone (in France) knows that the French, as a people, are ALWAYS right....
How ironic. It's the American idiots who got it wrong this time. The permanently outraged hack journos and bloggers got the wrong end of the stick. They are only demanding censorship of google.com when serving pages in France, not world wide. There is no global censorship request, just a request to make google.com work the same way as google.fr already does when the request comes from a French IP address.
Also, it's not the Right to be Forgotten at all, it's just bog standard data protection laws that have e
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Alas, while the Chinese rulers are pragmatic enough to accept things they don't really like but can't control, the French rulers are idiots who believe nothing is beyond their power, because, after all, they're French....
The U.S. authorities have a history of this type of behaviour. Just think of the case Microsoft is currently fighting, the one where they do not want to give the U.S access to emails being held in the E.U. (Ireland), or the case where some NYC judge imposed a massive fine - and confiscati
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Fuck China, what if Iran or Saudi Arabia demand it? Porn as we know it would be gone!
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"I don't see them trying to give orders outside of their country."
That is because they use direct action: They firewall international connections and they tamper with content in flight.
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The Tiananmen incident would go out of existence, as well as anything that offends any dictator or anyone with access to a friendly court.
If they push forward, they should just do like they did in China, leave. The bad part is that, like in China, it would leave the market open for others who are more willing to
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So far.
They are probably watching this rather closely.
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I think that's a "people" problem.
Anybody who does research needs to do so thoroughly.
Back when I was a kid, George Washington had wooden teeth and chopped down a cheery tree. Later, he was a slave owner.
Things change.
Google can help tell the whole story, from initial falsehood to corrected version (or reverse).
The fact that someone WAS wrongly accused is an important part of the story you cite.
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The solution to this is to allow privacy for certain court proceedings and to not allow reporting of the names of the people involved. Basically, grant anonymity to all people involved in criminal proceedings.
That is the easy, non-technological solution to the problem. Every person charged with a crime is a John Doe until he/she is convicted. All court records etc refer to John Doe unless the person has been found guilty and sentenced to prison.
In the Duke Lacrosse case, anyone searching on the internet wou
Good for the Goose.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the US claims the right to enforce its won stupid fucking laws globally, stop whining when other countries want to enforce their own stupid fucking rules globally...
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Re:Good for the Goose.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Since the US claims the right to enforce its won stupid fucking laws globally, stop whining when other countries want to enforce their own stupid fucking rules globally...
Citations, please. Or do you mean "the US chooses to sign treaties with other nations so that all parties in the treaty can pursue the same law enforcement options, like extraditing criminals as appropriate." Because if actually meant the words you used, it means you're either deliberately lying or are yet another low-information ranter (in either case, please just go away).
Too young (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're getting fat?
Well, yeah: technology increasingly gives regular folks the kind of power only kings used to have.
I don't think so. The only way that would happen is through a totalitarian regime, but totalitarian regimes can't exi
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Google (and Baidu) is learning to recognize letters, numbers, images, faces, the spoken word, more complex things every day, not unlike a baby. Eventually, Google will recognize our internet of things (with exploits), including everyone's phone, and medical implants, and DARPA's robot progeny. Maybe a human, perhaps one of the AI experts recently hired by Google, will be at the helm, maybe not, that just changes who has total control. If Google (or Baidu) wants to grow (it's that or be conquered by that whi
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I agree with your premise and disagree with your conclusions. Yes, technology is making nation states and borders irrelevant over time. No, I don't think there ever will be 'one world government' that people will listen to or care about. Government is a system of oppression via violence. The kind of reach that the one world government would have to have is not feasible and not desirable either. One world dictatorship is what you are talking about. One world slavery.
No, I think the internet and other
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You might want to try living somwhere where there is no government. (Other than your basement).
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Physically and socio-politically?
I think you're implying that without the tech, future humans would be more adapted to better the consequences of tech. I call bullshit.
I don't know if we're much brainier than we were 5k years ago, but if we are, tech is what allowed us to put those precious nutrients and energ
And I have the right (Score:3)
to demand France suck my dick every morning. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen either.
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I also suspect he's far past the prime altar-boy suckee age they would consider
Is there a little bias in the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
Words and phrases like 'hideous', 'food poisoning', and 'to hell with this'. The article needs to be withdrawn, edited, and resubmitted. Otherwise I can't take it seriously. Highly unprofessional.
There is bias in every article. (Score:2)
The most you can hope for is that it is not hidden.
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Words and phrases like 'hideous', 'food poisoning', and 'to hell with this'. The article needs to be withdrawn, edited, and resubmitted. Otherwise I can't take it seriously. Highly unprofessional.
Shouldn't this be labeled as "Funny"? I mean, this is slashdot. Do you really expect anything like "professional" editing?
FWIW, I find the words pretty appropriate. If you use the Internet, you better take them seriously.
Sauce for the goose ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So if any one country arbitrarily gives itself the right to globally police the internet, decide what should be allowed, prosecute (according to it's national laws) content it deems unlawful, and punish people - even people in other countries - for things that happen on it, then every other country cannot be denied.
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Indeed. The hypocrisy in this thread is unfortunately not surprising.
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Google's response (Score:3, Interesting)
Release a statement to all prominent french news outlets:
Citizens of France
Due to unreasonable demands of your governing bodies detailed at www.google.com/FrenchWithdrawl, Google will be withdrawing from the French market in 30 days. This includes all Google services - GMail, Google search, Youtube, Zagat, maps, flight information, Android, and others listed at www.google.com/FrenchWithdrawl. We feel we must protect the rights of the other 97% of our customers that live outside of France.
You have 30 days to download all of your data using the "Download" button at www.google.com/FrenchWithdrawl. On the 31st day, no service will be provided to anyone within France for a minimum for 6 months. Also, no services regarding France will be provided for people based out of France - no maps, no search, no Youtube, none of the services listed at www.google.com/FrenchWithdrawl.
One final note from outside the PR department: Don't bother with VPN, proxy, Tor, or any other half-baked obfuscation schemes because we'll know. Why? Because we're Google.
Love,
Google.
Threaten to grind their social and work lives to a halt in 30 days and effectively wipe them off the face of the internet for everyone but China (use Baidu) and Russia (use Yandex) and they'll think twice before pulling shit like this.
Clarification Required (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it depends on precisely what they're asking for here. To me the TLD accessed is a red herring by Google, if the EU wants the filter to apply to its citizens its not unreasonable it would apply to all of Google's domains. Though that should not mean the filter would apply to folks outside the EU accessing those domains.
This is also the pot calling the kettle black. The USA frequently attempts to govern outside its national boundaries, see the recent FIFA investigation as a recent example.
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google should just terminate service in France (Score:2)
France will blink.
Bluntly: Fuck France (Score:2)
'nuff said
It's not global censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
It's corporate censorship. Google can opt out of doing business in France. Or China. Or the U.S. Or it can comply. It will comply.
This is why we can't let corporations run the world. They're in it for money, not principle or human rights or whatever. They don't have ideals... they are like sociopaths that are in it for themselves. That's not to say that they're not useful, but they shouldn't be in charge of politics.
Hate to say it, but this problem isn't going to go away. The internet will have to become
Could there be possibly any LESS substance (Score:2)
Not that the topic has any, but the only link is to a poorly written blog you simply copied the first few lines out of, with the only link going to a paywalled WSJ article.
If that's what's necessary for a front page on /., I could offer an article on a miracle breakthrough in the cure on Asperger. Just gimme an hour to make it up.
French prosecutors discover VPN (Score:2)
... news at 11 :)
Look at it from their PoV: the French have a law, and their civil-code attitude to the law is to enforce on principle, not to the letter as English common law. Loophole closing rather than toleration (which might be applied wholesale to certain violators.)
Some well-intentioned person probably argued against RTBF by pointing out that VPN bypasses geolocation. So the Prosecutors were informed and instead of abandoning an impractical (if not stupid) law, they figured out how to close the loop
Why just Google? Why not Bing or Yahoo? (Score:2)
Seems like they are singling out one search engine to be treated differently than others. Hard for me to see how that is fair. Just because Google has been successful, is no reason that the law should not be applied evenly. I guess that is how Europe "thinks."
Hypocriteopotamus (Score:2)
Hmm... I call them a Hypocriteopotamus.
France is trying to force their law on other countries like the USA. France would be all upset if the USA were to do that. I see a hypocritopotamus in the room. France needs to back down and to realize how trivial they are. The UN needs to step in and remind France that they can only make laws within their own borders. Google needs to step in and just forget France.
I can't reach US google anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Try this from France : go to google.us or google.com, and you end up redirected to Google France anyway. So they don't want you to do unlocalized searches, or perhaps you have to dig deeper and learn syntax or go into "advanced research".
On duckduckgo they seem to have anticipated I wanted to do that and there's simply a clickable toggle!
Once again (Score:2)
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
"Governments, corporations, and religious ideologies destroy the right to self preservation, to think for oneself, to make your own choices in life, basically destroys individuality."
You missed one. I fixed it for you. Corporations are also about centralized command and control and have a rigid power hierarchy that benefits the few and devalues human beings.
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Sorry but with the exception of state created monopolies you trade with corporation by your own choice. Don't like Kellog's pricing for their cereal buy another brand. Don't like the neighborhood store, buy from another or shop online/mail order. Don't like your employer offer your skills elsewhere. Of course some people are a little to special to be like everyone else and get offended at having to make their own way.
Re:hum (Score:4, Insightful)
The Sherman Anti-Trust act wasn't just created on a whim. If you actively avoid treating corporations with the same skepticism that is popular for governments, then they WILL devolve into monopolies.
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Not only state-created monopolies. There are also natural monopolies - situations like utilities, where once one company enters a market it becomes impossible for another to do so profitably. This is part of why many areas have exactly one internet service provider: Whoever makes the first investment to to dig up roads and lay cables gets 100% of the customers, and no other ISP is going to invest in their own cables if they would only have to compete with an entrenched interest.
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The funny thing about that was that Standard Oil was the inspiration for the antitrust act, and all the while "People", were upset about the monopoly, their fuel prices were going lower because Rockefeller wanted the sales.
Hmmmmmm
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Except when you don't have a choice. There are cities where you MUST own a car and you MUST drive and you MUST support oil companies and corrupt terrorist nations. Or you MUST buy your meat from 1 regional meat packer. Or you MUST buy GMO vegetables because you have no way of knowing what you are actually buying. Welcome to the jack boot of corporations on your neck.
You are free to choose as long as you choose the only choice you have.
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I have heard a rumor you can buy an electric vehicle and power it from the sun. Sounds a little ridiculous I know.
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If you can afford it. There's the rub.
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OK, Goldilocks go through life convinced you are the victim and you certainly will be.
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There are cities where you MUST own a car and you MUST drive
And if you move away from these mythical cities, what happens ... the Eeeeevil City Enforcers drag you back by your hair and force you to live there?
Or you MUST buy your meat from 1 regional meat packer.
Because you're not allowed to have things shipped to your address from somewhere else? UPS and FedEx are being kept at the border of your city, with their trucks being checked by Armed Meat Thugs working for that one meat packing company?
you MUST buy GMO vegetables because you have no way of knowing what you are actually buying
Because ... you're convinced that your local farmer is lying to you?
Welcome to the jack boot of corporations on your neck.
Hold on a sec while I take some corporate-made pain k
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If it is the only place you can get a job you have no choice.
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If there is only one place you can get a job then I have a hard time feeling sorry for your plight. The market is tough but not *that* bad.
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If it is the only place you can get a job you have no choice.
Really? In a country of hundreds of millions of people with millions of businesses all across the country, there's only ONE place where you can get a job? You don't suppose that would have anything to do with you not lifting a finger to make yourself actually valuable to more than one single employer in one single town, do you? No, it must be that the Eeeeevil Corporations have gotten together to talk about you and make sure that you personally are blacklisted from working anywhere except that one place, w
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OIt's not like I have much of a choice. I could just stuff my money under the couch.
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where do I sign the petition?
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Well, Google could implement a filter that allows you to reverse its "look by country" filter, i.e. display everything BUT results from a certain country.
I doubt it's something they can "sue" for if the user controls it. And if anything, a chance to retaliate against government censorship is easily picked up by the internet community. You just have to inform them...
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wrong, I have the right to censor information about myself. Your decrees otherwise are meaningless.
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This is not a problem of "having too much knowledge". This is a problem of what you do with it. The direct approach to addressing this problem is to simple not punish people for ancient misdeeds. However, that just seems "too hard". Instead, we would rather try to subject the entire world to a sort of enforced amnesia instead.
No. It would be far simpler to simply alter our approach to how we deal with a person's "permanent record".
Besides, this idea of yours that we "forget old crimes" isn't even accurate a
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That could end up being the lesser evil, and would end up making a hell of a statement.
Of course the consequences with countries like China or Russia would have to be thunk through - they would be encouraged to pass similar laws so as to get Google out of their countries.
The balkanisation of the Internet.