I began writing the print version of this rag in September, 1987. Ronald Reagan was President, almost nobody carried a mobile phone, Bill Gates was worth $1.25 billion, and there was no Internet in the sense we know it today because Al Gore had yet to “invent” it. My point here is that a lot can change in 30+ years and one such change that is my main topic is that, thanks to the GDPR, the Internet is no longer American. We’ve lost control. It’s permanent and probably for the best.
Before readers start attacking, let’s first deal with the issue of Al Gore and the Internet. What Gore actually said to Wolf Blitzer on CNN in March, 1999 was “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” And he did. In 1986-1991 Gore sponsored various bills to both expand and speed-up what had been the ARPAnet and allow commercial activity on the network.
While one can argue that an Internet of sorts was inevitable, the one we actually got where people are buying and selling stuff and looking at dirty pictures came about with the very real assistance of Al Gore.
As the home of the ARPAnet, the United States called the shots when it came to the early growth of the Internet. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was initially created by the U.S. government as was the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and ultimately the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which handles Whois lookups and Domain Name Service (DNS) since its founding in 1998.
I’ll point out here that the Internet version of this rag, which you are reading right now, began in April, 1997, before ICANN was even created.
I am so old.
Finally getting to the news, ICANN is having some of its power stripped away by the European Union, which has found that ICANN’s Whois service isn’t compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which is going in effect May 25th, protecting the privacy of EU citizens. This has been coming for two years and ICANN appears to have generally been ignoring GDPR, but the change is coming nevertheless.
I think GDPR is going to be important for the Internet. It is also going to cause a number of interesting problems.
For example, I was looking at a couple of recent court cases involving Google. Both involved people with criminal convictions on their records. One won his legal challenge to get his conviction record removed from Google searches (his right to be forgotten), the other didn’t. How does a company like Google determine which “right to be forgotten” requests should and should not be honored? In these cases, since Google does not provide the source of the conviction data, shouldn’t the request be handled at the source — the government agency that maintains the public record and provides that data? That’s how it will be under GDPR, which Google, Facebook and others say they will honor, but only for EU users.
But what if my VPN says I’m in the EU but I’m really not? What rules cover me then? In the USA that rule would appear to be the recently passed Cloud Act, also called the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act. For the record, I don’t like the Cloud Act, nor do I like the way it was passed. I wonder how long before Orrin (not Warren) Hatch will be joining the board at Google, Microsoft, or Apple?
Given the recent news about Facebook data being misplaced and misused and not very well controlled in any case, GDPR or something like it makes a lot of sense. Frankly, the smartest route might be to simply adopt GDPR globally.
In the meantime ICANN acts as though they still control the Internet, which they very much do not. If half a billion Europeans pull out of Whois are they going to disappear from the Internet? No.
So a tug-of-war continues with that May 25th deadline approaching.
As the Internet has become not just a global network but the global network, the idea that control should remain in American hands is ludicrous — just as ludicrous as the idea that such control becoming truly international says something bad about the United States. We as a nation are not diminished by sharing control of a network used by billions of people worldwide.
the Warren Hatch of Scum Creek, Alaska, who chips ice for a living? or Orrin Hatch, noted Senate committee chairman who brought us unregulated “supplements” and 1/3 more nonsense than legally allowed in most states?
when I voted at a MRNet Tech Committee meeting to open The Connected Internet to commercial use, which is a wisp in a hurricane but I did so, I voted for free and open, owned by The Community.
weasels stole my internet. I want my vote back, and an .edu /24 block.
Thanks Bob finally someone set the record straight what Gore actually said and did.
So the right to be forgotten means that stuff that’s on the public record stays there, but you can’t access it via the Internet, you have to go to the right office in person and fill out the right forms and etc.?
Once you’ve done that, what prevents you from putting it online for others to see?
As far as where control should reside, I don’t even trust the US government, and I’m in a much better position to keep tabs on it than any other governments, so I’m even less enthusiastic about handing control over to them.
Which I know no doubt comes across to those outside this country as an incredibly arrogant attitude (and if I lived and had grown up anywhere else I’d likely share that sentiment), but it’s the one which I find myself holding.
WTH Bob. Can you just tell the people what is going on with the Mineserver? You are a monster, plain and simple.
“at Mineserver LLC and will have a revised design ready to go shortly….Look for a spec update and a new shipping schedule in a couple more weeks, followed shortly by a clever marketing announcement you may enjoy (it’s Fallon’s idea).” – January 2, 2018
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At this point you’re going out of your way to ignore the issue. Everyone wants closure. Check out your Kickstarter site which has people BEGGING for information and all you give us is silence despite promising otherwise…
I’d like to see the Mineserver issue settled so I can stop reading about it every time Bob posts a new article. It keeps coming back like Groundhog Day, over and over and …
Of course, there is one thing that won’t change in the next 30 years. Mineservers still won’t be shipped.
STFU. That is irrelevant to the thread.
Asking the same question over and over gets to be rather monotonous.
FFS, it seems like there are people who were naive to the fact that Kickstarters aren’t guaranteed, and entail a certain amount of risk.
And you know what, there is a time to place to discuss such issues, which isn’t here, it’s on the Kickstarter site.
So as the other poster said, take your beefs there and STFU about it here.
GDPR is also going to make some kinds of research more costly and time consuming.
There is a lot of source code in public repositories, bug reports in bug trackers containing personal details (e.g., a person’s name).
http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2018/04/05/gdpr-has-a-huge-impact-on-empirical-software-engineering-research/
The Senator’s name s ORRIN Hatch, not Warren.
IIRC, under GDPR, if you post something to a forum, website or bug tracker and sign your name to it, thats fine, because by doing so you’ve publicly associated your name with the facts or opinions in the post. Republishing the item is also fine unless forbidden by copyright conditions or if a re-publisher twists the item so it doesn’t reflect the author’s views and without acknowledging that he made the alteration.
What IS forbidden is for a third party to use your name and associated private details without your explicit permission. For instance, I’m not a Facebook User but nonetheless they’ll record what I was looking at every time I access a page that contains a photo linked to their website or a page containing their infamous pixel or ‘like’ button and THAT IS FORBIDDEN under the GDPR because:
(a) I haven’t given them explicit permission to hold data about me
(b) they haven’t asked for my permission to store and use my details.
I do not really understand why whois is always raised. Several countries now allow anonymous entries in their d/b only available under court order.
Doesn’t it need to start with every individual identifying themselves through a digital trust identity? Issued by a bank or government who really identifies the person as real? The problem with GDPR is that I’ll post what I want “mineservers are shipping now” and then deny that it’s my identity. Some hacker stole my account. It’s harder for corporations to hide and I work in digital advertising and every new page will have a “GDPR” prompt when you visit the site. If you don’t want your data collected be prepared to say “no” a LOT (like every page you visit). Well, not for Americans, because we’ve already given away the store.
To be clear I work in eCommerce and have to deal with embedded advertising tags ALL THE TIME…
I think you’re reading it backwards. GDPR works the other way: if a company wants your details it must explicitly tell you exactly what details that want, what they will be used for and who, if anybody, they will be shared with. If you don’t agree that your details can be used how they have described and explicitly allow them to be used that way, the other party cannot store or use them. In terms of web commerce, if you don’t have a login on a company site they are not entitled to hold and use your details at all, cannot stop you updating or removing details and, must delete them if you close your account.
IOW, the GDPR is saying that you own your personal information, that its valuable to you, and therefore nobody else is entitled to it without your permission for them to have it. And, as a consequence, they must take care of your data and, in particular, prevent unauthorised access to it. There are statutory penalties for being careless with your data.
Yes, this does leave people like Experian in an interesting position since historically they haven’t asked data subjects for their details and the banks that supplied them generally didn’t ask either, but since they don’t seem to be very careful with the data they hold, I really don’t care how awkward they find this.
I appreciate the hand wringing complaints about Mineserver here. They remind me that my problems are small, but that some people have real, serious problems in this world. Nevertheless they buck it up and persevere forever and ever. Without end. Endlessly. Like that there.
Most websites are not written or designed for GDPR the way you have described. I think there will be multiple iterations to get there, the first generation will be simple “opt in” or “opt out”. If you opt out, we will not save any information on you and will delete what they have. But every single site will ask you, “can I have your data” and then provide a link to what they want and how long. It will seriously annoy everyone. Maybe the individual indentity profiles will emerge when you get tired of saying “no” and you want an AI system that says no to everything, except the few people whose products or services you really are interested in. It’s like the Buick/GMC phone call I keep getting, same dealership. No I’m not interested in a GM product, no I’m not buying a car right now. I was interested in a used Nissan you had on your lot a month ago, and regret that I ever visited you. No please don’t EVER call me again’
Yes, you’re right that almost no websites are designed that way. Offhand I can’t think of one I use regularly that allows me to delete my login and have the details vanish, but wouldn’t it be nice if they all worked that way.
I think a clear implication of the GDPR is that they should have that facility – either that, or you can e-mail or ring and tell them to delete your login and details – and they MUST do it unless, of course, you still owe them money etc. Indeed, once GDPR comes into force I expect a large flurry of rewrites as all the site-owners that have been ignoring its arrival discover the penalties of not being compliant.
I have no difficulty saying NO to a pushy website just as I have no difficulty in not using FB and, indeed am looking forward to dancing on their grave in due course: I do NOT like their habit of slurping data about non-members.
Like Bob, I will not be surprised if many other countries also introduce privacy regulations based on the GDPR.
What’s not clear to me about GPDR is it’s actual implementation. If say to Google that I wish to be forgotten, that I gave no one permission to use my name on any site, will Google be required to redact just my name, or will they, for the sake of convenience, delete every page where my name appears?
Whether I am using a VPN or not is irrelevant. GDPR applies to European residents, and only to physical persons (in the EU at least, corporations are not people, it seems). Thus an American living in France is protected, including when he is travelling to visit his relatives back home, whereas I (a Frenchman living in the US) am not, including when I travel back to France. Simply using IP geolocation do determine GDPR eligibility does not work, you need more data on an account like home (postal) address.
The aspect you’re asking about applies to search results. A recent court case showed that, when a person with a spent conviction asked Google not to produce results about that. Google refused: the court said it must suppress the search results. At the same time there was another similar case over a more serious conviction: here the court said that the matter was serious enough that Google should NOT suppress these search results. But note that the original documents (court papers, newspaper articles etc. were NOT affected and should not be edited to remove references to J Bloggs – just the search results.
IMO its quite tricky legally: IANAL but it looks as though, if Joe Bloggs has exercised his right to have his criminal past forgotten, then searches for ‘fraud+”Joe Bloggs”‘ should not return anything, while, if J Bloggs was a noted footballer, a search for ‘football+”Joe Bloggs”‘ should return all articles about his football exploits even if they mentioned a fraud case in passing because the enquirer was presumably interested in his whole footballing career rather than any crimes he may have committed.
The Right To Be Forgotten is just a minor part of GDPR even though its attracted a lot of attention. Its main concern is that personal details MUST be accurate, stored securely (which includes not passing them to any country with lower personal data security standards than the EU) and MUST NOT be used for anything that the person did not explicitly agree to or be passed on to any third parties without the person’s explicit agreement. IOW you own your personal details, rather than any organisation that you may have allowed to use them for a specified purpose. An organisation can only use my details if they hold provide valid proof that I said they CAN use my details for that purpose, i.e a Big Social Media Firm cannot pass my details to a political party or Cambridge Analytica unless my privacy settings show that I had previously changed them to specifically allow my details to be used ‘for political purposes’.
And we come back around to a digital identity, and add it to the question with respect to the location of the person. (In Europe va in America).
Martin Gregorie April 22, 2018 at 2:03 am – Reply
“…it looks as though, if Joe Bloggs has exercised his right to have his criminal past forgotten, then searches for ‘fraud+”Joe Bloggs”‘ should not return anything, while, if J Bloggs was a noted footballer, a search for ‘football+”Joe Bloggs” ”
What about searches for “Joe Blogs”? If all the documents are still online and not redacted, they would show up, and each could be separately searched for “fraud” in an off-line search. Also, who decides what keywords are used to cover all “criminal past” activities? Perhaps a list of all synonyms for criminal past, and their misspellings, would have to be used by Joe himself. Misspellings are important, since news outlets, like spammers, could just add a list of misspelled tags at the bottom of their page, making those sites more popular among researchers.
You don’t mention the recent news that FB moved 1.5 billion accounts to US so that they were under US jurisdiction. But it seems relevant here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-eu-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-to-put-1-5-billion-users-out-of-reach-of-new-eu-privacy-law-idUSKBN1HQ00P
I think they’ll find that moving 1.5B accounts belonging to EU residents to US servers buys FB nothing but 1.5B fines. Where the data is stored is irrelevant: where its owner lives is what matters and whether the data owner gave FB permission to move their account details to a location governed by weaker privacy laws.
At least, that’s how I understand the GDPR will work when it comes into effect next month.
I think there are already laws in place which require customer data to be stored “in country” for certain countries.
“FFS, it seems like there are people who were naive to the fact that Kickstarters aren’t guaranteed, and entail a certain amount of risk.”
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Yes, and they are mostly complaining about the people complaining about Crookely. If you didn’t have your head up Crookely’s ass, you’d know that the primary issue is *not* whether or not the Mineservers have been (or ever will be) shipped, it’s that there has been an excessive lack of communication and many broken promises.
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And for the record, I definitely *do* know how Kickstarter works, having backed well over 200 projects and run one of my own.
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“And you know what, there is a time to place to discuss such issues, which isn’t here, it’s on the Kickstarter site.”
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Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you. The problem is, Crookely hasn’t even signed in to Kickstarter in more than six months and the last time he posted anything there was nearly a year and a half ago. So, since that’s not working,folks come here for answers where they get promises of updates “in a couple of weeks” four *months* ago.
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“So as the other poster said, take your beefs there and STFU about it here.”
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Nope, as I said, Crookely’s not there, so we come here. Don’t like it? Ring up Crookely and complain.
“I appreciate the hand wringing complaints about Mineserver here. They remind me that my problems are small, but that some people have real, serious problems in this world. Nevertheless they buck it up and persevere forever and ever. Without end. Endlessly. Like that there.”
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Yes, Kickstarter in general, is best left to the privileged who have plenty of disposable income to throw away on the latest EDC-multi-tool-bottle-opener-wallet-with-wifi each week. And, yes, if we don’t get our precision titanium spinning tops or high-tech hoodie, we’ll still be fine.
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But the fact that we are wealthy privileged pigs doesn’t excuse Crookely’s behaviour.
Roger, thanks for sticking with the dumb hat. That picture makes skipping your posts easier.
Roger, seriously, fuck off.
Cheers
Kaftan fiyatları hakkında en ideal seçim için bizleri tercih ediniz. Yeni adresimiz ile yeni modellerimizi yakından görmek için bizi tercih ediniz.
Eskiler, kınanın eşleri birbirine sevgili yapmak, bir ömür boyu aşklarının devamını sağlamak amacı ile yapıldığını söylerler. Ayrıca kınanın, evlenecek çiftleri nazardan ve kötülüklerden koruyacağına inanılır. Kına, hem gelinin hem de misafirlerin ellerine yakılarak, evliliğin kutlanıp kutsanması amaçlanmaktadır.
https://www.bagdatkaftan.com/
“Roger, thanks for sticking with the dumb hat. That picture makes skipping your posts easier.”
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I’m afraid the hat is long gone IRL. But, unlike Crookely, I listen to folks, supporters and detractors alike. I give you my word that I won’t change it. And, again unlike Crookely, my word is actually worth something.
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Side note to “Rogers Mum” — is your name a reference to me (I’m honored!) or to something/someone else? I’d hate to snicker for the wrong reason.
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@User “And you know what, there is a time to place to discuss such issues, which isn’t here, it’s on the Kickstarter site.”
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Actually, I don’t want to disagree, but Bob has not posted on the Kickstarter site and has been posting about it EXCLUSIVELY here since November 2016 (for those following along at home, that’s almost 1.5 years ago). You can see, if you bothered to navigate to the KS site, that there ARE people posting there, but Bob has yet to respond to ANY of them. And yet, when we post here, we DO get a response, even if just rocks being thrown at us. It’s a sad day when I’ll take getting pelted with blunt objects over solitude and feeling like I don’t have a voice…
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But hey, on the bright side for you, your fearless leader can end all of this in one fell swoop if he stops being self-centered and addresses the situation as he said he would “in a few weeks” about 4 months ago. He’s such a great guy, I see why you hold him in such high regard.
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So to answer your statement: So as the other poster said, take your beefs there and STFU about it here. No.
Don’t be too quick to thank the EU!
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We in Europe have to click to accept cookies on just about every website we visit. It’s just an annoyance, and doesn’t add value to your day.
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Zuckerberg had a nightmare trying to describe the internet to decrepit old duffers, but we in Europe let them make the rules! And some who were just plain stupid.
I hope everybody also remembers that Orrin Hatch wanted to literally blow up people’s computers if they pirated music. Talk about out of touch. https://www.geek.com/news/senator-wants-to-damage-computers-of-pirates-552909/
You’re right, why should people think about their personal information? I can’t imagine anything more boring. On a related note, when are we going to get rid of this whole “election” nonsense that we keep getting pestered with every few years? People are always bothering me to go and vote for someone I don’t even know, and it’s extremely irritating. It would be so much easier if the government just picked their own managers and didn’t bother us with these petty details.
@Adam Luoranen AMEN! On that note, why do we even need government in the first place? I’ve been getting along just fine without them, you all should try it.
Not sure about this asserted right to be forgotten. I do think we have a right to be left alone.
Re: Nemo April 21, 2018 at 7:00 am – Reply “I do not really understand why whois is always raised. Several countries now allow anonymous entries in their d/b only available under court order.”
Bob raised the issue because it’s not compliant with GPDR. If those countries you mentioned require a court order for anonymity, then the default is to publish the info, violating the privacy of the site owner. It sounds to me like GPDR wants a listing in Whois to be opt-in. If I’m right about that, then that’s the only part of GPDR that makes sense to me. Of course, after the database was wiped clean, who would opt in?
RE: Cris E April 23, 2018 at 11:21 am – Reply “Roger, thanks for sticking with the dumb hat. That picture makes skipping your posts easier.”
Roger’s posts are well thought out and very articulate. His logic is correct, with which no one can argue, hence the hat comment.
Hey Bob – do you really need ‘I, Cringely’ in your title (HTML title) TWICE???
Whenever I post your stories on other sites like Hacker-New the title ends up being:
‘I, Cringely – STORY TITLE – I, Cringely’
Yeah pretty obnoxious, no?
Sorry to nitpick…
Re: Rick April 26, 2018 at 1:54 pm – Reply “Sorry to nitpick…”
Speaking of nitpicking, I sure wish Bob would restore the ability to comment on individual posts in a threaded format, as was possible throughout the past 20 years, until recently.
Police in Britain will arrest people over social media posts, and have warned that they are monitoring all posts about Alfie Evans and will take action.
Giving up control of internet means that free speech will be done according to other countries’ wishes.
Speaking of hot air and jurisdictional tug of war UK courts decided that a commitment on a crowdfunding site was a commitment to deliver a product not empty promises no matter how entertaining they were.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/31/crowdfunding_court_case_refund_retro_computers_zx_vega_plus/
A crowdfunding backer of Retro Computers Ltd has won his court claim for a refund against the Brit company for failing to deliver its promised product.
The court, in south England, also ruled that Indiegogo’s terms and conditions were not relevant to the claim.
@MikeN: You’re conflating two things that have nothing to do with each other. UK police have reported that they will respond to threats made on social media because many people have resorted to using threats and intimidation in response to the Alfie Evans case. They’re not censoring the Internet; they’re just saying that they will investigate people making threats, which is something they would do in any case. Besides that, even if they did actually plan to censor the Internet, do you actually suppose that the U.S. (or any other country) could stop them? China has famously been filtering all of their Internet communications nationwide for years, and there isn’t anything that any other country can do to stop it. This article is not about Internet censorship, but rather the regulation of the collection of personal data, which is what GDPR is all about. It’s not about preventing you from voicing your opinion, it’s about preventing data farms from tracking your activity on the Internet.
Re: “We as a nation are not diminished by sharing control of a network used by billions of people worldwide.” I think that depends on the definition of “control”. Suppose all countries “sharing” control have different opinions about what is allowed to be uploaded, put it to a vote, and the majority decide that, as with the DMCA, it should be illegal to upload certain content. For example the DMCA “criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works”. This affects only the USA now, but could be voted in by a majority of countries “sharing” control, so as to affect the entire planet. It could also work the other way, so that disparaging another country’s god or supreme leader would be illegal on the internet.
@Ronc: You make a good point, and I understand why people might be concerned about this, but at the risk of over-simplifying the matter, that is how democracy works after all, isn’t it? Democracy doesn’t mean that you get what you want; it means that everyone gets what the majority wants. We as Americans often still live under the impression that we live in an American world where other countries copy our habits and social and cultural norms. This may be the case if we look at Europe, some parts of East Asia, and maybe a handful of scattered other locations around the globe, but the reality is that most of the world still lives in a different cultural sphere, one which we don’t often see because it’s not globalized enough to be broadcast on our mass media. As the Internet becomes less American and more global, it can’t avoid naturally drifting away from these ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc. that we just take as a given because they are so ingrained in our “Western” culture. We may not like that idea, but globalization can hardly avoid it. The Internet is becoming less a medium of free information exchange and more a tool for marketing and propaganda, and a key reason for this is precisely its own increasingly global nature. The only way to avoid this would be to avoid making the Internet truly global. It is no coincidence that a rise in nationalism in Europe is occuring right now, precisely as a response to this increasing globalization that is causing countries to lose the very values that have sustained and defined their cultures for centuries. We’ve thus created a lose-lose situation: if we try to uphold “Western” values, we become “nationalists” who are too racist and closed-minded to open ourselves up to other countries’ values and cultures, but if we do open ourselves up to the process of globalization, we risk coming under the influence of countries where freedom of speech is an utterly foreign concept. I see no way to undo this problem; the Internet became widespread in the heady years right after “The End of History” marked by the fall of Communism, but today, more than 25 years later, we’re beginning to see that while the relatively small peninsula of Europe might have been ready to unite, the rest of the world isn’t.
I hope everyone remembers precisely which road it is that is paved with good intentions. I understand very little about the intricacies of the Internet and how and why and what makes it work. But I have a nagging feeling that if we invented the damn thing, we ought to be able to protect it from the bad actors out there who use it for their high crimes and misdemeanors. I now expect a grand chorus of comment about how naive I am.
I must be old too. I was on “the internet” in the military. I got out about a year after Mosiac was invented (barely saw it). Then I created my own web site in… Aug 1997. Still have it. I recall starting to read this “rag” well before Y2K. I was a programmer at a large insurance company and remember being inline with Bob’s writings that it was way over blown. Though my company did require that EVERY I.T. Team had 2 people in the office at midnight 1999. I remember my wife dropping me off at work at 11:45 and getting a ride home from a coworker around 3 am when the “power’s that be” finally agreed with us our system was working properly. We built it in 1996, so I never had an ounce of doubt. Keep going “old man” and I will keep reading.
“. . . we ought to be able to protect it from the bad actors out there who use it for their high crimes and misdemeanors.”
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Yeah, you’d think that… and yet, Crookely is still here. Go figure.
GDPR is an impossibility with a de-centralized Internet as it was designed. It only works in a system with centralized control of information. Europe tries to pretend that the Internet is a centralized system, just like everything else there with authoritarian, top-down, don’t question-your-boss cultural attitudes and government functions.
Reality is that European entities (companies and individuals) will need to spend a lot of time in court to try to enforce GDPR outside the European borders – outside their Jurisdiction. That make work on large entities like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc..but it won’t work for entities with no presence in Europe – even if Europeans somehow use their sites.
Honestly, the easiest way for folks to implement GDPR is to put in a requirement that basically says “I am not a European or I waive all rights under GDPR” because compliance is not really feasible.
Adam, you say nothing to worry about, then you say yea you have a point but that’s how democracy works. That’s why we object to handing over Internet to global groups. Problem solved.
@MikeN: I don’t think I said that there is nothing to worry about; I just said, in reference to your comment on the Alfie Evans case, that UK police watching for violent or threatening comments on the Internet is not really a cause for concern. Law enforcement has existed since before recorded history, and anyone making threats against someone else has always been something which authorities would be inclined to investigate. The problem as I see it is the much bigger process of individual nations, organizations, and people losing the ability to remain in control of their own lives as the entire system becomes too global for anyone to retain a sense of self-identity. I don’t think we can really refuse the idea of the Internet becoming global, though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of globalization either, but the U.S. (or any other country) doesn’t really have the right to say “We want to retain unilateral control of the Internet and we won’t allow anyone else to have a hand in designing or steering it”, because while the Internet may have been originally designed mostly by American agencies, it only really became widely used by civilians following the development of the “world wide web”: the Internet as we non-researchers know it has always been designed as a global system. I would love to see a resurgence of local BBS systems where people within a single telephone area code posted messages together in an environment isolated from the outside world, because they were great for fostering local communities, but I think most people would agree that we’re never going to go back to such a model, because for the people who actually hold the political and economic power, global is the way to go.
Adam, Alfie Evans was just one example. The Brits are policing social media and going after people for posting opinions they don’t like. ‘Hate speech’ is a common term.
@MikeN: It’s true that “hate speech” is something that is kind of in the spotlight right now, but as far as I know, no one is getting arrested because they posted hate speech on Facebook; what usually happens to those people is that their posts get removed or their accounts get closed. How someone feels about this is really based on their personal perspectives: some people like it, some people hate it, but I think more relevant to this discussion, it’s happening in the U.S. too. Facebook is an American company, and American users are having their posts censored or removed for posting “hate speech”, so even if the Internet were still a unilaterally American game, I don’t think that would have prevented these things from happening. It’s true that the U.S. still has the First Amendment, but that doesn’t mean that a website is forced to act as a host for your opinions. Facebook and Twitter have long been censoring or removing content which is seen as objectionable, and I don’t think you’d win a court case about it, because while you do have the right to say whatever you want, there is no law requiring Facebook or Twitter to host your opinions.
@Adam — The first amendment really only applies to the government and to attempts to completely stifle someone’s speech. You are entirely right that, while Facebook,et al, cannot (and should not) prevent anyone from saying whatever they want, they are definitely NOT required to host it.
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Similarly, I wouldn’t have to let someone post on my website about how they were going to make an announcement about shipping Mineservers if I didn’t think it appropriate or if I didn’t believe them one iota. Of course, on their own website, they can post whatever lies they like.
@Adam We’re aware of the fact that a web site’s owner does, and ought to have control, over his own website, including the power of censorship. The free market will decide who choses to participate. What we don’t want is any government telling the website owner what to do, especially if that government is far removed from the site’s target audience. The US already has justifiable limitations on free speech, like child pornography, the fire-in-crowded-theatre thing, or even the dmca, so we don’t need other countries imposing their will on us. When it comes to the latter, we also have treaties, to make sure it’s a fair give-and-take arrangement.
@Roger: At this point, I am pretty sure that you’re maintaining the Mineserver theme as a running gag because it’s gone way beyond complaint territory and into the realm of pure satire. I don’t think we’ve interacted on these forums before, so let me just take the opportunity to say thanks for bringing a lighter side to these discussions. You seem to have a lot of enemies here (or at least, people whom you’ve annoyed), but I do take great amusement in the way you manage to turn any discussion into that one topic. You would make a good politician, sir.
@Ronc: Generally speaking, I agree with what you say, but for the sake of argument, let me make two counter-points. First of all, I notice that you declare that “The free market will decide who choses to participate.” This is indeed the prevailing mentality in a “capitalist” nation: the government is a bunch of incompetents who would do best to minimize how much they meddle in our lives, and businesspeople are the brilliant leaders of the free world who show everyone else how it’s done. Does this not simply replace one authority with another? Are businesspeople any more qualified than people who have studied law and politics to regulate our lives? We’ve become a nation where people like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Satya Nadella usurp the roles of president, vice-president, secretary of state, and so on. Is this really any better? Are we really better off allowing these people to have control of our private information and letting them decide how we live? The second point I’d like to make is that while we are very quick to assume that we’re doing everything correctly (this is human nature: human beings have a natural tendency to automatically assume that whatever side they’re on must be “the right side”), I wouldn’t want to assume that everything the U.S. (or any other country) does is correct. Consider, as an example, the recently-signed “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017.” On the one hand, you might say that a bill which aims to fight sex trafficking and child pornography is a good thing; many people have criticized the bill, however, as really being about censorship in the guise of anti-child-porn laws. It’s very easy for anyone to say “This is about X,” where X is some common cause that nearly anyone would readily support, and gain mass support that way. Don’t assume that our only problems are foreign governments (though that is obviously a problem as well); many nations fall not because of foreign enemies, but because of subversive elements within. The Soviet Union was a good example: despite decades of the Cold War, the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed not because of foreign conflicts, but because of its own internal lack of cohesion. The United States is on the same course. In the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, we saw how very quickly things can fall apart. Things seem to be a little better right now, but many economists say another such crash is inevitable and are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I agree with you entirely that we don’t need foreign agents imposing their will on us, but we shouldn’t assume that if we avoid this outcome, that means that we’re “safe.”
Re: “Does this not simply replace one authority with another?” Not really since it’s about motivation. Businesses do not have the authority or power to print money, nor to force people to give them money under threat of imprisonment. Businesses must entice people with desired services and products, to survive. Governments just raise taxes or print money. The more politicians promise, to get themselves elected, the more it costs all of us to pay for their promises. Unlike government, businesses have no authority.
Roger, e-mail me at novickbauer at yahoo.
Adam, UK is arresting/investigating people over Facebook postings.
UK, Germany, and others are dictating to Facebook and other social media giants censorship policies they must implement.
Now consider with the Internet handed over, these policies would apply even more widely. You get your website deregistered based on objections of certain governments, like what Erdogan is doing to people who mock him.
@Ronc: We’re getting sidetracked from the discussion about GDPR into a much broader and more fundamental discussion about the role of government. I feel like here is not the best place for such a discussion, but since this post from Bob is already a couple of weeks old and the people who are going to comment on it have already commented by now, I hope I’m not being amiss by continuing the discussion. In any case, I hope that this doesn’t come across as insulting, but your assessment of the role of business in our lives comes off as a bit naive; I almost wonder if you’re playing devil’s advocate with your arguments. Do you really think that the businesses which survive are the ones which offer the best products to consumers at the best price? Do you really think, to take a prominent and obvious example, that Microsoft is the world’s largest software company because they produce the best software and provide the features that users really want? The products which you buy every day are produced by businesses. Businesses decide what you can buy: if they don’t feel like manufacturing or stocking a product, then they won’t, which means you won’t be able to buy it. Businesses only sell the products which make them the most profit, and if a product is not profitable enough for a business, they will cease production of that item, regardless of how desired it may be by consumers. Whatever happens with your personal information that you put into websites like Facebook, Twitter, et al. is determined by those companies. The government doesn’t decide what Facebook does with your private information; Facebook alone decides that. If you really trust a corporation that is motivated only by profit to do the right thing with your private information, then I’m afraid I don’t share your trust in the motivations of those businesses.
@MikeN: Countries have laws, and those laws are legally binding. Countries do have the right to set their own laws, which is part of the definition of being a sovereign country. As a well-known example, Nazi propaganda is illegal in Germany, so Facebook posts which display swastikas or images of Hitler are illegal in Germany, but not in other countries. The German government can’t tell Facebook what to allow in the U.S. or any other country, but the German government can decide what is allowed in Germany. The same is true of any other country. I’m not really understanding what the problem is; why would a country not set laws that are valid within its own borders? It sounds like you’re worried that foreign countries will be able to control what Facebook does worldwide, but that is not the case and has never been the case. GDPR is a European law; companies that operate in Europe will need to comply with GDPR regulations within Europe, but outside of Europe, GDPR does not apply and companies will not have to comply with GDPR outside of Europe. GDPR is a law which was set by governments, because governments are the entities that set laws. That has nothing to do with the Internet; that’s just a country being a country, which is what all countries do.
Adam, I haven’t followed the details of GDPR. My issue was with handing over of domain registrations to a global body. Having global control of Internet will inevitably produce governments controlling what happens outside their jurisdictions as well.
@MikeN: This is indeed closer to the original idea that I had in mind when I thought about giving up control of the Internet to international bodies: not anything to do with laws specifically (that is the realm of politics and governments, and always has been), but rather about where Internet sites are hosted and where the infrastructure operates. Right now, most of the important Internet servers (including most of the DNS root servers), routers (including most of the world’s major peering points), and organizations (including the once-all-important ICANN, particularly IANA) are in the United States or other similarly “Western” countries. If this infrastructure starts becoming global, then the U.S. will really have lost control of the Internet. But this is not a political problem and has nothing to do with GDPR or any other laws; it’s just physical infrastructure, which, at the end of the day, is all the Internet really is. And yes, that is a cause for concern, but again, going back to my original point, I don’t see that we can really prevent it from happening as the Internet becomes more global. So again, either we prevent the Internet from going truly global, or we lose control of it.
GDPR may actually save the Internet – right now, under American regulation, it’s a cesspit of false news on all sides however the validity or otherwise of “news” is not the issue – it’s that there are probably a thousand entities out there that think they “own” my personal information because I once posted something or visited a web site – even if it was just a fat fingered mouse click.
GDPR is good – it’s not perfect but it’s a huge improvement.
Global free speech online in action!
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/police-threaten-to-ban-and-arrest-people-mocking-tiny-cannabis-bust-in-yorkshire-1-9160985
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Just an update on the EU’s Great Firewall of Brussels. a.k.a GDPR. Due to GDPR you can longer read large numbers of US newspapers in Europe. Small papers, like, you know, the LA Times. Due to GDPR you can no longer check out locations or production for a large number of US supermarkets. Tried to do that for a friend on tour who is musician. And on and on and on. The only reason why a very large number of non-EU web sites have not gone dead so far to EU residents is because almost all of them are ignoring the law. So far.
The driving force behind GDPR, the new EU copyright laws, the German/EU “anti-hate” laws, is the German governments and to a lesser extent French governments very long tradition of authoritarian control of the media. And the total symbiotic relationship between the national media and the governments of these countries.. If the media are completely supplicate to the government wishes they get lots of huge direct and indirect subsides.
In the real world GDPR give individuals less that zero rights. By design. You’ll never bring a successful complaint. But these laws gives the EU enormous leverage in trying to enforce its wishes on anyone, anywhere, on the web. Its current wishes include complete and comprehensive censorship rights over anything and everything published on the web that might be read by an EU citizen. All EU countries have a very long history of government censorship and media control and none have any serious trad-ion of free speech in the US tradition. Even the UK lost its right to effective free speech about fifty years ago.
So if you write a comment in English on a US hosted blog that maybe mass migration to Europe of magrebians might not be such a good idea according to current EU law you have just committed a “hate crime” felony. Because according to the German Minister of Justice any such opinions are a “hate crime” and the German view has recently been elevated to an EU directive. And the EU claims jurisdiction over any and all web published mater that might be viewed by an EU citizen.
Remember, these people have form. The sort of people who write those smooth and smarmy pieces saying “trust us, trust the EU apparat, we have your best interest at heart” in outlets like Der Spiegel and Le Monde are exactly the same type of people who were the higher level functionaries in the NSDAP and Vichy.
These people are not your friends.
JMC – I agree with you here. Just went to visit a US music website to read reviews on a microphone and was unable to as the site is worried about non compliance with the big brother of GDPR (which has already seen loads of companies and people lose subscribers and customers). This is actually reducing my choice about which sites to visit (music shop websites – hardly ‘dangerous’ except spending my money!) which is actually the reverse of the ridiculous GDPR. So you’re forced to search a specific page and then read the cached version for any page – or use a proxy.