We Should Be More Worried About Our ISPs Than Google When It Comes To Abuse
from the pay-attention dept
With the government gearing up to potentially go after Google for antitrust violations, we're seeing all sorts of press coverage of stories about how Google may be abusing its position, from supposedly hurting companies to potentially having too much insight into your web surfing activities. And, no one's gloating over this turn of events more than some of the broadband providers, who often find themselves at odds with Google over issues such as net neutrality, patent reform and other issues. Yet, as some new research is suggesting, it's odd that there's so much of a spotlight focused on Google, when those same ISPs are a much bigger privacy threat. They have a lot more visibility into our online activities, a lot more control over what users do, and (unlike Google) it's a lot more difficult to route around them. Plus, many have shown that they have no problems selling your private data -- sometimes without letting you know. So, why is all the attention focused on Google? If it's abusing our privacy, then it's easy to switch to a competitor. Broadband ISPs, on the other hand, have a lot more control and visibility -- and a much tighter grip on customers, usually with fewer competitive options. Yet, the government rolls over backwards to let these ISPs do what they want, while it prepares an antitrust lawsuit against Google?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: abuse, antitrust, isps, privacy
Companies: google
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It's called corruption
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An interesting note to add...
First of all, the Dutch justice system has examined the possibility to have certain sites blocked by the ISPs. (Sites containing childporn, btw.) They started pushing those ISPs here into taking appropiate actions already while Justice would find any legal means to force these ISPs to block those sites.
Unfortunately, research showed that Dutch Law doesn't allow Justice to dictate those ISPs which sites need to be blocked. Thus, agreements between justice and several ISPs about this censorship had no legal grounds and would be unconstitutional.
So, now the ISPs have decided to take matters in their own hands. They will still continue to block certain sites but an independant organisation will be maintaining the blacklist of sites that need to be blocked.
But who will be keeping an eye on this "independant" organisation? What if they block more than just childporn sites? What if they block certain political sites? Or some other, innocent sites? It's a step in the direction of the Chinese Firewall and to be honest, it doesn't solve any problems. It just covers them up...
And that's the power that ISPs have. They sooner or later will dictate which sites we can visit... And they're watching every step we take online...
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Google is marxists
VOTE McCain 2008 - the politics of failure have failed, together we can make them work again!
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Like the old guy said its a matter of power and money. Google is a threat to the old power and money of the ISPs therefore they need their lackeys (that would be the governent) to do their dirty work for them.
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Goggle is not the problem the ISP's and the Govt are the problem
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Re: Google is marxists
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Politics, of course.
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Re: Re: Google is marxists
Google hates our freedoms and you should support an administration that is trying to do something about it. Terrorists are using Google to find stuff and chat or whatever! If we dont stop Google, AlQuida wins!
VOTE McCain 2008 - the politics of failure have failed, together we can make them work again!
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Re: Google is marxists
I see what you did there. :)
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im so sick of isps
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Government not all that concerned about Privacy
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No way dude.
Jiff
www.datools.net.tc
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Re: Google is marxists
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Re: im so sick of isps
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so what is the dutch site. Ik kan Nederlands verstaan.
BTW google translates, or altavista.yahoo.com translates.
Glad to bring you up to date on the tools.
Trust us with the info.
But anyway I can google it. :)
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Re: Google is marxists
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Competition between ISPs ?
They (ISP) claim that there is competition in the market place, but we all know that is not the case.
Most if not all of the instances where a once regulated entitiy was deregulated has caused problems ranging from minor to major. Allowing the various ISPs to do what ever they want is not a good idea.
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Funny...
The link I posted was http://www.nu.nl/news/1745563/52/Providers_blokkeren_samen_kinderporno.html which is an initiative by Dutch ISP's to block child porn sites. Basically, the Dutch justice system started the whole thing just to discover that it would be illegal for the Dutch state to keep a list of banned sites. (Something related to freedom of speech or whatever.)
But local ISP's have already started to block several sites and they just want to continue this so they're going to create a separate organisation that will be responsible for maintaining a blacklist of sites. So in a way, our justice system did get this whole bad idea started.
And why is it a bad idea? First of all, censorship doesn't work that well. The Great Firewall of China isn't that effective either since those who want to bypass it, know how to do so. Furthermore, how do we know that this blacklist only contains child porn sites? They could also misuse the same blacklist to block certain political sites or informational sites.
Google translated link: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.nu.nl/news/1745563/52/Providers_blokkeren_samen_k inderporno.html&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=nl&tl=en
Then again, it's bad when justice tries to enforce censorship on ISP's. It's worse when those same ISP's just decide to work together and come up with their own censorship.
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