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I found this article really frustrating. The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? These services are so

I found this article really frustrating. The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? Should we knock Netflix because it makes it harder for French social engineers to impose their preferences on their own citizens? Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason.

vox_mollis 10y ago
The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? We still, to this day, don't know the extent to which PRISM and BULLRUN participation was forced, voluntary, or completely opaque. We have Marissa Meyer claiming USG threatened charges of treason, and we have Google denying involvement full-stop. I doubt if we'll ever know.
- bduerst 10y ago
  We do have an idea though. Industry experts have said they think that PRISM was a dark fiber hack between data centers (even the name implies it). Most tech companies have closed the exploit by encrypting data over dark fiber.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    You're thinking of MUSCULAR. MUSCULAR was a fiber hack between data centers. (Not really dark; if it was "dark" fiber the lines wouldn't be carrying any data.) That's the one tech companies are really pissed off about, which got them to start encrypting data between DCs. PRISM is FISA. It's the NSA codename for data collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. That's why the tech companies had no idea what the press was talking about. When the NSA goes to execute PRISM, they have a lawyer contact the appropriate tech company and say "We have a lawfully-obtained warrant for search terms X, Y, and Z under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, please hand over your logs for those terms", and because it's all done legally, the tech companies have to comply. Once the data is handed over, there is apparently a whole storage & search mechanism within the NSA for handling that data, and that is what PRISM refers to. BULLRUN is the NSA decryption effort, and it involves them systematically inserting backdoors into various encryption algorithms. It operates at a lower level than what most people think of as "American tech"; if there were companies involved, it'd be Cisco and Juniper, although all the evidence I've seen so far indicates that the NSA managed to hide flaws in the algorithms in plain sight, even as they underwent public review.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Thanks - you're right. I was mixing PRISM with MUSCULAR. Wasn't PRISM still limited to data around high-interest individuals? (i.e. not a blank check to all data) Was BULLRUN what ATT room 641a was involved with?
      - nostrademons 10y ago
        Uncertain; that was my initial understanding as well, but the Wikipedia article on PRISM indicates that certain search terms are fair game as well. Also uncertain about the relationship between BULLRUN and AT&T room 641A. My understanding is that BULLRUN is different, focusing on influencing encryption standards so that the government could break them, but I'm not sure.
        sievebrain 10y ago
        BULLRUN appears to be an umbrella term for all efforts to crack encryption directly, not just efforts to influence standards. For instance their VPN cracking systems probably fall under BULLRUN. I think it was never entirely clear what PRISM is: the only slides that covered it were vague and were directly contradicted by the testimony of the relevant CEOs.
        nostrademons 10y ago
        It's pretty clear from a couple of the slides: https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/PRISM-tasking%20process.jpg https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/PRISM-tasking%20proce... https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/prism-conclusion.jpg https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/prism-conclusion.jpg Note the presence of FAA Adjudicators and FISA Oversight & Processing in the collection pipeline in the first slide, and the direct reference to "FAA 702 collection = PRISM program providers" in the last. The director of national intelligence also confirmed it in response to the leaks: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-under-section-702-of-fisa https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-pr...
verroq 10y ago
How is it not problematic when American tech form an oligopoly on internet services? Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government.
- DominikR 10y ago
  > How is it not problematic when American tech form an oligopoly on internet services? They are the best so they won. I have no problem with that and I don't think anyone should have as long as there's no abuse of power. > Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government. This is what I have a problem with.
  - marxidad 10y ago
    They didn't win because they are the best, unless you mean they are the best at winning for arbitrary reasons, like random market forces.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      It doesn't look random to me when the biggest IT companies all originate from a small area in or near San Francisco. The US government spent a massive amount of money over decades in infrastructure and in government contracts which in combination with the right legal framework (and capitalism) created this dominance.
      - scholia 10y ago
        Right, because it's not a level playing field. I could start a company in a small European country for €X but tackling the US market would cost me 10 times that, which I haven't got and can't raise. However, the comparable US company can invade my market not by raising 10x more money but by raising 10% more. Even if you're successful, like Spotify, a big American company can start up years later with an inferior product, like Apple, and probably put you out of business. Spotify money is, by Apple's standards, chump change. And if the American company can't knock you out, then it can just buy you. America's home market size and the availability of capital make it very hard to compete, even if you have the talent. And the fact that SV imports almost all the best overseas talent as well as having its own tremendous talents makes things even harder. It's easier with virtual goods than with physical goods, but look at social networking websites for an illustration of the same problem. Sure, you can be the biggest in France or Germany or Italy or whatever, but Facebook just knocked out all the local successes except Russia and China. The only way to play it is to open a small US office and pretend to be American, so you can get US capital and US media promotion. But if you succeeded that way, just how French (or German, or Italian) would you be in the end?
di4na 10y ago
Let's look at it the other way. Launching a movie cost a ton of money. So to keep a diverse culture ( we all agreee diversity is great isn't it?) and diverse way to think, you need to help less mainstream way to think. You spend years elaborating complex way to let mainstream exists and makes money, without disturbing it too much, but still keep a working amount of culture disruptor and new ideas growing. And you even create way for the mainstream to do that, enabling cross pollination. Then suddenly, a group that know nothing about your rules and believe that "all rules are bad anyway" come and control the main way to consume mainstream culture, rendering all your organisation void, cutting the money and support for the smallest groups. Woops, you have to rebuild everything. Except that this time around, you have no grasp on that "mainstream" to get cooperation and build a working ecosystem. The "market" is well and all. But an ecosystem need rulers and law enforcement. Too much rules is not good and i may agree that France and Europe was a bit too much (is a bit too much) coercive right now. But there is probably a middle ground that can be found. Well now, i still believe lawmakers and rulers are decade behind the need of today technology. But it is not just "regulating consumption". It is also about future and keeping an healthy pool of new and fresh ideas.
- strictnein 10y ago
  > "rendering all your organisation void, cutting the money and support for the smallest groups." How does Netflix not offering enough French TV shows do that? Did the government just stop giving them money once Netflix showed up? Also, encouraging Netflix to take on more local content is one thing. I'm sure they'd love to. Forcing them to fund the creation of local content is another thing completely. These governments are looking to require that a foreign company fund domestic businesses to be able to access their markets. Seems like something that would run afoul of the WTO, or similar body.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > These governments are looking to require that a foreign company fund domestic businesses to be able to access their markets So, like the All-American clause for almost all US govt. contracts? Or the US punishment for VW, requiring them to produce specific cars in the US? > Did the government just stop giving them money once Netflix showed up? Where is the government supposed to get the money from, once they can’t make money with TV anymore?
DominikR 10y ago
> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? It's not so important who is to blame from a moral perspective, it's still a serious issue. > These services are so useful and well-liked ... Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. Some do but mostly you are correct. French authorities in particular are very backwards and Socialist.
kelukelugames 10y ago
Didn't Osama bin Laden write a declaration about culture invasion from the West?
- DominikR 10y ago
  Invasion implies use of force and against the will of someone. Nobody forces you to use Google services, eat hamburgers or listen to US music.
  - soundwave106 10y ago
    Downvotes for this? I personally think that many who use the "cultural invasion" angle fail to realize that it often ends up being a two way street. In the US, not many people make a big deal when, say, a French film wins a US Academy Award (example: The Artist) or a French artist tops the US pop charts (example: Daft Punk). It's a global world, after all. Perhaps there is some scope for protecting the uniqueness of individual cultures that might get lost in the global shuffle. But a lot of people happily stand up for this cause on their own, without any sort of political angle. Now, the NSA snooping angle with American tech emphasized in the article, that's another story -- I see this as a legitimate concern for any foreign firm. America's spy agencies probably underestimate how much they've hurt American companies in this global world.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      I as a citizen of a EU country (Austria) also share the same concerns regarding NSA and invasion of privacy by the US government and I'm highly critical of the wars started/instigated by the US in the last 20 years. But I have no problem with being fair even if I'm the loser in the end. Google is in it's space better than anyone else by far (in the Western hemisphere), same goes for many if not most other tech companies. I cringe when thinking about using a German or French search engine and having no other option because the EU commission has imposed a ban on all foreign competition. Sadly we are moving in this direction. The solution I believe is to change our legal framework to reduce the risks, bureaucracy and costs (taxes) for founders of startups. Currently in many EU countries a failed business means for a founder that he'll lose everything he owns. And if the founder has some kind of success he'll be tortured by bureaucracy and insane taxes/regulations. (50% just for income tax, in France there was even a 75% tax for a few years) For example if you employ a handicapped person in Austria you almost have no way of ever firing that person. You have to request this from a government commission but they rarely allow this. Or you hire a woman that gets pregnant. She gets paid leave for up to 2 or 3 years (the government pays for that, but in the end we pay higher taxes for this) and when she gets back she has the right to be employed by you for 5 years in the same or an equivalent job without any way to fire her. I get that these laws have been created because employees were abused but this is too much. Edit: When I talk about firing persons I mean of course bad players that don't do their job well or worse, cause damage to the company. I don't care about a persons background, race or sex as long as the job is done well.
dougmany 10y ago
>These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? Just because something is well liked, does not mean it is beneficial to society overall. Junk food and facebook come too mind. I love Netflix but part of me feels my life would be better without it too.
- criley2 10y ago
  Facebook is beneficial to society, it has dramatically changed how people organize and communicate. You can always tell the difference between facebook users and non facebook users now. The non-facebook users don't hang out as much and don't show up to group events as much. "Why wasn't I invited?" "I hit everyone in the FB invites" "Oh I don't have facebook" "You're not using the tool our entire social group uses to organize our social experience-- there's your answer"
  - hellbanner 10y ago
    Have you considered the "non-facebook users" coordinate offline, in-person and can use other technologies like SMS, email, phone calls, IM, chat apps, running into friends at the store, visiting a friend's workplace and "passing the word along" telling friend A who tells friend B?
    - DominikR 10y ago
      Your examples aside from chat apps are quite unrealistic. I don't even know when was the last time I invited someone to an event using any of the listed methods, it must have been years. But even if running into friends at the store was a thing, it doesn't mean that Facebook is not used by a billion people for organising social events and is therefore beneficial to them.
      - arcticfox 10y ago
        Wild, I just got invited to join a group for coffee over SMS. And before that, to meet with a technical group on MeetUp. And before that to meet up with my friends on GroupMe.
zer00eyz 10y ago
>The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? The US government is to blame here, the companies are penalized for our governments belligerent behavior. The alternatives (war, sanctions) are much less appealing or viable. >These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? In the case of physical goods, this has been happening for YEARS, and in both directions, in the form of import/export tariffs. For years, the tariff on corn going into mexico from the US kept local corn farmers in business, with NAFTA this was no longer in place, and a LOT Of them went out of business. > Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/wireds-100-hottest-european-startups-2015 http://www.wired.co.uk/article/wireds-100-hottest-european-s... Europe has a thriving start up scene, and quite a few major tech players (SAP springs to mind as the largest). Not to mention interesting efforts like Raspberry pi and Arduino.
yuzi 10y ago
> ... so US companies are to blame? Blame is irrelevant. These countries are choosing to backlash against a product problem. > ... they should be considered a threat? Yes. Unless, in the long term, they want to become level-B American citizens. Believe me I know - I'm Canadian and we are close. > Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. New tailored products will grow and gain success when the old behemoth products are gone.
Bartweiss 10y ago
> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? In a case like this, "to blame" is somewhat irrelevant. No matter how unwilling the companies are, US spying is a reason to regulate or avoid them. This isn't a moral judgement (though the article does offer one), but when you can't trust the security of US-produced hardware and software that's a reason to act against US-headquartered companies regardless.
guelo 10y ago
> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? They don't have to defend it to you. You have American values, they have French values. The whole point is that they don't want Americans coming in and imposing their values over theirs.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
  But... no one's imposing. The people of France are choosing to consume cultural artifacts provided by netflix, et. al. The French bureaucracy is basically telling the people that "no, we know better than you what you want." Which is absurd.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  American values tend to actually be genuinely shared by Americans and thus do not need to be enforced by the government. The USG does not force its TV stations to play specific content in order to promote American values, they arise spontaneously from the culture. When it comes to pop culture, "French values" are something the French government wishes were actual shared values, but which aren't, hence the need for subsidies and laws mandating that local content which supposedly embodies these values are played. It's a simple propagandistic switcharoo: a few lawmakers claim "French values" must be protected, but who asked the French themselves? Well, in a sense the market did, and the French weren't interested. The flip side of this is that there are definitely non-media related French values that really do arise from the people, like socialist values and the value of striking.
pjc50 10y ago
The article starts by asking you to view things from another perspective. It's not asking you to "knock" Netflix, it's inviting you to consider the point of view of people who do. American media is subtly hegemonising. All media carries with it the culture of those who produce it, but US media also carries a very strong assumption of "defaultness": that everyone is a (mostly white) American at heart. What effect does this have on the viewer, especially on kids who grow up with a diet American cartoons and action movies? The normalisation of American values in the use of violence to deal with threats and crime. Kids learning US (view of) history instead of their own local history. People learning American alongside their own language, while Americans (and Brits) don't learn another language: that makes the cultural exchange more one-way. Americans don't have to worry about French culture seeping in and erasing American cultural values, notwithstanding the occasional panic about "freedom fries". If you're not American, you run the risk of becoming an underrepresented minority even in your own country. The problem is even worse for local ethno-linguistic minorities such as Gaelic and Welsh in the UK. Ironically France is only as homogenous as it is due to centuries of centralisation and standardisation deliberately driving out regional linguistic variation. The popular HN view is probably going to be that minority languages can and should "fail in the market" and die out, leaving only English. Like endangered species. But with every language dies a culture and a literature.
- verroq 10y ago
  The irony is that for there to be diversity there must be protectionist policies and xenophobia to preserve it.
  - ComodoHacker 10y ago
    Policies maybe, but not necessarily xenophobia. Xenophobia starts where multiculturalism fails. IMHO European multiculturalism has failed not in its idea, but in its implementation.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Xenophobia starts where multiculturalism fails. IMHO European multiculturalism has failed not in its idea, but in its implementation. Then implementation of multiculturalism is always in a state of partial failure. I guess it always has "bugs?" Intolerance always seems to seep in, even from the most vocal proponents of tolerance. In fact, there seems to be a correlation between how stridently one advocates tolerance and how much intolerance seeps in with it.
tomc1985 10y ago
That's only like 10% of the issue. Many of these tech firms are so big that many countries perceive a threat to their sovereignty. SV acts with such impunity that pushback should be no surprise.
exomancer 10y ago
> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? By the virtue of those bureaucrats being democratically elected officials responsible to implement the will of said Frenchmen. Not to say that the situation is perfect, but while there are many things wrong with Europe, but the democracy does work better than it does in the States.
deleted 10y ago
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calibraxis 10y ago
Corporations and state are interlinked. For all intents and purposes, there's no clear boundary between them. (Especially since corporations are creations of the state, and heavily influence state policy.) I agree the French government example seems weak. Maybe due to not being able to use truly cutting arguments in the US's agenda-setting newspaper.
tacone 10y ago
> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? It's not the government, it's the establishment.

vox_mollis 10y ago

The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? We still, to this day, don't know the extent to which PRISM and BULLRUN participation was forced, voluntary, or completely opaque. We have Marissa Meyer claiming USG threatened charges of treason, and we have Google denying involvement full-stop. I doubt if we'll ever know.

bduerst 10y ago
We do have an idea though. Industry experts have said they think that PRISM was a dark fiber hack between data centers (even the name implies it). Most tech companies have closed the exploit by encrypting data over dark fiber.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  You're thinking of MUSCULAR. MUSCULAR was a fiber hack between data centers. (Not really dark; if it was "dark" fiber the lines wouldn't be carrying any data.) That's the one tech companies are really pissed off about, which got them to start encrypting data between DCs. PRISM is FISA. It's the NSA codename for data collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. That's why the tech companies had no idea what the press was talking about. When the NSA goes to execute PRISM, they have a lawyer contact the appropriate tech company and say "We have a lawfully-obtained warrant for search terms X, Y, and Z under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, please hand over your logs for those terms", and because it's all done legally, the tech companies have to comply. Once the data is handed over, there is apparently a whole storage & search mechanism within the NSA for handling that data, and that is what PRISM refers to. BULLRUN is the NSA decryption effort, and it involves them systematically inserting backdoors into various encryption algorithms. It operates at a lower level than what most people think of as "American tech"; if there were companies involved, it'd be Cisco and Juniper, although all the evidence I've seen so far indicates that the NSA managed to hide flaws in the algorithms in plain sight, even as they underwent public review.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Thanks - you're right. I was mixing PRISM with MUSCULAR. Wasn't PRISM still limited to data around high-interest individuals? (i.e. not a blank check to all data) Was BULLRUN what ATT room 641a was involved with?
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      Uncertain; that was my initial understanding as well, but the Wikipedia article on PRISM indicates that certain search terms are fair game as well. Also uncertain about the relationship between BULLRUN and AT&T room 641A. My understanding is that BULLRUN is different, focusing on influencing encryption standards so that the government could break them, but I'm not sure.
      - sievebrain 10y ago
        BULLRUN appears to be an umbrella term for all efforts to crack encryption directly, not just efforts to influence standards. For instance their VPN cracking systems probably fall under BULLRUN. I think it was never entirely clear what PRISM is: the only slides that covered it were vague and were directly contradicted by the testimony of the relevant CEOs.
        nostrademons 10y ago
        It's pretty clear from a couple of the slides: https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/PRISM-tasking%20process.jpg https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/PRISM-tasking%20proce... https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/prism-conclusion.jpg https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/prism-slides/prism-conclusion.jpg Note the presence of FAA Adjudicators and FISA Oversight & Processing in the collection pipeline in the first slide, and the direct reference to "FAA 702 collection = PRISM program providers" in the last. The director of national intelligence also confirmed it in response to the leaks: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-under-section-702-of-fisa https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-pr...

verroq 10y ago

How is it not problematic when American tech form an oligopoly on internet services? Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government.

DominikR 10y ago
> How is it not problematic when American tech form an oligopoly on internet services? They are the best so they won. I have no problem with that and I don't think anyone should have as long as there's no abuse of power. > Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government. This is what I have a problem with.
- marxidad 10y ago
  They didn't win because they are the best, unless you mean they are the best at winning for arbitrary reasons, like random market forces.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    It doesn't look random to me when the biggest IT companies all originate from a small area in or near San Francisco. The US government spent a massive amount of money over decades in infrastructure and in government contracts which in combination with the right legal framework (and capitalism) created this dominance.
    - scholia 10y ago
      Right, because it's not a level playing field. I could start a company in a small European country for €X but tackling the US market would cost me 10 times that, which I haven't got and can't raise. However, the comparable US company can invade my market not by raising 10x more money but by raising 10% more. Even if you're successful, like Spotify, a big American company can start up years later with an inferior product, like Apple, and probably put you out of business. Spotify money is, by Apple's standards, chump change. And if the American company can't knock you out, then it can just buy you. America's home market size and the availability of capital make it very hard to compete, even if you have the talent. And the fact that SV imports almost all the best overseas talent as well as having its own tremendous talents makes things even harder. It's easier with virtual goods than with physical goods, but look at social networking websites for an illustration of the same problem. Sure, you can be the biggest in France or Germany or Italy or whatever, but Facebook just knocked out all the local successes except Russia and China. The only way to play it is to open a small US office and pretend to be American, so you can get US capital and US media promotion. But if you succeeded that way, just how French (or German, or Italian) would you be in the end?

di4na 10y ago

Let's look at it the other way. Launching a movie cost a ton of money. So to keep a diverse culture ( we all agreee diversity is great isn't it?) and diverse way to think, you need to help less mainstream way to think. You spend years elaborating complex way to let mainstream exists and makes money, without disturbing it too much, but still keep a working amount of culture disruptor and new ideas growing. And you even create way for the mainstream to do that, enabling cross pollination. Then suddenly, a group that know nothing about your rules and believe that "all rules are bad anyway" come and control the main way to consume mainstream culture, rendering all your organisation void, cutting the money and support for the smallest groups. Woops, you have to rebuild everything. Except that this time around, you have no grasp on that "mainstream" to get cooperation and build a working ecosystem. The "market" is well and all. But an ecosystem need rulers and law enforcement. Too much rules is not good and i may agree that France and Europe was a bit too much (is a bit too much) coercive right now. But there is probably a middle ground that can be found. Well now, i still believe lawmakers and rulers are decade behind the need of today technology. But it is not just "regulating consumption". It is also about future and keeping an healthy pool of new and fresh ideas.

strictnein 10y ago
> "rendering all your organisation void, cutting the money and support for the smallest groups." How does Netflix not offering enough French TV shows do that? Did the government just stop giving them money once Netflix showed up? Also, encouraging Netflix to take on more local content is one thing. I'm sure they'd love to. Forcing them to fund the creation of local content is another thing completely. These governments are looking to require that a foreign company fund domestic businesses to be able to access their markets. Seems like something that would run afoul of the WTO, or similar body.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > These governments are looking to require that a foreign company fund domestic businesses to be able to access their markets So, like the All-American clause for almost all US govt. contracts? Or the US punishment for VW, requiring them to produce specific cars in the US? > Did the government just stop giving them money once Netflix showed up? Where is the government supposed to get the money from, once they can’t make money with TV anymore?

DominikR 10y ago

> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? It's not so important who is to blame from a moral perspective, it's still a serious issue. > These services are so useful and well-liked ... Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. Some do but mostly you are correct. French authorities in particular are very backwards and Socialist.

kelukelugames 10y ago

Didn't Osama bin Laden write a declaration about culture invasion from the West?

DominikR 10y ago
Invasion implies use of force and against the will of someone. Nobody forces you to use Google services, eat hamburgers or listen to US music.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  Downvotes for this? I personally think that many who use the "cultural invasion" angle fail to realize that it often ends up being a two way street. In the US, not many people make a big deal when, say, a French film wins a US Academy Award (example: The Artist) or a French artist tops the US pop charts (example: Daft Punk). It's a global world, after all. Perhaps there is some scope for protecting the uniqueness of individual cultures that might get lost in the global shuffle. But a lot of people happily stand up for this cause on their own, without any sort of political angle. Now, the NSA snooping angle with American tech emphasized in the article, that's another story -- I see this as a legitimate concern for any foreign firm. America's spy agencies probably underestimate how much they've hurt American companies in this global world.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    I as a citizen of a EU country (Austria) also share the same concerns regarding NSA and invasion of privacy by the US government and I'm highly critical of the wars started/instigated by the US in the last 20 years. But I have no problem with being fair even if I'm the loser in the end. Google is in it's space better than anyone else by far (in the Western hemisphere), same goes for many if not most other tech companies. I cringe when thinking about using a German or French search engine and having no other option because the EU commission has imposed a ban on all foreign competition. Sadly we are moving in this direction. The solution I believe is to change our legal framework to reduce the risks, bureaucracy and costs (taxes) for founders of startups. Currently in many EU countries a failed business means for a founder that he'll lose everything he owns. And if the founder has some kind of success he'll be tortured by bureaucracy and insane taxes/regulations. (50% just for income tax, in France there was even a 75% tax for a few years) For example if you employ a handicapped person in Austria you almost have no way of ever firing that person. You have to request this from a government commission but they rarely allow this. Or you hire a woman that gets pregnant. She gets paid leave for up to 2 or 3 years (the government pays for that, but in the end we pay higher taxes for this) and when she gets back she has the right to be employed by you for 5 years in the same or an equivalent job without any way to fire her. I get that these laws have been created because employees were abused but this is too much. Edit: When I talk about firing persons I mean of course bad players that don't do their job well or worse, cause damage to the company. I don't care about a persons background, race or sex as long as the job is done well.

dougmany 10y ago

>These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? Just because something is well liked, does not mean it is beneficial to society overall. Junk food and facebook come too mind. I love Netflix but part of me feels my life would be better without it too.

criley2 10y ago
Facebook is beneficial to society, it has dramatically changed how people organize and communicate. You can always tell the difference between facebook users and non facebook users now. The non-facebook users don't hang out as much and don't show up to group events as much. "Why wasn't I invited?" "I hit everyone in the FB invites" "Oh I don't have facebook" "You're not using the tool our entire social group uses to organize our social experience-- there's your answer"
- hellbanner 10y ago
  Have you considered the "non-facebook users" coordinate offline, in-person and can use other technologies like SMS, email, phone calls, IM, chat apps, running into friends at the store, visiting a friend's workplace and "passing the word along" telling friend A who tells friend B?
  - DominikR 10y ago
    Your examples aside from chat apps are quite unrealistic. I don't even know when was the last time I invited someone to an event using any of the listed methods, it must have been years. But even if running into friends at the store was a thing, it doesn't mean that Facebook is not used by a billion people for organising social events and is therefore beneficial to them.
    - arcticfox 10y ago
      Wild, I just got invited to join a group for coffee over SMS. And before that, to meet with a technical group on MeetUp. And before that to meet up with my friends on GroupMe.

zer00eyz 10y ago

>The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? The US government is to blame here, the companies are penalized for our governments belligerent behavior. The alternatives (war, sanctions) are much less appealing or viable. >These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? In the case of physical goods, this has been happening for YEARS, and in both directions, in the form of import/export tariffs. For years, the tariff on corn going into mexico from the US kept local corn farmers in business, with NAFTA this was no longer in place, and a LOT Of them went out of business. > Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/wireds-100-hottest-european-startups-2015 http://www.wired.co.uk/article/wireds-100-hottest-european-s... Europe has a thriving start up scene, and quite a few major tech players (SAP springs to mind as the largest). Not to mention interesting efforts like Raspberry pi and Arduino.

yuzi 10y ago

> ... so US companies are to blame? Blame is irrelevant. These countries are choosing to backlash against a product problem. > ... they should be considered a threat? Yes. Unless, in the long term, they want to become level-B American citizens. Believe me I know - I'm Canadian and we are close. > Companies like this don't come out of Europe for a reason. New tailored products will grow and gain success when the old behemoth products are gone.

Bartweiss 10y ago

> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? In a case like this, "to blame" is somewhat irrelevant. No matter how unwilling the companies are, US spying is a reason to regulate or avoid them. This isn't a moral judgement (though the article does offer one), but when you can't trust the security of US-produced hardware and software that's a reason to act against US-headquartered companies regardless.

guelo 10y ago

> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? They don't have to defend it to you. You have American values, they have French values. The whole point is that they don't want Americans coming in and imposing their values over theirs.

AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
But... no one's imposing. The people of France are choosing to consume cultural artifacts provided by netflix, et. al. The French bureaucracy is basically telling the people that "no, we know better than you what you want." Which is absurd.
sievebrain 10y ago
American values tend to actually be genuinely shared by Americans and thus do not need to be enforced by the government. The USG does not force its TV stations to play specific content in order to promote American values, they arise spontaneously from the culture. When it comes to pop culture, "French values" are something the French government wishes were actual shared values, but which aren't, hence the need for subsidies and laws mandating that local content which supposedly embodies these values are played. It's a simple propagandistic switcharoo: a few lawmakers claim "French values" must be protected, but who asked the French themselves? Well, in a sense the market did, and the French weren't interested. The flip side of this is that there are definitely non-media related French values that really do arise from the people, like socialist values and the value of striking.

pjc50 10y ago

The article starts by asking you to view things from another perspective. It's not asking you to "knock" Netflix, it's inviting you to consider the point of view of people who do. American media is subtly hegemonising. All media carries with it the culture of those who produce it, but US media also carries a very strong assumption of "defaultness": that everyone is a (mostly white) American at heart. What effect does this have on the viewer, especially on kids who grow up with a diet American cartoons and action movies? The normalisation of American values in the use of violence to deal with threats and crime. Kids learning US (view of) history instead of their own local history. People learning American alongside their own language, while Americans (and Brits) don't learn another language: that makes the cultural exchange more one-way. Americans don't have to worry about French culture seeping in and erasing American cultural values, notwithstanding the occasional panic about "freedom fries". If you're not American, you run the risk of becoming an underrepresented minority even in your own country. The problem is even worse for local ethno-linguistic minorities such as Gaelic and Welsh in the UK. Ironically France is only as homogenous as it is due to centuries of centralisation and standardisation deliberately driving out regional linguistic variation. The popular HN view is probably going to be that minority languages can and should "fail in the market" and die out, leaving only English. Like endangered species. But with every language dies a culture and a literature.

verroq 10y ago
The irony is that for there to be diversity there must be protectionist policies and xenophobia to preserve it.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  Policies maybe, but not necessarily xenophobia. Xenophobia starts where multiculturalism fails. IMHO European multiculturalism has failed not in its idea, but in its implementation.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Xenophobia starts where multiculturalism fails. IMHO European multiculturalism has failed not in its idea, but in its implementation. Then implementation of multiculturalism is always in a state of partial failure. I guess it always has "bugs?" Intolerance always seems to seep in, even from the most vocal proponents of tolerance. In fact, there seems to be a correlation between how stridently one advocates tolerance and how much intolerance seeps in with it.

tomc1985 10y ago

That's only like 10% of the issue. Many of these tech firms are so big that many countries perceive a threat to their sovereignty. SV acts with such impunity that pushback should be no surprise.

exomancer 10y ago

> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? By the virtue of those bureaucrats being democratically elected officials responsible to implement the will of said Frenchmen. Not to say that the situation is perfect, but while there are many things wrong with Europe, but the democracy does work better than it does in the States.

deleted 10y ago

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calibraxis 10y ago

Corporations and state are interlinked. For all intents and purposes, there's no clear boundary between them. (Especially since corporations are creations of the state, and heavily influence state policy.) I agree the French government example seems weak. Maybe due to not being able to use truly cutting arguments in the US's agenda-setting newspaper.

tacone 10y ago

> The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? It's not the government, it's the establishment.