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Google Comes Down on the Wrong Side of the TPP
- skrowl 10y agoAnyone who has even been passively following the US election cycle this year knows that Google is throwing in with Hillary Clinton. This is just another example of it and is honestly much less troubling to me than their censorship issues around the campaign.
- chipperyman573 10y agoFor someone who hasn't been following it, what makes you say they are?
- dsabanin 10y agoThis is what I was able to find right now, but there are more clues. "Google works closely with Hillary Clinton to promote presidential campaign: Julian Assange": http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/google-works-closely-with-hillary-clinton-to-promote-presidential-campaign-julian-assange-34780998.html http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/google-wor... "The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that’s working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House": http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working...
- agscala 10y agoIt's not necessarily google itself, but Eric Schmidt has a company called The Groundwork that has been working for her campaign. http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working...
- snowwrestler 10y agoDoes Schmidt have a day-to-day role at Google anymore? I was under the impression that he is essentially retired from Google's operations and serves only as a board member. Anyway, it raises the question of whether a board member / former exec can do things on his own time and dime without it reflecting on Google. Does everything that Schmidt does imply that Google is doing it too?
- mattnewton 10y agoI only have additional anecdotes, but the claim has been leveled several times with varying degrees of convincing evidence. Here's another: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/10/google-is-manipulating-search-results-in-favor-of-hillary-clinton/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/10/google-is-manipulati...
- Buge 10y agoThey block all autocompletes of the form "firstname lastname liar" and other similar words. For example they block "hillary clinton liar". They allow "hillary liar". They block "donald trump liar". They block "george bush liar", they allow "bush liar".
- VOYD 10y agoit's the plot from last seasons' "House of Cards".
- bitmapbrother 10y agoThis is absolute bullshit and you have no proof to back up your ludicrous claims.
- Selfcommit 10y agoLet me help you out http://lmgtfy.com/?q=eric+smidt+think+tank+hilary+clinton http://lmgtfy.com/?q=eric+smidt+think+tank+hilary+clinton
- bitmapbrother 10y agoIs that all the proof you have? You Trump supporters are ridiculous.
- dang 10y agoYour account has broken HN's guidelines in this thread and unfortunately in other comments you've posted. We ban accounts that do this, so please post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on. Note that this holds regardless of how wrong or ridiculous someone else's views are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- kyrra 10y agoThat's Eric Schmidt, not Google. While he may be the executive chairman for Google, those efforts are outside of Google's goals. If you want to look into where Google puts some of it's money, check out: https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623 https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623
- mattnewton 10y agoAs posted elsewhere, it's not damning and could still be a total coincidence, but it does raise eyebrows: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/10/google-is-manipulating-search-results-in-favor-of-hillary-clinton/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/10/google-is-manipulati...
- pjc50 10y ago"The TPP requires the 12 participating countries to allow cross-border transfers of information and prohibits them from requiring local storage of data" Yup, definitely the wrong side of this. I can't see how this will get passed in the EU when it directly contradicts all the previous data protection rulings, but presumably there will be some undemocratic process.
- greeneggs 10y agoTTP = Trans-Pacific Partnership TTIP = Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...
- Infernal 10y ago/s/TTP/TPP/
- cbowal 10y agoThe TPP is the Trans-Pacific Partnership which doesn't include the EU (only countries on the Pacific).
- dredmorbius 10y agoTTP, TTIP, BITS, and TiSA are a set of conjoined multilateral aggreements. Yes, individually seperate and with distinct members, but broadly similar.
- alwaysdoit 10y ago> "The TPP ... limits governments’ ability to demand access to encryption keys or other cryptographic methods" This seems good though.
- cardiac 10y agoThis is what irrational looks like. "just wrong" Um. Ok. Why? `limiting exploration of fair use` Unless you're one of those empirical people and like human experimentation, which is rather unethical when people's livelihoods are at stake, you can literally theorize that right now. Go ahead. Everybody's listening. Well, while you continue to think about that and have no answer, we'll continue using laws that protect content creators. Many of these opinions are nonsensical anti-capitalist drivel. TPP is consistency and compromise and if there's a real better way, you better believe countries will adapt to it.
- mattnewton 10y agoIrrational and anti-capitalist these are not. There is nothing free-market about a patent or copyright, they are exceptions to the free market meant to try and subsidize "innovation," and smart people are still arguing on whether or not that is working well today. There are other issues that the TPP forces the hand of the American legislative system to pass new restrictions where we had previously voted against doing so. It is an undemocratic, anti-free-market end run around the American legislative branch.
- pzone 10y agoThere are very good arguments in favor of the existence of patents and copyrights. Copyrights and and patent reward creators and innovators for their work. Of course giving these legal rights too much force (eg indefinite copyright, overly broad patent licenses) is harmful since it restricts further innovation and increases the price of consuming creative goods. But the question is not whether patents and copyright are pure good or pure evil, but how we should make use of these legal tools to improve society. http://economics.mit.edu/files/7720 http://economics.mit.edu/files/7720 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-015-9114-3 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-015-9114-3
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoGoogle has come down on the right side of the TPP - for Google. The company is a major major major player for most of humanity outside of China. Even people who use exactly zero Google products or services are inextricably linked with those who do, by just a few degrees of separation. This deal would be a huge benefit to one of the most global corporations in history. I'm not defending Google by any means, but the company had every right to defend its own self-interest.
- njknsdf 10y agoAnd we have every right to criticize them for it.
- niftich 10y agoTPP the largest cross-national, non-military cooperation pact of our time. It's a huge power play with serious geopolitical consequences that go far beyond Google. Nonetheless, Google benefits from TPP because it enables them to shift operations to areas with lower costs, and not having their services blocked or censored in participating countries. They clearly feel that the advantages of TPP outweigh the drawbacks. I don't expect a public corporation to oppose a trade agreement on grounds of protectionism or ideology. Author cites expansion of copyright and corresponding limitation of free use as specific problems with TPP, but Google comes out in support of those points. Analysis of other problematic provisions of TPP would serve to make the article more persuasive, rather than stating that Google is wrong on those grounds.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago> They clearly feel that the advantages of TPP outweigh the drawbacks. The problem is that's always how this works. You take a thousand people who each want something that will help them a lot and hurt everybody else a little. If you only look at them, they come out ahead, because they get +1200 from the thing they wanted and -1000 from the sum of all the little harms everybody else wanted. But everybody who isn't a huge corporation with the ability to shovel the thing they wanted into the treaty only gets the -1000, which makes the treaty a huge net negative because there are a lot more mortal people taking the big hit than there are huge corporations eeking out a little at the margin. > Author cites expansion of copyright and corresponding limitation of free use as specific problems with TPP, but Google comes out in support of those points. Analysis of other problematic provisions of TPP would serve to make the article more persuasive, rather than stating that Google is wrong on those grounds. Author links to their explanation in the article: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120804/00173819933/tpp-text-fair-use-leaks-us-proposals-are-really-about-limiting-fair-use-not-expanding-it.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120804/00173819933/tpp-t...
- niftich 10y agoThanks for the link, but that's the same point about the reduction of fair-use of copyrighted works. I meant the analysis of all the -other- things, besides copyright harmonization, that make TPP bad, which the author refers to briefly: "There's so much in there that's about blatant protectionism and supporting certain business models over others." and "(...) other problems in the agreement (such as the corporate sovereignty provisions that will almost certainly come back to bite Google and others)." These could be good points, but since the author mentions them only in passing, and does not expand on them. After reading both links it sounds as if the author's opposition of Google's stance is entirely predicated on the copyright/fair-use topic, despite implying that TPP is deeply flawed for other reasons that should warrant its abandonment.
- naringas 10y agothe TPP is good (great) for entities made out of humans and their tools, but it's pretty bad for entities comprised of (mostly) human cells, i.e. individual humans.
- fredo699 10y agoJeez, I don't like the TPP either, but can you really call it the "wrong" side? This is a perfect example of the kind of general arrogance that I see on the left which allows conservatives to mop the floor with leftists.
- godgod 10y agoSupporting TPP is the right side for Google. They are in bed with the Obama administration.
- dang 10y agoThis was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880399.