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Your comparison is nonsensical. Pollution is a violation of a shared resource, and can even be an aggression to someone's property. Even the most libertarian mi
by necessity 10y ago
Your comparison is nonsensical. Pollution is a violation of a shared resource, and can even be an aggression to someone's property. Even the most libertarian minded individual will make a case against it, see for instance Rothbard[1]. Selling user supplied data to advertisers is exactly what Google and Facebook do. The problem is that there is a monopoly in the ISP business. You can use Searx, Startpage, DDG, or other privacy-focused solutions instead of Google directly, and Facebook is really superfluous, if you don't want don't use it, or just create a fake profile. When it comes to ISPs you don't really have a choice if they all decide to turtle up and do the same (the freer the market the greater the incentive to one of them to turn or for another to start in business by answering to the demand for a more private browsing experience, even if locally at a certain city at first).
[1] "The eruption of Mt. St. Helens should have alerted everyone to the ever-present processes of natural pollution (...) In sum, no one has a right to clean air, but one does have a right to not have his air invaded by pollutants generated by an aggressor (...) such aggression may take the form of pollution of someone else's air, including his owned effective airspace, injury against his person, or a nuisance interfering with his possession or use of his land (...) this is the case, provided that (...) while visible pollutants or noxious odors are per se aggression, in the case of invisible and insensible pollutants the plaintiff must prove actual harm; the burden of proof of such aggression rests upon the plaintiff; the plaintiff must prove strict causality from the actions of the defendant to the victimization of the plaintiff; the plaintiff must prove such causality and aggression beyond a reasonable doubt; and there is no vicarious liability, but only liability for those who actually commit the deed." https://mises.org/library/law-property-rights-and-air-pollution https://mises.org/library/law-property-rights-and-air-pollut...
- mattmanser 10y agoYou say his argument is nonsensical, but then make exactly the same argument as him by calling it a public utility.
- tzs 10y agoRothbard's approach to pollution in many cases does reduce down to "tough...buy a filter if you want clean air/water", due to his requirement that the plaintiff prove strict causality, and in the case of invisible pollutants prove actual harm. When you find, for example, your crops damaged by acid rain, that acid rain can have been caused by pollutants releases hundreds or even thousands of miles away, from hundreds of sources. Who do you sue? It's generally not going to be possible to prove that the pollution emitted by any particular source ended up in the rain that fell on your crops.
- mundo 10y agoI didn't say pollution and privacy were identical, or even similar. My whole point was that the fact that the author's argument would apply to almost any type of regulation is proof that it's over-broad.
- jancsika 10y ago> Pollution is a violation of a shared resource Isn't "user privacy" is a collective noun that describes a shared resource? I.e., Tor's anonymity pool.
- pera 10y agoAs far I am aware Google doesn't operates as a data broker ("We do not sell your personal information to anyone." - https://privacy.google.com/how-ads-work.html https://privacy.google.com/how-ads-work.html), so comparing what Google does with ISPs selling PII associated with traffic to any third-party is in my opinion, no offense, a bit absurd. Not trying to defend Google neither: I don't support the way they use user's data, which is why I use DuckDuckGo, but I don't think this comparison (which was used by the Republicans) is valid.
- rhino369 10y agoThat just means that Google is vertically integrated the advertising value chain. And while the law would probably let the ISPs sell your actual web history, in the past ISPs never went anywhere near that far. They more or less did what Facebook and Google do with their data.