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You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation. Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like this and then turned against us by our friends at the NSA, for example.

dmix 9y ago
If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries take note of precedence defined in major foreign courts to define their own. Formalizing this in legislation always seems to sound like a good idea in the short-term. But in practice it's often really hard to define preemptive regulatory systems that work efficiently (and relevant to todays realities), especially in technology, as well as more expensive to enforce via agencies/auditors, and will likely end up wastefully crossing over into many areas/situations which are totally harmless in practice or having negative side-effects which outweigh the benefits, such as harming innovation. I'd rather we deal with negative behaviour on a case-by-case basis.
- EggsOnToast 9y ago
  The enforcement of laws matters just as much as the quantity of the laws in my opinion. In this case the argument being made by Facebook is basically "everyone does this so why are we being selectively targeted?" Obviously it makes sense to start with the biggest offenders but it's hard to believe that the EU's apparent tunnel vision on applying the law to American companies is because of a lack of resources.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    But Facebook and Google are the biggest and most flagrant offenders. It wouldn't make sense to go after anyone else first, and you want to have a precedent so you can go after other companies (or other companies will stop committing crimes of their own volition because being litigated against is expensive). As for your belief that American companies are being unfairly targeted, this also doesn't make much sense to me. European companies wouldn't break the laws in the first place, Asian companies don't really compete in the European "web services" market, so the only major source of rights violations is going to be American companies. If American companies don't want to follow European laws, they shouldn't be doing business in Europe. And why are you complaining about in which order those companies are being punished for breaking the law?
    - EggsOnToast 9y ago
      >European companies wouldn't break the laws in the first place, Asian companies don't really compete in the European "web services" market, so the only major source of rights violations is going to be American companies. European companies are just as capable of violating the law as American companies. Part of the argument being made by critics is that there's been little sign that comparable effort has been made by European governance to investigate its domestic companies as rigorously as it's been investigating America's. >If American companies don't want to follow European laws, they shouldn't be doing business in Europe. The counterpoint would be that the companies are only breaking the law because the EU decided that its laws can be applied globally. >And why are you complaining about in which order those companies are being punished for breaking the law? Because it's difficult to believe that there's only enough resources to prosecute a handful of companies at a time.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        > Because it's difficult to believe that there's only enough resources to prosecute a handful of companies at a time. The decision in question was in a civil suit. The suit was brought by a "privacy watchdog" organization that's presumably at least partially government funded to investigate cases like this, but that doesn't prevent anyone else from suing as well. So if you know of a European company with similarly privacy-violating practices, what's stopping you from filing suit? Or if you're not an EU citizen, you might still be able to get some less corporate-friendly group to investigate.
- candiodari 9y ago
  > If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? Simple: that the courts won't handle it. It is not reasonable to expect either customers or the courts to actively go after companies that use this sort of tracking internationally. They can go after companies with a global presence, by doing so locally, and of course because these companies will actually fight it instead of just ignoring them. So Facebook is a target of convenience, but convicting it will not yield any results (if necessary Facebook will just use an intermediary, besides Facebook is being targeted because politicians like to stick it to Facebook atm). You can say "just change the law", but a lot needs to happen beside that to make this practice stop. None of that is happening, so this practice won't stop as a result of this. It's just a PR grab for some politicians.
mtgex 9y ago
We have lots of restrictions on corporate behavior because markets do not solve human problems, they solve corporate problems. The corporate response to long hours and low pay is to put up suicide nets. In the U.S. we have minimum wage, hourly restrictions, break, and overtime laws. You can't trust the market to weed out bad players when the bad players are the ones with enough money to buy public perception and government influence. You have to force them to do the right thing through legislation.
- allthenews 9y ago
  You act like corporations are totally divorced from the people that run them. You also ignore how comfortable in-demand white collar work in many industries can be, and non-government movements toward shorter workdays in certain European countries. You also seem to neglect that the government all over frequently takes advantage its position in ways that make things worse for society. The thing about corporations, though, is that with minimal regulation, they can be forced to compete, and ultimately bad ones are orders of magnitude more likely to change or die than any given government. In fact I'd argue that a constant churn of negative companies is still better than some of of the worse tyrannical states that ever existed, by a large margin, because of the forces of competition.
  - mtgex 9y ago
    I don't feel I've acted like any of the things you're ascribing to me. Corporations are not divorced from the people that run them, but the people that run them are divorced from the people they impact by their decisions. Which countries are moving towards shorter workdays without government intervention? Governments do frequently take advantage of their position. I do not dispute this. We can prevent a constant churn of negative companies as well as tyrannical states. It's not an either or.
pishpash 9y ago
Minimalistic restrictions work if you also help to ensure a working marketplace with healthy and robust competition. When few players dominate the marketplace, even if they are not technically "monopolies," the market is dysfunctional.
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
> You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. Why don't you put your faith in data? If you're a engineer that's presumably what you're already doing in every other respect of your life. It doesn't seem to me that starting out already having decided on what the best approach is will lead to the best decisions.
bobcostas55 9y ago
>Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. The law is already far behind in this case. It implicitly assumes all databases allow for a CRUD workflow. But now we have blockchains/distributed databases where the UD part of CRUD is literally impossible. It will be very interesting to see how the courts deal with personal data stored in this manner...

dmix 9y ago

If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries take note of precedence defined in major foreign courts to define their own. Formalizing this in legislation always seems to sound like a good idea in the short-term. But in practice it's often really hard to define preemptive regulatory systems that work efficiently (and relevant to todays realities), especially in technology, as well as more expensive to enforce via agencies/auditors, and will likely end up wastefully crossing over into many areas/situations which are totally harmless in practice or having negative side-effects which outweigh the benefits, such as harming innovation. I'd rather we deal with negative behaviour on a case-by-case basis.

EggsOnToast 9y ago
The enforcement of laws matters just as much as the quantity of the laws in my opinion. In this case the argument being made by Facebook is basically "everyone does this so why are we being selectively targeted?" Obviously it makes sense to start with the biggest offenders but it's hard to believe that the EU's apparent tunnel vision on applying the law to American companies is because of a lack of resources.
- cyphar 9y ago
  But Facebook and Google are the biggest and most flagrant offenders. It wouldn't make sense to go after anyone else first, and you want to have a precedent so you can go after other companies (or other companies will stop committing crimes of their own volition because being litigated against is expensive). As for your belief that American companies are being unfairly targeted, this also doesn't make much sense to me. European companies wouldn't break the laws in the first place, Asian companies don't really compete in the European "web services" market, so the only major source of rights violations is going to be American companies. If American companies don't want to follow European laws, they shouldn't be doing business in Europe. And why are you complaining about in which order those companies are being punished for breaking the law?
  - EggsOnToast 9y ago
    >European companies wouldn't break the laws in the first place, Asian companies don't really compete in the European "web services" market, so the only major source of rights violations is going to be American companies. European companies are just as capable of violating the law as American companies. Part of the argument being made by critics is that there's been little sign that comparable effort has been made by European governance to investigate its domestic companies as rigorously as it's been investigating America's. >If American companies don't want to follow European laws, they shouldn't be doing business in Europe. The counterpoint would be that the companies are only breaking the law because the EU decided that its laws can be applied globally. >And why are you complaining about in which order those companies are being punished for breaking the law? Because it's difficult to believe that there's only enough resources to prosecute a handful of companies at a time.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      > Because it's difficult to believe that there's only enough resources to prosecute a handful of companies at a time. The decision in question was in a civil suit. The suit was brought by a "privacy watchdog" organization that's presumably at least partially government funded to investigate cases like this, but that doesn't prevent anyone else from suing as well. So if you know of a European company with similarly privacy-violating practices, what's stopping you from filing suit? Or if you're not an EU citizen, you might still be able to get some less corporate-friendly group to investigate.
candiodari 9y ago
> If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? Simple: that the courts won't handle it. It is not reasonable to expect either customers or the courts to actively go after companies that use this sort of tracking internationally. They can go after companies with a global presence, by doing so locally, and of course because these companies will actually fight it instead of just ignoring them. So Facebook is a target of convenience, but convicting it will not yield any results (if necessary Facebook will just use an intermediary, besides Facebook is being targeted because politicians like to stick it to Facebook atm). You can say "just change the law", but a lot needs to happen beside that to make this practice stop. None of that is happening, so this practice won't stop as a result of this. It's just a PR grab for some politicians.

mtgex 9y ago

We have lots of restrictions on corporate behavior because markets do not solve human problems, they solve corporate problems. The corporate response to long hours and low pay is to put up suicide nets. In the U.S. we have minimum wage, hourly restrictions, break, and overtime laws. You can't trust the market to weed out bad players when the bad players are the ones with enough money to buy public perception and government influence. You have to force them to do the right thing through legislation.

allthenews 9y ago
You act like corporations are totally divorced from the people that run them. You also ignore how comfortable in-demand white collar work in many industries can be, and non-government movements toward shorter workdays in certain European countries. You also seem to neglect that the government all over frequently takes advantage its position in ways that make things worse for society. The thing about corporations, though, is that with minimal regulation, they can be forced to compete, and ultimately bad ones are orders of magnitude more likely to change or die than any given government. In fact I'd argue that a constant churn of negative companies is still better than some of of the worse tyrannical states that ever existed, by a large margin, because of the forces of competition.
- mtgex 9y ago
  I don't feel I've acted like any of the things you're ascribing to me. Corporations are not divorced from the people that run them, but the people that run them are divorced from the people they impact by their decisions. Which countries are moving towards shorter workdays without government intervention? Governments do frequently take advantage of their position. I do not dispute this. We can prevent a constant churn of negative companies as well as tyrannical states. It's not an either or.

pishpash 9y ago

Minimalistic restrictions work if you also help to ensure a working marketplace with healthy and robust competition. When few players dominate the marketplace, even if they are not technically "monopolies," the market is dysfunctional.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago

> You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. Why don't you put your faith in data? If you're a engineer that's presumably what you're already doing in every other respect of your life. It doesn't seem to me that starting out already having decided on what the best approach is will lead to the best decisions.

bobcostas55 9y ago

>Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. The law is already far behind in this case. It implicitly assumes all databases allow for a CRUD workflow. But now we have blockchains/distributed databases where the UD part of CRUD is literally impossible. It will be very interesting to see how the courts deal with personal data stored in this manner...