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I can't talk for the rest of the EU but in Germany privacy issues tend to get blown out of proportion - the media coverage during the street view controversy wa
by thirdsun 14y ago
I can't talk for the rest of the EU but in Germany privacy issues tend to get blown out of proportion - the media coverage during the street view controversy was rather ridiculous. Average, non-technical people almost thought Google would drive through their backyards.
It's ok to disagree with Google's and Facebook's behaviour and it's ok to take measures but I wish the media would focus on balanced and objective coverage, educating people rather than calling for drama and hysteria.
- Argorak 14y agoI think the street view thing was a deliberate campaign. Many german publishers hate Google with a passion because it eats their advertisement revenue - so much that they are even lobbying for a law passed that would force Google to pay them for indexing their content. Microsoft started photographing a few months later and no one cared.
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago> so much that they are even lobbying for a law passed that would force Google to pay them for indexing their content. Don't they remember the last time somebody tried to get in the way of Google indexing their content? As I recall, Google just took them entirely out of the index and then they changed their tune.
- thirdsun 14y agoThe 'Leistungsschutzrecht'? That was really ridiculous. Publishers could simply opt-out from being indexed but of course being paid for providing snippets of content on Google News sounded like a nicer option. If you speak german Stefan Niggemeier just created a nice rundown of the events since 2009 that outlines how newspapers and publishers tried to cover the issue in their favor: http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/ein-kartell-nutzt-seine-macht-wie-die-verlage-fuer-das-leistungsschutzrecht-kaempfen/ http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/ein-kartell-nutzt-seine...
- weel 14y agoWow, that's an impressively well-researched piece.
- alexqgb 14y ago"In Germany privacy issues tend to get blown out of proportion." Gosh, I wonder why? I mean, what is it about German history - in particular - that would trigger such powerful negative reactions to the technical foundations of a surveillance state? Hummm.... Nope, no idea.
- mjwalshe 14y agoI would be more concerened about the large number of EU states that have "ID" cards. And aprently the German police are quite keen on askening "papers please" especialy if one is of a darker hue :-(
- thedaniel 14y agoAs I assume you're referring to the 3rd Reich, let me add that you don't even have to go back to the 30s for this - the DDR had a surveillance state courtesy of the Stasi until the wall came down.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- einhverfr 14y agoAlso consider that Kaiser Wilhelm basically denounced civil liberties as an excuse for Serbia not reining in the press following Archduke Ferdinand's assassination. There's no reason to take this as referring specifically to the 3rd Reich. Germany has a relatively recent tradition of civil liberties with a lot of abuses still in living memory, and many more abuses in the recent history books.
- jsemrau 14y agoI don't think this is necessarily related to the Third Reich, but more about common sense. How much should a private company with the reach of Facebook and Google should collect about their users?
- CamperBob2 14y ago