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Bad for the digital giants and their shareholders, good for the public. Silicon Valley has skated by with very little privacy regulation, but the tide is turni

by IBM 12y ago

Bad for the digital giants and their shareholders, good for the public. Silicon Valley has skated by with very little privacy regulation, but the tide is turning.

api 12y ago
It's part of a growing movement to reject feudal and surveillance based business models. Those business models are largely an artifact of the dot.com bust and the need to find some way to make "free" pay... they're a recent development, probably not a permanent one, and are not synonymous with Silicon Valley. For most of it modern incarnation -- say 1970 to present -- Silicon Valley was all about personal computing and democratizing technology. Hopefully it can return to its roots.
- jeangenie 12y ago
  > surveillance based business models OT but I was watching a docu- on Goldman Sachs and found interesting parallels between the rise of the "surveillance" model in the tech sector and the financial sector. They both succeed based upon the successful monetization of customer data. That may be the content of your emails searches in Google's case or a client's trading position in Goldman's but the goal is the same.
  - api 12y ago
    Interesting question: Do we know for a fact that Google does not monetize its e-mail data by -- say -- offering insights to traders or hedge funds? Boy would that ever be valuable.
maximumoverload 12y ago
As a citizen of EU, I very much doubt it. Most of the technical revolutions in the past decade(s) was brought to us by the giants. Never by the governments. The most that will happen is more variants of the demented "cookie law" and "Google deletion law".
- danieldk 12y ago
  On the other hand, the EU has finally brought telco to their knees. We had the situation where as e.g. a T-Mobile Germany customer, you'd pay exorbitant roaming fees to use mobile internet or to call on the T-Mobile Netherlands network. It's still expensive, but getting better by the year, thanks to the EU intervening in such cases.
  - maximumoverload 12y ago
    This one I agree with, but telco is basically an oligopoly anyway (created by a necesitty). There needs to be a regulation, because it's not a free market. You cannot just created a new operator because everything is licensed.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    But telephony was invented over 100 years ago - and given the USA completey screwed up telecoms deregulation its a case in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Yep the EU's track record on laws on tech is not exactly good is it.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Cookie law - probably cost jobs as vast resources where pissed against the wall to implement this.
    - illumen 12y ago
      Every website mentioning privacy has had a great impact on privacy awareness world wide. It is a brilliant law, but many people still don't understand why so. It has probably done most for privacy than anything else I can think of.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago

by IBM 12y ago

Bad for the digital giants and their shareholders, good for the public. Silicon Valley has skated by with very little privacy regulation, but the tide is turning.

api 12y ago

It's part of a growing movement to reject feudal and surveillance based business models. Those business models are largely an artifact of the dot.com bust and the need to find some way to make "free" pay... they're a recent development, probably not a permanent one, and are not synonymous with Silicon Valley. For most of it modern incarnation -- say 1970 to present -- Silicon Valley was all about personal computing and democratizing technology. Hopefully it can return to its roots.

jeangenie 12y ago
> surveillance based business models OT but I was watching a docu- on Goldman Sachs and found interesting parallels between the rise of the "surveillance" model in the tech sector and the financial sector. They both succeed based upon the successful monetization of customer data. That may be the content of your emails searches in Google's case or a client's trading position in Goldman's but the goal is the same.
- api 12y ago
  Interesting question: Do we know for a fact that Google does not monetize its e-mail data by -- say -- offering insights to traders or hedge funds? Boy would that ever be valuable.

maximumoverload 12y ago

As a citizen of EU, I very much doubt it. Most of the technical revolutions in the past decade(s) was brought to us by the giants. Never by the governments. The most that will happen is more variants of the demented "cookie law" and "Google deletion law".

danieldk 12y ago
On the other hand, the EU has finally brought telco to their knees. We had the situation where as e.g. a T-Mobile Germany customer, you'd pay exorbitant roaming fees to use mobile internet or to call on the T-Mobile Netherlands network. It's still expensive, but getting better by the year, thanks to the EU intervening in such cases.
- maximumoverload 12y ago
  This one I agree with, but telco is basically an oligopoly anyway (created by a necesitty). There needs to be a regulation, because it's not a free market. You cannot just created a new operator because everything is licensed.
- walshemj 12y ago
  But telephony was invented over 100 years ago - and given the USA completey screwed up telecoms deregulation its a case in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.
walshemj 12y ago
Yep the EU's track record on laws on tech is not exactly good is it.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Cookie law - probably cost jobs as vast resources where pissed against the wall to implement this.
  - illumen 12y ago
    Every website mentioning privacy has had a great impact on privacy awareness world wide. It is a brilliant law, but many people still don't understand why so. It has probably done most for privacy than anything else I can think of.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago