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California Senate Passes Preemptive Strike Against Gmail
Technically Inept writes "The California Senate has passed a measure to force Google to limit search capabilities on Gmail to real-time, with no records. What if I want them to search my mail in advance?"
We're legislating technology most people haven't even seen yet.
In other news Google announced it was moving out of California to get away from the usual knee-jerk legislation that plagues the state.
Seriously, what's wrong with these people?
and this affects me how?
Perhaps now we'll see Google move their operations and offices to India.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
At least for us booring nerds that are mainly interested in hiding how booring we are? :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Seriously, how can they legislate against that kind of a thing? Could google at least make it an option that defaults to off?
It seems to me that companies ought to have a right to exchange services with people on terms that both sides agree on. If Google wants to offer a gig of email in exchange for being able to stick context-oriented ads in it, they ought to be able to do so -- if you don't like it, buy your own damn email.
Hell, if Google wanted to offer me a gig of email in exchange for being able to read my messages, print out the embaressing ones and pass them around their offices, they should be able to do that, too. If I don't like it, I don't have to sign up.
But no, here in CA we never met a regulation or inhabition to business that we didn't like. God forbid the legislature not spend yet more time not fixing our insane budget problems.
* - Don't kid yourself. We still beat the hell out of your crappy state/country.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
...how what a company does with its website users has anything to do with the California state law.
Google has yet to actually give us even the slightest notion that they would use Gmail in ways that would invade privacy. This is simply an act, I believe, by worried politicians that something good might dominate the Internet and threaten their pockets.
It's was never designed to do that...
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, legislating technology that doesn't really even exist yet isn't THAT good, but neither is your email provider data mining you, and possibly selling that info to other companies. Plus, it is email. Sensitive data may pass through that (you'd be stupid to use something like Gmail or Hotmail to do so, but it happens).
If you don't agree to their terms, then don't sign up.
Can the government restrict what type of information a company collects on its customers when they volentarily opt in to it, especially when thats kinda the point of the service?
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
How is this legal - is Google forcing people to use Gmail? I always assumed there are other players in the free online e-mail circuit.
Time for google to move out of Cali.
Is this law necessary if they disclose such practices? Isn't it up to the consumer not to use the product?
Time for google not to offer gmail in cali.
Just knee-jerk thoughts after reading the article.
Why would Google do anything but search in real-time? There is no point in scanning ahead, since the difference in response time would be minimal. The only thing I could see impacting them would be the no records thing, since they won't be able to track users interests and such, which can be in turn used to attract advertisers.
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
Google should just say that it's illegal to use their service in California. Eventually enough angry Californians will complain, and the law will go away.
.Mac, your ISP, your own server, etc, etc. It's called a free market...
But what's the point of a law? Nobody is forcing you to use gmail. If you're worried about privacy, don't use gmail. Use Hotmail, Yahoo!, Hushmail,
My other car is first.
IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T USE IT.
This isn't an OS, it's email. I'll start to worry the day google implements GMTP (google mail transport protocol) until then, as a californian, I call our state govt. a steaming pile of shit.
Photos.
How is this a democratic system? It's THEIR PROGRAM, not the governments.
another senator without a clue passing on a prefab amendment
Artists against online scams http://www.aa419.org/
search the brains of the geniuses who are pushing this bill through. I sure would like to know what they think they are accomplishing by limiting something not widely available and something that people have to opt-in to.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
You don't have a right to free email. In fact, I would go so far as to say there ain't no such thing -- you're paying for it one way or another. If you find one certain payment method objectionable, don't use it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What if I want them to search my mail in advance?
Contact the NSA and ask for "Mr. Echelon".
Trolling is a art,
The bill, as I've read in other articles is agaisnt any service retaining information about the contents of people's emails. They can still scan it realtime and give ads based on keywords, but they can't store it in a database or share that information with other people.
It is a good thing, in my opinion, because you know as soon as Google announced they were going to do it and let people know about it, hundreds of others figured it would be a good idea to do it and not say anything and then sell email information to advertisers.
And Google approved the legistation as well. It is *NOT* a Bad Thing.
It's a voluntary service. Just make sure users know about it before they signup to use the service. Then you're free from liability. Not too difficult. Or am I mistaken?
What is your penile percentile?
I mean seriously, you KNOW what your getting yourself into when you sign up, the company TELLS you FLAT OUT your mail is going to be scanned for ad placement, California has no right to say we we dont care its a intrusion even if the person agreed to be intruded on.
The fact that this is comming from a state that elected twice elected a actor as gov, and has tried to get rid of the master/slave lables yet also says people should have the right to decide what to put in their bodies (in regards to marajauna smoking) shouldnt come as unexpected....
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Or should we have pre-emptive justice? Hell yes, we're all potential criminals and therefore we should be kept under 24h/7 days a week house arrest.
Think of the children!
So what happens when the servers are moved somewhere else? Give me a break. It's voluntary. Don't sign up if you don't like what they are doing..
If you are not a liberal when you are young then you have not heart. If you are not a conservative when you are old then you have no brains.? -Winston Churchill
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
You put pressure on the boss now, making a strike to "prepare the negociations" even if they are not started yet.
*sigh*
Yeah, great, so people can't make their own minds up?!? If you want to have your e-mails scanned, use it, if you don't, then don't use it! Do they really think people are so stupid that they can't make up their minds for themselves!?!
Give me a break, this is just taking it too far, what next, making it illegal to eat McDonalds because it's bad for you?
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
"The bill by Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa would require Gmail to work only in real-time and would bar the service from producing records.
The bill also would bar Gmail form collecting personal information from e-mails and giving any information to third parties. "
Doesn't Google state that GMail already works this way? So in effect they are legislating it to do only what it already does. Unless Google turns evil and wants to invade our privacy, they won't mind at all.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
But if you seriously think that any American company is going to lock themselves out of the globe's 7th largest economy, you're kidding yourself.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
When I was able to get a GMail account, I knew full well that they would do this (the ads). I'm fine with that.
It's not like having a GMail account is a right or anything; If you don't want the ads, don't use GMail. Simple.
How can one be sure that the spam filtering mechanisms do not save info about their mails??
Are there any similar legislations about the spam filtering done by all the email providers!?!?
GMail is John Ashcroft and John Poindexter's wet dream: billions of messages nicely indexed and ready for mining.
Fortunately experience shows that Google doesn't much care to help the USG.
Doesn't the govenator own some Google stock? I remember reading somewhere that he was an early investor... I'm sure he'll swing something to protect his investment.. he is a Rebuplican after all! :)
Where the hell does the Senate get off telling Google how to run their email service? This doesn't seem right. Not that I want Google harvesting my email for personal information they can use as they please, but it just doesn't seem like its the government's place to make that decision. This is something that should be decided in the free market. Don't like the terms of service? Then don't f-ing sign up. Anyways last time I checked, the Hotmail terms of service basically said that anything you send through Hotmail belongs to them. I'm sure there are similar provisions in the TOS for the others too. The article was a little light on details. Does this single out Google or does it apply to other providers as well?
That would make it faster them my computer.
Seems the obvious answer to alot of these types of things is making them CLEARLY tell people what they are doing to/with what info. DOnt read my mail without telling me. Dont install stuff without telling me. Dont send out info without telling me. Preferably telling me why in the process. Then i can tell em to take a hike. Personally i thought them adding ads from email might be amusing when most my mail is trying to sell me something in the first place. Next we need animated mail where the ads can duke it out...
that they are going after google now that they have put a stop to SPAM , adware and spyware. The web will now be a safer place.
Sure you can sign yourself into slavery. It's called alimony. Once you've signed that paper, you keep working, but your ex gets all the benefits.
-Some of the things people are whining about may also affect anyone who so much as sends a message to a Gmail user.
-A great many laws are made to outlaw "voluntary" undesirable agreements, because when companies can't propose those types of agreements they tend to offer something better. Example: Minimum wage laws.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
It seems to me that this law will be struck down. Isn't Gmail in the federal regulatory domain, or shouldn't it be?
Even if you ignore the goodness or badness of the restrictions this California resolution imposesit's a big problem. Trying to program to obey 51 different groups of technical ignoramuses has to be hell.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Not to argue with extremes, but I could sell crack and make quite a profit. The government says I can't do so. There *are* limits to what everyone will accept.
Just a point. Though I have a gmail account, and love it, and think it's ridiculous that CA would pass a law against it.
I can't believe I read posts about people defending Google when they are trying to read *your* email and send it to *3rd parties*. You say people don't have to accept it. How many people do read the privacy policy? And do you think Google will write in big red font WE ARE READING YOUR EMAIL AND SENDING IT TO ADVERTISERS! I don't think so. Google Inc. is becoming just another Yahoo, and it is really time for some people to wake up.
It seems to me that it would make much more sense to go after things like spyware and spammers, instead of Google, which is one of the few companies that seems to be concerned with something more than profit.
to do something illegal, so if California makes a feature illegal, you can't sign away your 'right'. Depends on how they right the law.
They're going to prevent Google from collecting personal information, like names and addresses and email!
Waitaminute....
Has anybody looked into whether there is any money from competitors involved in this? It seems like MS has been gunning for Google for a while, and if GMail succeeds, it would be the end of Hotmail forever. There must be a money trail somewhere. Oh, and why is it that nobody cares about spyware which sends your browsing history to people without even telling you it is there, but this is so bad.
It's called a "plaintext protocol"....
Someone help me here, I'm too lazy to look it up. Wouldn't this bill have to be signed by Gov. Ahhh-noold? He's probably looking forward to giving this joke a good, swift kick in the pants, unless he needs to buy off some members to get what he needs to fix the budget...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Why do goverenments make laws against things that in reality ether don't affect them, or they can't really control. For instants, the laws against mp3 trade etc... now this... The way things are headed, soon it'll be illegal to post your political opinion on the net if it says somthing that the party in power doesn't like. People have to realize that the more we use the internet the more and more other people are going to know more about our personal lives. I for one, don't really care if sombody knows what i write in my emails...or if i do, there are tools on the net to encript your messages. I am tired of hearing about how people walk around getting influenced by what the media/goverenment says....IT'S TIME TO MAKE YOUR OWN CONCLUTIONS ABOUT THE ISSUES...information is power. Arm yourself.
-Pizentios
See how fast they made a move on google. Now compare that to their E-voting progress. To have or not have an audit trail, damn how simple is that.
Whatever happened to priorities...
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
You continue with ads, but .
i) Give me 1 TB of space
ii) Send me $100 every month for watching the ads
iii)
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Italics mine.
At least Google is up front about this, unlike your bank, credit card company, tax preparer, and medical records transcriber. This kind of notification is what California should have passed.
[Yes I know this isn't exactly the point the parent was getting at. Sue me.]
This is pretty much what I've been saying.
Google's a good company. They've never done anything that has raised my eyebrows before in terms of violating someone's privacy, or anything really. It's not like humans are going to scan your emails and decide what ads to put next to them. (Side note: the article was misleading in that it said gmail would place ads IN your email. Pure FUD. They're NEXT TO your email, which is way different). The whole system is automated, just like their AdSense program. It figures out what ads to display based ont he content of the web page.
The only argument that I've heard that makes any sense is if someone is against Gmail beacuse of this ad thing, so they dont sign up for the service, but then all their friends do so when they send email tot hem, their emails are scanned for content, even though they're not signed up with the service. Seriously though who cares. Google's not going to do anything like sell your email content to third party's so they can email your ads and stuff. People need to stop getting their panties all in a knot.
Joseph?
It's been said before, but email is about as private as a postcard. Privacy is important but let's not kid ourselves. Until both sender and recepient are using encryption on their own PC (and assuming that their PC is not infected with spyware, or otherwise insecure) there is no privacy when it comes to email. The best we can hope for is relative anonymity. Restricting one end of the email trail will not give us privacy.
So, how are the laws these days when it comes to having a free or open source email client with built in, easy to use encryption? I don't know, I haven't looked into it lately. But assuming things haven't changed much in the last few years, if our politicians really want us to have privacy they should decriminalizing encryption for the masses.
People who know what they are doing can fairly easily set up our own email clients, but until it is trivial for everyone we correspond with it won't do much good. Unless maybe Google encrypted it for you, and both sender and receiver are using gmail.
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
One small Step for spam, one giant leap for spam kind, now doesnt the bill make anti-spam software illegal in california..way to go senetors..way to go
I didn't RTFA, but this is insane. Pre-emptively limiting an email service's search facilities. For what reason? Privacy?
If that's the case, then I'm pissed. Where were the "pre-emptive privacy legislators" when Gator came along, or any other data mining company? I like to see some laws stopping windows from phoning home, or at least asking first. Ooooh, here's one: How about a law that will limit from being in the phonebook, until I OPT-IN?
Useful, probably not. But moreso than limiting pre-cached searches.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Hold up...
/. would be thoroughly upbraided.
/.ers typically don't like. The fact that Google is doing it makes it no more permissable.
So, it's ok for Google to, rather than even aggregating results, to search your email, profile you, and direct ads toward you?
I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I would imagine that if MS were to put features into Exchange that would send the results of the equivalent of a dirty word search back to them, then they were to target you with advertisements,
Wake up folks, California is protecting against something that
Personally, I think that it's a-ok to target adds based on such results, but I would prefer that it be done on the spot, in real time, rather than have the results cached.
As many have mentioned, nobody is forcing anyone (including Californians) to use GMail.
If you live in California, I advise you to write the bill's sponsor, Liz Figueroa and ask her to find something better to do with her time and your tax dollars. In case her page is Slashdotted you can always send her an email.
Many people commenting on this issue say "If you don't want Google to read your mail, don't sign up." That assumes that the only person who has a potential privacy issue is the recipient of the e-mail. My problem is on the other end: when I SEND someone e-mail I don't want someone else to read it. Why should I compromise my privacy so you can get a bigger mailbox?
Well, before we all start knocking politicans for being poltically and technically inept, let's at least give them some credit for trying (/ducks :) )
/.-ers got together and found some sort of solid canidate for an office, we could have something very powerful. A politican that actually gives a sh!t about technology and the rights of the people online, etc.
/. effect....SLASHDOT UNITE!
Seriously, if we
We could give a government homepage for this canidate the real
My MythTV HowTo
Doesn't server side SPAM filtering already require some reading of messages? How is Google reading a message to target adds any different than Yahoo, or my ISP, reading a message to decide if it's SPAM?
Microsoft's Law.
So Google has to do this as the page/email loads instead of in advance... Who cares? All this means is Google will have to put more power behind the service, which Google can certainly afford.
People are screaming bloody murder, but this doesn't affect them, so they really should shove it. The only people here who have the right to complain about this bill is Google, who will have to spend more money to operate their service.
First, those who voted for that bill most probably can't even turn on a damn computer. Let alone use an email service. The story should end right here. But these technophobic fuckers actualy have some power over what Google can do.
Google is a private company and they offer a free -- FREE -- service to users who agree to some terms and conditions of use. These users will most likely be very happy to use this service.
Now can anyone tell me why should the govt even consider thinking about voting anything concerning Gmail!?
No one is FORCED to use it. It's not like a Govt agency decides to send you spam based on your credit report and your annual income... Google is private and the users are free to use it or not.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. I can't. Nothing justifies the intervention of the government in a free, web-based service. Nothing at all. Google does not hide anything and is not violating any law.
The only basis for the vote is that "Google is huge", or something like that. It's just one step away from voting a bill against, say, an automotive email newsletter that contains car ads; or any other free service on the web for that matter.
They just should not have any jurisdiction over the internet... Just screw them. Or better yet: patent the bill and sue them for copyright infringement. I just can't believe those daily stupidities....
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
it didnt matter, google has your data and they can scan it anytime they wanted. And real-time is the only way google works (I have never waited more than 1 second for a result from google).
I didn't think it was legal to single out particular companies for laws to apply to.. it shouldn't be, at least.
Playing devil's advocate here, at least partly.. why/when, in general, is government intervention worthwhile in certain contracts? From a libertarian POV, probably never, or almost never (e.g. preventing certain types of abuses, e.g. slavery). From a liberal point of view, there are some types of contracts that are so naturally one-sided, e.g. landlord-tenant relations, that in order to prevent one side from being excessively harmed by the concentration of power on the other side, the government has seen fit to legislate. One necessary (but not sufficient) component of these types of deals is that the services offered are sufficiently necessary and scarce that it is difficult to live life without them. Another is that there exists a pattern of abuse by one side. It is left as an exercise to the reader to judge this means of thinking about things, and decide what the exact criteria should be for when and what intervention is proper.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
i bet google will be known to cause cancer in the state of california too :p
I would bet that Yahoo and Hotmail are already searching through their users' email and storing the results for ads. They just haven't made the fact public like Google has.
It *is* wrong, however, to force a company to abide by certain terms in regards to totally legal activities.
Let's say that AT&T came out with a new cell plan tomorrow: You can call anyplace with your phone for as long as you want anytime for free. Beforehand, though, you have to listen to an ad for some company and press in a code they mention to prove you listened to the ad.
Should I have the right to sign up for this service? Of course I should -- I'm bartering my time and attention rather than my money, but it's a fair (and legal) trade.
What if AT&T offered the same deal, except that they wanted to be able to listen in on my call if they wanted to. Should I still have the right to sign up? Should I still have the right to decide if I'd rather spend $40 a month on my phone or give up my privacy?
I mean, I'm an adult. WTF does the government get off making these decisions for me, esp. when the people making the laws are a bunch of idiots to begin with?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Gmail is Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer.
Is there an email version of robots.txt to prevent them from doing so?
Why is the government even bothering to interfere? If people don't want Google "reading" their email, then don't use gmail, it's as simple as that.
Oops! I guess someone forgot to tell Google that they should begin making political contributions before announcing the IPO. A good hundred thou should take care of this pesky law.
Your .sig was never more appropriate! ;-)
it's all about control for them. What they stop? Who did they help? Who did they 'protect'? Google will spend time and energy fighting this, or have to work around it, and nobody benefits except the lawmakers who claim they 'did the right thing'.
Yeah, just like CANSPAM stopped spam. (it didn't)
Are you tired of government doing things like this? Me too.
That's why I've join the Free State Project. Imagine 20K liberty minded people all standing up for freedom, willing to be politcally active, and using technology and common sense to achieve a free society. We'll advocate for the end of victimless crime laws (no more drug laws, sex laws, nanny laws), allow privacy tools like encryption, and reduce the size government down to as small as we can make it, lowering taxes, and always respect the rights of those around us. Are you even mildly libertarian? Do you believe that this country is becoming more and more about 'You aren't allowed unless the state says so?' Join us, and help achieve liberty in your lifetime.
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
Not having the text of the bill, I'm a little confused: would this outlaw something like a bayesian spam filter on a server in California? That kind of filter does not filter in "real time" (I think they mean to say "when the mail is read") and it keeps records (word frequency). So did these knuckleheads just outlaw spam filters, or does the text of the bill name Gmail or Google specifically?
Cthulhu loves you.
I've read the article not once now but twice.
Are they drafting this legislation specifically for google?
I seem to remember something about it being bad policy to create laws for specific people or companies. OK, I feel less threatened by curbing corporations but it seems kinda funny considering that google is one of the less evil of the corporations out there.
How is this going to affect Hotmail and Yahoo etc.?
Do other free email providers already scan email?
Maybe they do it but they just don't tell anyone?
The fact that Google is open about it at least gives the idea that they will make an effort to keep their noses clean while doing it. But then I'm assuming that google is less evil than most corporations.
Whatever. I don't consider protecting people from their own stupidity to be a major legislative priority -- all that ever does is end up hurting the rest of us who have some detectible level of brain activity.
To some extent I agree but then it is not for good reason that we have Usury laws in this country. Having a significant part of the population brought to financial ruin does have a trickle effect on the economy as a whole.
But as I said in another post the main problem I see with this legislation is that they are assuming that there is already any degree of privacy to email in the first place. And there is a big difference between regulating car loans, and regulating free email services which you sign up for voluntarily.
There is no privacy in email unless you are using encryption, and if you were using encryption google wouldn't be able to scan it anyway. Will gmail have POP3 access?
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
I agree that government should prevent blatant abuse or taking extreme advantage of desperate people but I can't see how targeted advertising equals usery. This is not depriving anyone of funds people aren't going to sign up for this to get a quick fix only to be unable to pay later.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Must be an election year.
Google should be able to do whatever they want, considering that the customers have agreed to it.
Of course this attempted regulation is not stupid per se - it's just stupid in the context of Google and its e-mail system. If Microsoft were to do this to Windows and implement an uninstallable system that could track your browsing, document editing and other activities in order to collect demographic data, I'd say throw the book at them. The difference? Google doesn't have a monopoly over anything. There are tons of alternatives, both for webmail and e-mail in general. (Of course there are also alternatives to Windows, but for better or worse the world is more dependent on Windows than it is on Gmail.)
I hope silly uses of our government's time like this one don't serve to prevent us from doing useful things with government regulation - like forcing Microsoft to refund your money if you return your unused copy of Windows, or preventing public companies from inflating their stock values for executive sell-offs. There is such a thing as regulation that serves the public good, regardless of what Religious Republicans try to tell you. This just ain't it.
Smoking, drinking, eating too much fat. Most of our laws are set up to protect the unaware from their own actions.
That was my immediate reaction. EFF, the bellwether of electronic privacy issues, doesn't seem to care about this; Google does not appear among their featured news stories. This whole flap about Google's new service threatening privacy seems calculated to scare investors and keep Google from releasing their product until such time as their competitors have something similar.
Many people here are saying that "If you don't like it (GMAIL), then don't sign up for it.". However, what people fail to see here is that once Google launches this service, other e-mail providers are sure to follow in their footsteps. Imagine, two years from now, all of your free e-mail accounts will be scanned; be it hotmail, yahoo, etc. Why wouldn't others want to follow in this path if they give their advertising a target audience in exchange for more $? Google has changed how we searched the web and now they are changing how we use e-mail. These laws are probably not going to be targeted just at Google but at any e-mail that uses similiar technology.
How many fields can I pick where your own stupidity would kill you? Chemicals? Insulation in your home? Guess what, you aren't so smart. If not for legislation, think-they're-smarts like you would probably be dead due to misuse of a consumer product that "any idiot" should know how to manipulate.
If all this legislation is done to avoid the improbable event that Google could misuse information that a few could store in their servers, what about the sure event that Microsoft will misuse the information stored in most PCs everywhere?
I hope that the easier explanation according to Occam (i.e. that legislator is getting an extra payment this month from some private company) is not the right one.
Ok... this could be a flamebait, but is a match fire against the volcano fired by that legislator
Tell her what you think!r oa/
http://democrats.sen.ca.gov/senator/figue
I wrote:
"Dear Senator Figueroa,
Thank you for passing the law regarding gmail. It was nice to see California take the lead role as the laughing stock of the Nation instead of West Virginia."
fuck you California. These sorts of idiotic issues are why you guys are are drowning in debt. Why don't you tackle some real problems, instead of things like what kind of coffee you make people buy (Berkeley City Council), or banning the words "master" and "slave" from computer hardware (Office of Affirmative Action)?
The text of the bill is here. The tracking information for the bill is here.
For everyone wondering, the bill explicitly allows reading email for filtering spam and viruses.
It doesn't matter if you want your email searched or not! Google is supreme because they use Linux!! Your privacy is not important, unless of course Microsoft is involved then it is paramount.
As far as I see, this law is to protect the privacy of the senders who may not realize the nature of Gmail.
Google's arguments over the rights of the senders is weak; it is only Google's promise that it will not read the mail just like provider's automated virus scanner or spam filter.
It is probably OK as far as Google is in the business, but naturally you never know who would take over Google if something happened. You might be held responsible for the violation of their privacy by the senders.
What the hell is good ol' Arnold thinking? I guess he's getting board, and has to go mess something up... just like in terminator.
ZX2C4
They can still scan it realtime and give ads based on keywords, but they can't store it in a database or share that information with other people.
And wouldn't that also mean that they couldn't store characteristics of your emails-- for example say Baynesian statistics-- in order to help identify and flag spam in future? Right now tools like Apple Mail store "training data" characteristics about spam and non-spam in a database on your hard drive. Will GMail be banned from doing this?
This seems to me to be horribly ill-considered.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Spammers:
zackster@gmail.com -- spam away!
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
The reasoning behind it was simple: while YOU (the gmail acct owner) may not have a problem with Gmail scanning your e-mails, *I* (the sender of e-mails to you) might.
I'm not saying I agree with it, rather, I am just pointing out why they did it.
If lawmakers are passing laws that are almost exclusively designed to target google and their services, this just shows how much influence google has. I find it amazing that the internet as a whole hasnt changed copyright law except make it more strict, yet google is able to cause people to pass laws within a very short amount of time. Kind of strange dont you think?
Signing a private contract for an email service isn't about to effect you like the lead in your water did when you were younger.
But if your landlord uses linux then he is kewl and he gets a free pass on /. just like Google. If anyone here thinks this is about anything other than "cred", replace Google with Microsoft in the story and see how many /.'s approve of it.
you can't legislate that shit. google can do whatever the hell they want with users' email, as long as they make it clear that they are doing that. if it was like 'we cache every email and make it public,' who cares? if you don't want all your email public, dont use their service. if you dont want them searching your emails and placing ads based on it, or selling your personal information, don't use it. don't pass laws agains it!
Government does nothing when you need them and sticks their noses in when you don't want them around.
Smarten the fuck up stupid a-holes.
In other news...
Google announced today that they would move their
headquarters up to Oregon in an attempt to escape the lunatic legistature of Kal-i-forn-ya.
A spokesman for Google said, "yeah, we know that the Oregon legislature isn't all that sane either, but at least with Oregon being a much smaller state with lower land prices and cost of living we could just about afford to buy the whole damn state after the IPO if we need to."
Some prominant Oregonians cheered Google's decision noting that the move would add thousands of jobs to the Oregon economy and significantly lower the unemployment rate. The governor of Oregon even offered to rename the state capitol building to "The Google-Lex". Other names were suggested including "The Google-slature".
Of course, in my state (not California) you can only have sex missionary style.
I think that recent supreme court decisions about homosexuality in Texas invalidate this as well.
-1, "1337" speak
Clearly stated that provisions will be made for spam filters. Sorry, the legislature did its homework on this one.
I mean, if you send me email at work, my employer can read it, because it's on a system they own.
Doesn't hotmail claim copyright on everything that passes through it?
If you don't want google to read your mail, don't sign up, and don't send messages to @gmail.com, or to anyone you don't trust not to forward it there.
However, this apparently describes an earlier draft, because this somewhat better article says the bill is about amassing personal information (ie, keeping email that's been deleted) and sharing it with third parties. Which are much more legitimate concerns, but have nothing to do with the targeted ad and search features of Gmail.
So what's the real story? It almost sounds like the revised bill is just a cover for Senator Figueroa's embarrassing early draft.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Gawd, I'm thinking you need to change your sig to Dr. Kevorkian or somesuch. Advocating Hotmail for privacy?
As a user clicks logoff an adv featuring Arnie (la clippy) will say "History WONT be back, it will cease to exist. Do you want to logoff ?"
Striving to be common...
That is the entire point of the legislature, they can simply make actions illegal where they deem necessary. At that point you can appeal to get the law overturned at a higher court but until then its academic.
mean, I'm an adult. WTF does the government get off making these decisions for me
See "American Revolution", "US Constitution", etc etc. At the end of the day they get to make decisions because your forefathers told them they could run the army. Your best bet for disagreeing with their right to pass laws is to build a bigger one.
Private company existing in a free market economy harmlessly collects data for text advertisements... Politicians must then act to protect freedom!
Hmmmm... I can't wait until November...
On another note, I don't know about other people, but ads don't bother me. I simply ignore them. I don't see how ad companies make any sort of profit off of web advertising. Oh! Why I'd love to have an icon on my taskbar to tell me the weather! What? My computer is running too slowly, that really looks like windows dialogue box, so I'd better click on it!
Let me get this straight - you pass your thoughts through a medium that gets beamed all over the electromagnetic spectrum, passes through who knows how many private systems that backup their contents for millenia and are controlled by untold numbers of admins of unknown background
And you're worried about the idea that a box along the way would scan your email's content?
Something is very wrong with this picture.
- GMail isn't even out
- GMail was announce just a bit under two months ago
So the questions are... what if GMail never comes to be, then what of the bill? A waste of time? Who asked for this bill? How is it they moved so quickly on this, isn't congress generally slow?
Official Press Release dated April 1st, 2004.
Sounds like someone has some heavy investments in Goggle's competition, for a bill to be passed on a single company's product that doesn't even exist yet.
I'm not exactly sure, but it sounds like this law, the way it's being stated, would prohibit Google from creating the full-text indexes that are *absolutely necessary* to do fast searches. The *point* of GMail is to have email with the power of google. If I'm gonna be doing searches without any indexes, I might as well stick with my Mozilla Mail client getting mail by POP3 - I already have well over 1Gig of free space on my HD to store mail, and Mozilla has some mail searching capabilities built in.
The only reason GMail is appealing is that I can apply the power of Google (which is built on indexing content) to my mail. *sigh*
If you send me your super secret cold fusion plans by e-mail, and I choose to publish those plans on the web, and google trawls my site and your secret data winds up all over google servers and the web, who is to blame?
I'd suggest either you for not specifing a non-disclosure agreement, or me for ignoring said agreement? not, I would contest, google.
I can't see how the theoretical g-mail situation is any different. Your privacy was compromised when you sent the e-mail to someone else. That's the nature of privacy.
you'd surely see a lot more people replying about how Microsoft is finally getting put in its place, that they just crap on privacy...
And why shouldn't Google move their base of operations out of the US? I strongly dislike judicial or political interference in the quality of service offered. Maybe the premise of fearing abuse of privacy is accurate, but as a programmer, I am offended whenever the government tells me how I can and can not code. It should be up to experienced systems designers and coders to decide how these systems are designed, not issue-pushing baby-kissers.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
All of this extreme anti-Google privacy concern crap is so suspicious.
Of all things to be concerned about in regards to privacy, a free, web-based email service seems hardly enough to even loose any sleep over. I can think of a TON of other privacy concerns that would and should come miles before a GMail account.
Which leads me to believe that there's more going on here than we know and realize. Specifically, at least two well-known companies with a lot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ENORMOUS lobbying power would have reason to want Google's GMail to fail -- Hotmail, Yahoo. And we all know what kind of anti-competitive tactics one of those is known for.
All of this blatant extremist attitude towards GMail could stem from these facts. Since I'm wearing my hat, I'd wager that it probably does.
In any regard, if I was a California citizen, I would be e-mailing these so-called representatives and inform them that they would not be receiving my vote next election and that I would be spreading the word to my friends, neighbors and family.
Like liberating Afghanistan and Iraq?
http://democrats.sen.ca.gov/senator/figueroa/
(Type "gmail" into the search box")
She also has a convenient Feeback option which you can use to educate her, or share your thoughts.
Luckily amendments to the bill bring it into line with what Google was going to do anyway.
-Ian Danforth
I have a hunch this has more to do with money than anything. How much do you want to bet that someone from Microsoft paid a visit to Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa's office recently? Its hard to imagine that Figueroa just came up with this on her own out of the goodness of her own heart...
Casca
Here is the text from the actual bill SB 1801:
.
BILL NUMBER: SB 1822 AMENDED
BILL TEXT
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 20, 2004
INTRODUCED BY Senator Figueroa
FEBRUARY 20, 2004
An act to add Section 1798.87 to Title
1.81.15 (commencing with Section 1798.88) to Part 4 of Division 3 of
the Civil Code, relating to privacy.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
SB 1822, as amended, Figueroa. Privacy: social security
numbers: sales online communications
Existing law protects the privacy of personal information,
including customer records and social security numbers. Existing law
prohibits a person or entity located in California from initiating
or advertising in unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements, as
defined, and prohibits a person or entity not located in California
from initiating or advertising in unsolicited commercial e-mail
advertisements sent to a California e-mail address.
This bill would prohibit a provider of e-mail or instant messaging
services, as defined, that serves California customers, from
reviewing or evaluating the content of a customer's e-mail or instant
messages, except as specified. The bill would permit a provider of
e-mail or instant messaging services to review and evaluate the
content of a customer's outgoing e-mail or instant messages with the
customer's consent, and would permit a provider to review and
evaluate the content of incoming e-mail or instant messages only from
another subscriber to the same service and only when that subscriber
has consented to the procedure.
Existing law prohibits a person or entity, except as specified,
from publicly posting or displaying an individual's social security
number, and from printing that social security number on a card
required for the individual to access products or services.
This bill would provide that a person or entity that sells a
social security number is strictly liable to the person to whom the
social security number applies for any and all damages that directly
or indirectly result from the sale. The bill would except specified
transactions from its provisions.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: no.
State-mandated local program: no.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. Section 1798.87 is added to the Civil Code, to
SECTION 1. Title 1.81.15 (commencing with Section 1798.88) is
added to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, to read:
TITLE 1.81.15 PRIVACY OF ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS
1798.88. For the purpose of this title:
(a) "Electronic mail" or "e-mail" means an electronic message that
is sent to an e-mail address and transmitted between two or more
telecommunications devices, computers, or electronic devices capable
of receiving electronic messages, whether or not the message is
converted to hard copy format after receipt or is viewed upon
transmission or stored for later retrieval. "Electronic mail" or
"e-mail" includes electronic messages that are transmitted through a
local, regional, or global computer network.
(b) "Instant messaging service" means a service that alerts a
person when another person is online and allows them to communicate
with each other in current time in private, online areas.
(c) "Provider of electronic mail or instant messaging service"
means any person, including an Internet service provider, that is an
intermediary in sending or receiving electronic mail or instant
messages or that provides to users of the electronic mail or instant
messaging service the ability to send or receive electronic mail or
instant messages.
(d) "Spam" means an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement
NO, 99% of the legal statutes and precedents are TORT LAW. I am not going to debate this with you, ask a lawyer. The tort laws regarding home insulation are probably more voluminous than all of the criminal code.
when I SEND someone e-mail I don't want someone else to read it.
Then don't send it through normal email--it goes through quite a few different servers and most of them probably filter spam. That means they *gasp* read the content of your email. People don't (just like Google staff doesn't) but the computers do. It's the same thing.
link
Doctors use e-mail to respond to medical inquiries from their patients. Lawyers use it to communicate confidential strategy to clients. Businesses use it to discuss trade secrets and confidential product development. Troops far away from home use it to communicate their hopes and fears to loved ones. E-businesses use e-mail to deliver confidential usernames, passwords and financial interaction information.
For e-commerce to grow, and for California's high-tech economy to grow with it, consumers need to be confident that their Internet-based shopping and communication is private and secure.
Yet, Internet giant Google has recently placed all of this at risk. [...]
-- four
Read more than the intro paragraph (it is BS), the detailed analysis is quite interesting. The big argument is that even though the Gmail account holder agreed to have their email profiled, the other party(ies) did not.
Now one has to think! If MS tried this, we would cry foul. But Google is one of the good guys...but guess what, they are going public! In a few years, they might be owned by Bill Gates, The Home Shopping Network, or the Direct Marketing Association.
Seriously.
/really/ wanted to help the common man keep his emails from prying eyes, they'd start a program to fund OSS development to help make OpenPGP software more easily accessible and usable.
Without encryption, everything we send via email is essentially world-readable anyway.
To suggest that the passing of this legislation will help to keep GMail's user's communications private is like saying that invading Iraq helped the U.S. government in its fight against terrorism.
If they
But that's not something California should be dumping resources into right now anyway.
Now they are trying to ban cell phones in cars, starting with children. They have already passed legislation to make your computer more expensive by adding a fee for your monitor or LCD screen. They have banned the use of notebook computers and other technology in the front seat. They are charging and enforcing a huge use tax on all internet purchases. And this is just a start.
Now Figueroa (D-Fremont) and the Senate are targeting Google personally with SB 1822. All of Silicon Valley voted for this bill except for one abstain, Sher (D-Stanford).
Those in Silicon Valley are going to either buy back they Democrats from the Unions (and they have tons of money to fight back) or vote for Republicans.
Is there a way to get a list of everyone who voted in favor of this bill? So I can save it and treasure it until election day, and do my part to get rid of these assholes?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the past is any indication, if MSN offered the same service, government would look the other way.
welcome out Google overlords. Make me search oh great google masters.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
1) Unless you encrypt them, your emails are not private. No encryption == no privacy. It's that simple. The ignorance of the masses regarding this fact does not make it any less true.
/dictate/ those policies will have ill effect sooner or later.
2) The internet is far more transparent (and is far more scannable by the common man) than the phone system. See (1).
3) Laws like this have a way of coming back to bite us in the ass. Suppose you want your emails scanned and routinely data-mined, for example. In such a case, there is no victim, so what good is the law?
I'm ok with laws that say that companies must make their privacy policies publicly readable, but laws that
I like your phone analogy. Because what Gmail is doing is applicable to other media. The real Gmailphone analogy would be a phone service that has a machine that uses speech recognition to "listen" to the conversation and say every 3 minutes interrupts and plays an ad. The conversation is not recorded and is all done in real time. The words picked out are not stored after the call, and it is not recorded who listened to what ad. Where is the privacy issue? Nowhere! You could do a similar thing for voicemail. Now how long before I see the above "obvious" system in a patent? (esepecially one issued after 29th May 2004). But that will be the topic of another post...
the internet is currently dealing with tons of scams, spam, spyware, hijackers.. and they are concerned about gmail?? An optional email service by a company. Gmail is one of the far more legit things going on here.
No really, everybody disses this sort of legislative as "dumb" or yells "if you want it to be private, go elsewhere"... Everyone - at least the modded up comments at this point - believes that there will be no problems whatsoever because he is in control, knows what he is doing and so on.
Legislative like that *is* supposed to protect people from their own stupidity. Google's plan may not look that big a threat to you, but maybe you're overlooking something? Just because this is a field most users of slashdot are experienced in they diss this initiative. Well, did you also say the same about food regulations? Privacy bills? Wat about laws like the PATRIOT act most people get hyped up about? "You shouldn't worry, after all you're no terrorists, right?" would be the same rebuttal...
Too tired to make more sense. This thing is important, you'll understand it in 5-10 years from now...
To me the jury is still out on Gmail, because I don't trust any company, Google included, to responsibly use my personal information. Let me play devils advocate for just a second.
;) All I can go by is this article, for now.
1) This bill according to everything I can see only restricts Google to how it can advertise. It can advertise on demand as emails are brought up, but what it can't do is create a massive indexed database with personal information based on emails I send with which to shell out advertisements to me. Why aren't more people scared to death of a database like that? We bitch and moan about governments creating databases like that, and giving up information to advertisers, why aren't we scared of this?
2) Everyone here is saying "if you don't like it, don't sign up for it." Great, but what happens when Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, AOL, etc, start doing it themselves? It makes it a lot more serious, especially if all those guys now have databases with personal information. My nice local ISP doesn't have that problem, but consumers are decent people who just don't have time to learn all this computer shit like everyone else, so they use hotmail. Go easy on them.
3) Does anyone one have a link to this law... PLEASE? People claim to have "read" this law but I'm too damn lazy to go searching for it when I've never even bothered to go to the California website to check it out. If there's no link here how are people making real comments on it... flamers usually don't usually read this stuff anyway so pardon me if I don't trust the Slashdot crowd
4) This isn't restricting if Gmail can advertise, just how and what it does with personal information. There are already several laws and practices on the books about personal information. Collecting personal information is a huge boon to any major company because then they can shove ads down your throat, despite what most people truly want. Doing the wrong thing with personal information gets some companies in hot water but a lot of times it creates a huge windfall for that same company.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Part of the Second American Revolution!
U. S. Postal Service to Offer Free Postcards
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Postal Service announced today that it would offer a free postcard service. The service known as FreeMail will debut later this summer and provide people with a way to communicate without paying the price of postage.
"We now have a low-cost alternative to postcard-rate stamps." Stated Postal Service Spokesperson. "When sending a postcard, all you need to do is write a small 'X' where the stamp goes and its free." The service will permit the Postal Service to scan the contents of your postcard message and print targeted text advertisements in the available blank-space. "We promise not to use any annoying images so the advertisements will be in unobtrusive red lettering."
Privacy advocates raised concerned about the scheme stating that it violated the basic trust of the government to transport the mail. The Postal service addressed these concerns by saying, "A FreeMail postcard is scanned by a computer that analyzes the text and based on the the location of the mailing, the destination, and the subject-matter of the sender's message, the recipient will see a pizza delivery number or coupon code for a local dry-cleaner. its really a great way to promote local business." The spokesperson also indicated that the postcards would be rarely analyzed by a human and the text of the messages would only be kept for "a short while" to identify message trends and to fine-tune the system. "You can always pay your 23 cents and send it by regular mail."
"We expect airlines to be some of our first advertisers, displaying flight deals to some of the exotic locations that the postcards are mailed from. Of course, if the postcard says 'This place is terrible,' then you may see an ad for a car dealer instead." The Postal Service stated that FreeMail would only be available for hand-written postcards. "We don't want a pizza delivery ad printed on a postcard from a realtor. That would be tacky."
The Postal Service Spokesperson concluded by saying, "We just hope we don't get Slashdotted with mail."
Email body:Google ad:
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
State Sen. Liz Figueroa:
Capital Office:
(916) 445-6671
Fax (916) 327-2433
District Office:
(510) 413-5960
Fax (510) 413-5965
E-mail: Senator.Figueroa@sen.ca.gov
You have conveniently omitted the qualifier "potential for" in my statement "potential for invasion of privacy" and thereby changed its meaning to suit your assertion.
is no more or less an invasion than that of regular Google searches.
Utterly ridiculous - searches do not generally include names, phone numbers and personal information. The potential for abuse is what is causing the storm, not the stated intent.
DMCA... Gulf War...
Legislators don't have all of the facts before they pass laws. Nobody does. They do the best the can, but they certainly don't protect me any better than I do. That's why it's your responsibility to protect yourself.
In any event, I should have to the right to enter into a contract with a cleaning supply maker even if I know that use of that cleaning product will cause deformities in my children. Perhaps shiny chrome is more important than kids. I'll get a visectomy and clean my car, thank you very much!
Oh, and I'll use GMail, too.
--
Remove the Kiddie Gloves!
I'd rather semi relevant ads be displayed on the top of my email messages than irrelevant and useless ads! For God's sake, hows is this a bad thing? Nobody outlaws spam-killing software - that scans your emails as well!
-Imidazole2
Of course these laws are never enforced, so no one really cares about (and if they were repealed, we would have nothing to laugh about).
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
NO BLOOD FOR EMAIL!!!
This is really pissing me off. This is simply unacceptable. Google is really a good company, with their "do-no-evil" policy and nonintrusive method of making $$$.
YOU, the user, ACCEPT THE AGREEMENTS when you sign up. That should be between YOU and GOOGLE, not Mr. Politician's job.
Sure, there are ridiculous EULA but targetting Google like this is ridiculous.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Well I guess CA will not be able to use it then. Just have a disclaimer that says that CA can't use this service. Then we will se if them dumb ass people will keep passing dumb ass laws.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
If you're in such a small minority that no one provides a service catering to your special whims, then no, you shouldn't be able to choose what kind of service you want. If no email service to your liking exists, I would hope your first inclination would be to pull up your boot straps and start coding, not to head to Sacramento as a lobbyist.
Gmail regulation will probably be as good for consumers as California's regulation of African hair braiders, Tennessee's regulation of discount coffin sellers, New Orlean's regulation of curbside book vendors, or Louisiana's regulation of flower arrangers. Behind the scenes, so many times, regulation like this (to ostensibly protect consumers) is actually rent seeking: politically-connected private businesses using government to coerce a state-protected cartel for themselves.
The justification for the law sounds nice: we want to protect email users from this new, nasty, privacy-invading Gmail. But I haven't heard a peep of complaint about Gmail from users, only from Google's competition . If Open Government Information Awareness weren't down right now, I'd look up Senator Figueroa's contributors. I smell a rat.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
And the /. crowd is up in arms AGAINST the legislation? Somebody tell me what they put in my water supply.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
A thousand years ago, someone would stand up and recite the law at the big council meeting. If he left anything out, and nobody cared enough to object, then that law was repealed.
Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.
- Try fewer keywords.
If Google stopped providing their services to ISP's in California. I wonder how they'd react then. They'd have all rights to do so at least, IMHO..
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I don't really fully know what to make of the proposals themselves.. but it is extremely interesting how law & technology are catching up finally. For better or for worse, the fact that laws are being proposed for a service that isn't even fully functional yet is very interesting.
Just don't let californians use Gmail until they quit passign stupid legislation that will harm the product for all of us.
oh ok.. hmm.. so Carnivore and Echelon are ok... but when Google does it law makers are all of a sudden concerned about privacy?
Go f... yourself...its a volunteer service. The rest of the email online is not.
Besides, who parses my email first? Google or Carnivore? maybe Google isn't playing nice and thats whats going on.
The issue is about choice. No one is forcing you to email your recipient at their gmail account.
So what if they only have a gmail account? Tell them they have to open another account to get your email.
Not worth it to them to open another / check another account? Then its *your choice* if you are willing to get your email read by a computer as much as it is the *other person's choice* if they are willing not to open account because they think someone who won't email @gmail.com is over the top.
Its all about choice - tradeoffs of cost versus benefits.
Forcing government regulation is incredibly stupid because no one is forcing anyone to open a gmail account and no one is forcing you to email a gmail account. If you choose not to email a gmail account, others have to pay the cost of not getting your email to get the benefit of using gmail. Its their choice if they choose gmail over getting your email.
I live in California. I'm glad our legislators have decided to spend their time working on a bill which affects something I can *choose* whether to use or not (it's not like Google's got a monopoly on free e-mail services), rather than... oh, say, sorting out the State's budget defecit, dreadful school systems, lack of decent health care, the flight of businesses because of exhorbitant taxes and workers' comp requirements, etc etc etc.
On the other hand, working on those problems wouldn't have resulted in nearly as many soundbites and TV appearances, so I quite understand the reluctance to tackle them...
We really need to get these legislators into some re-education camps where they can be indoctrinated with Hayak's theories of self-organizing open systems. This is a perfect example of such a system, and needs no government interference. The market will decide for itself whether Google's new service is worth the cost (email scanning for adwords) or not, as people experience first hand the tradeoffs involved in Google's novel scheme. All the legislature need concern itself with is whether Google is being completely forthcoming and transparent about the details of their service or not, which it appears they are doing of their own accord. Hands off, you commies-without-a-cause!
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Legislators generally propose regulating an industry primarily in order to get that industry to cough up campaign contributions. Of course this bill does nothing to protect consumers -- that's not its real goal! The real goal is simply to make sure that a big chunk of the $2.7 billion raised in the IPO goes to politicians.
Once Google gets the message and hires a few political consultants to start spreading green around, the problem will go away. It's like the Microsoft antitrust trial, but on a slightly smaller scale.
I play Nerd-Folk!
All email that I send, unless it's encrypted, I treat the same as if I was sending a postcard and assume everyone between me and the recipient can & will read the contents.
Can you imagine the campaign ads that could be used against them in the future? "Robert Lawmaker voted against a law protecting the privacy of consumers from evil private corporations. Do you want this man to be your President? Paid for by the Running Against Robert Lawmaker campaign."
Is it just me or does this sound like it was ripped from the pages of a book written decades ago? I wonder two things: 1) Which company (Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) got this bill passed? 2) How much were the congresspeople paid? Who gave the government the power to stifle innovation? Oh yeah, we did. Who never objected when they did so? That was us too. Are we so envious to fight corporations who have earned their position in exchange for mediocrity?
I dunno, set up filters?
Why weren't they this conscientious and forward thinking when spam wasn't a problem yet?
Oh. Heh. Yeah. It's because the little guy was the victim there.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Send it earlier... twice.
I'm posting this for tomorrow... so if you mod it Funny today everybody can laugh in advance...
It's hilarious watching people pee their pants about a product that MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Did'nt the founders of google say that gmail is being TESTED. It just does not occur to people that they may not ever deploy it in production....for reasons completely different than all the hair pulling that people are doing.
If we are going to start passing laws against "possible products" why don't we go into the research labs of Microsoft or Orcale or Sun or RedHat or whomever....write down all the things we object to and then pass laws to restrict their development. THEN we'll all be safe and secure! Riiiight
Wait until it comes out...then bitch and moan, but to do so while it's in development is goofy. Ideas (even bad ones) are routinely batted around inside places like google and other companies. Just because you see them in alpha or beta does not MEAN you are going to see them in the final.
> Advocating Hotmail for privacy?
Nope, I'm not advocating. I'm just pointing out that gmail isn't the only online mail service. Hell, it doesn't even exist yet!
My other car is first.
If you are that parinoid then you must already be encrypting your e-mail to keep out the vouyers. To repeat what others have said "free" email has all the privacy of a postcard. By sending a mail to your friend @google you are using Google's "free" service. Why should Google pay to pass your message on to a friend, where is your 50c e-mail stamp? You see when you regulate away the sponsors it will no longer be "free". I'm just glad that the rest of the world dosen't revolve around Califonian law.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What if one of those small print lines in the user agreement said "I'll give half my salary to x company, in exchange for clicking through this link." There are limits to what can legally be enforced for good reason, and contracts have an implied notion of reasonability. You can't use fine print to rope people into horrid situations, nor should you be able to. A contract is an exchange, never a one sided surrender. And some rights are, and should be, inaliable.
The 'usually say the same thing' in contracts is called boilerplate, and it's a result of the current legal situation which demands a fair exchange for the contract to be enforcable. By standardizing contracts, you eliminate the waste of time associated with having to read 20 pages of text every time you need to sign somthing.
Enforcing miniscule text changes in boilerplate might be appealing theoretically, but it'd be hell in the real world and make entering into agreements the mental equivalent of writing a graduate level thesis. This isn't reasonable or efficient.
True, ignorance of the law is not an adequate defense. But the presumption (true or not) is that the law is a fair contract between citizen and state, an equitable covenant between two parties. If that presumption of fairness doesn't apply to a contract, then those contracts shouldn't be binding. (The only possible exception is if it is made very clear that the signer gives informed consent to the unfair contract.)
Too many corporations abuse contracts quite severely, and it's only the fact that some clauses aren't binding that saves people from being raked through a living hell. For instance; you can't forefit your ability to earn a living using your job skills, when you sign a non-compete clause.
I agree, in the case of google, that users may be able to give informed consent and the gov's actions may be off base.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
What if I want them to search my mail in advance?
1. define your search criteria and save them.
2. check the "apply search on log in" option.
If 10 of my friends all have GMail, and I e-mail them, Google is now caching MY messages on their servers forever!
Without this law, Google is not required to ever delete my e-mails, even after I mark them for deletion -- or cancel my account.
I love google, and their 100,000 servers, but I love some privacy too. You say "don't sign up" -- but what if all my friends sign up? Now everything I write is cached on Google forever, almost like a newsgroup!
Guess we should give up scanning for spam and viruses, and put in a complaint to hotmail for scanning it multiple times.
Hell, i trust google a lot more with my private data than i would hotmail or Yahoo.
Don't like the idea? Don't use em! Just do not destroy it for those (me) that do like it.
THE PROBLEM IS people who think they have a right to free email with zero strings attached. This is a business model. Don't like what Google is doing? DON'T SIGN UP YOU FREAKING MORONS. No one is MAKING people use gmail. The thought that some stupid tree-huggers in california (god please fall off into the ocean) are using this to try to make a social statement is infuriating. The idea of making this illegal is so awesomely STUPID and a waste of tax payers money (or, that is to say, normal usage of tax payers money) At some point, people are responsible for their actions (something we've long forgot here in the good ol' USA) This is STRICTLY about choice - any other statement made is simply trying to cloud the subject with some other political/personal agenda. If you want to get angry about something you're being forced to do, jesus christ sound off about the silly state of the tax code (where we are practically required to pay someone to figure out how much we should pay the government) Better yet..go climb a tree and leave the rest of us alone.
Damn tree hugging hippies...
Maybe things are different in the US though... Or maybe, if it was BASE-64 encoded or something, you'd also have DMCA problems to deal with :-)
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
"The final decision on whether it becomes law falls to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who can approve it or decide to terminate it."
While it is true that you have copyright and thus the only person cannot republish your content.
This in no way applies to Gmail, Google is simply 'reading' your e-mail.
You cannot publish a book, copyright it and then say "The only people who are allowed to read this book are those who agree with me". Anyone can read the book, and do what they like with it (including get your name & address then send you junk mail).
Seriously, how do you think the species managed to survive, nay, thrive, when up until quite recently, there was no government which regulated much of anything beyond weights-and-measures?
Obvious answer: most people are actually quite smart, and when they know they aren't, they go hire someone who is.
You should learn to treat adults as adults, leave children to parents, and let Darwin take care of the rest.
I'm actually paraphrasing him from a different version of HHGTTG that fell out of a parallel universe. :-)
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I just re-read the 5 books (plus Young Zaphod Plays it Safe) twice in the past couple months. I love the train ride. ;-)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.