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?"

Comments

Initial thoutghts.

[vicviper]

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.

Re:What, do lawmakers get paid per law now?

[six11]

Just one of my many ideas on how to make government better: affix a time limit on every law. When the time limit is up, they have to vote on it again, and it has to pass with a larger percentage than it did the first time. Not only would this cull out silly knee-jerk laws like Patriot or this Google nonsense, it would also force lawmakers to deal with their mistakes by repealing laws, rather than spending time fucking things up for everybody else and increasing the number of laws on the books.

Re California: If Cally is so cool, why are you all migrating to Colorado?

What!?

[Neurotoxic666]

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....

Disclosure good, forced terms bad.

[Skyshadow]

There's nothing wrong with forcing a company to disclose what they're going to do. There's nothing wrong with forcing them to put it in simple language, nothing wrong with forcing them to point out other options.

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?

Re:No kidding

[JofCoRe]

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.

Hmm, messages scanned for content by the receiving mail server... nothing at all like these MailScanner and SpamAssassin packages that we have installed on our mailservers, that scan every piece of received mail for content. :)

(and we don't even tell the sender that we're "reading" their mail!)

Why is there so much AGAINST this law?

[hellfire]

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.

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 ;) All I can go by is this article, for now.

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.