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Upcoming EU Data Law Will Make Europe Tricky For Social Networks
Thorfinn.au writes "EU politicians are mulling new data protection laws that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks. The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner drew up proposals for the new data protection law which reads: 'EU law should require that consumers give their explicit consent before their data are used. And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the internet themselves. We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU.'"
...Such as Google. Given that information posted on social networks is generally searchable, that information, once cached, is very, very difficult to erase.
See: Wayback Machine. I've used this wonderful site myself, very recently, to grab snapshots of a website I helped set up in 1997 (kitbag.com, which sells sportswear), to show someone something (which was relevant to the conversation at the time, I can't remember now what that was all about even though it wasn't two weeks ago...). Said site now uses php, I believe; way back then it was coded in ASP.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
the so called "Social networks" look more and more like voluntary surveillance databases !!
aaaaaaa
Dear Service Provider, Please delete all my data (texts, phonecalls, emails, etc) that you have stored due to the data retention directive. Thank you.
Heavens forbid we might actually regain control over our data again. Oh the humanity, how ever will the industry survive? They might need to actually check and track data internally after they've raped and pillaged it (although you can't rape the willing).
That would also make it awkward for search engines such as Google. Given that information posted on social networks is generally searchable, that information, once cached, is very, very difficult to erase.
See: Wayback Machine. I've used this wonderful site myself, very recently, to grab snapshots of a website I helped set up in 1997 (kitbag.com, which sells sportswear), to show someone something (which was relevant to the conversation at the time, I can't remember now what that was all about even though it wasn't two weeks ago...). Said site now uses php, I believe; way back then it was coded in ASP.
This only means that Google would have to respond to a takedown request directly from the person who owned the profile (or their heirs) -- they wouldn't be responsible for a request made to Facebook to delete data, because they would not receive a copy of that request. As for the data already cached, Facebook et al are going to have to do some major purging AND send search engines a request to do the same. Until they do, Google should not have to purge anything since they didn't originally collect it. Now this data protection act WOULD apply to Google+, but not so much to the search engine.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Google (as in the search engine) would probably not come under the scope of these laws; they merely forward information received from another source. Compliance with data protection laws is the responsibility of the database maintainer, which in this case would be the social network site. Google would have some responsibilities, but generally they comply with these anyway (not showing data to somebody who couldn't access it directly being the main one).
I have had issues with Google myself and they were not interested in taking any action. I posted some comments to a BBC web site but due to the way the page was laid out the snippet presented in the Google search results was actually the half-baked half-xenophobic comment of the next person. Google's attitude was that the only way to get the information removed would be to have the BBC do it.
In the end I contacted the BBC and rather than fix the page they just deleted it. There goes some otherwise useful content.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It seems the EU believes that some social network practices are hostile to its citizens and I can hardly disagree. Remember those complaints to fb from that group of Austrian students? It's an interesting reading for anybody who designs any service handling customer data (basically all of them).
Very interesting language. It suggests that data you haven't posted might be considered yours. I wonder how this applies to a range of gray areas social networking sites provide - such as someone posting a compromising photo of you, or even more interesting, something you've posted but someone else shared/reposted.
(Bad form to reply to myself, but I just thought of this.)
Google+ is still in beta. It is still within the realm of possibility that Google could comply by nuking ALL their stored data and making everyone build a new profile. Facebook would probably suffer badly if they decided to go this route.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I disagree with the earlier poster who said it was difficult to delete data once it was cached. That is not true. A data "cache" by its very nature is transitory; once the cache is routinely updated, "cached" data that has been deleted goes away.
If it doesn't, then it isn't "cached" at all... it is stored. That is a different matter. Like the WayBack machine that was used as a (bad) example. WayBack doesn't "cache" data, it stores it for long term.
But none of that has any real relevance for "social networks", except for items that are explicitly made public. Certainly it is true that nobody has a right to expect privacy or exclusivity to data that has been deliberately made public.
What this really affects is your private communications and connections to other people, and what you have stored on some social network that ISN'T public. I happen to agree that somebody should have the right to delete such "personal" or "private" data, and that when it is deleted, it should go away... permanently.
We all know that Facebook reserves the right to store data permanently. Your deleted data is truly deleted, but their TOS explicitly says that they have no obligation whatever to delete data from their archives. That would indeed run afoul of the European data protection laws... but so what? That's Facebook's problem. There is nothing that says a perfectly good and legitimate social network could not be built that conforms to those laws.
Could they legally do that? Not having read the TOU nor am I up on current US IP regs... I would think though, as a sane man probably would (I make no absolute claim to sanity), that stapling "BETA" to a product and adding something to the TOU *would* cover them in this case... I could be dead wrong and stand to be corrected.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the internet themselves
We need an automatic Streisand Amplification System that immediately draws attention to anything a user has requested deletion of. Especially if it's pictures.
I may stand corrected on this issue, with one caveat:
Would Google's use of the term "cached" not apply if it meant it in the transitory sense, in that hardware may fail at any point causing the data, which for whatever reason is not mirrored, to be lost forever? Does that not fulfil the technical requirement of proper use of the term "cached"?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Companies that are archiving personal information for such purposes as being evaluated for a job position will just keep the data offshore.
If you don't want your private life made public, don't put it on the net.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
If you chose to delete your google+ account, it says it'll "try and destroy all data".
Keyword, try - I deleted mine, no idea if they really destroyed anything, but it says there was no way to recover my account if I went through with it.
FTFY
The wayback machine is a wonderful thing, yes... But a positive example doesn't negate a negative one.
Guns are a good thing - they really helped that one time in the forest when a bear attacked you. They just sucked badly, when a good friend got shot.
Cigarettes are a good thing, because they make you look 'cool' - until lung cancer sets in, at which case, cigarettes probably weren't quite as cool.
The wayback machine is nice to look at some of your old work - but the wayback machine also allows you to remove your site from it - not an individual page or version, yes, but at least it does give you _some_ way to keep a lid on your data.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Another bad side may also be when you change opinions on something over time, and people find pages of you arguing 'the other side' - maybe you were against abortion at some point, now your pro abortion - and some of your pro-abortion friends might find pages of you advocating against (or vice versa).
There are certainly things I argued 20 years back (_on the net_) that are still visible, but that I now see fallacies of. And I have no chance of removing the old comments. If you discuss something just among friends, you can, at least, hope that they'll forget it over time - or that they will also see how your change of heart comes about and therefore ignore what you said before.
On the net, you don't have that choice.
You may now argue, that people should think better before they post - but how often do you read the "How to avoid beginner's mistakes on XYZ", _before_ making some of them?
In my case, 20 years ago, I wouldn't have thought that that data would still be around now; at least, not publicly - at the time, I just didn't think it was feasible storage-wise to keep it all. Now I know different.
Today you might be thinking - well, whatever I post, I don't think anyone will be able to find it 10 years from now - but you're basing that thinking on technology that you see today; and you might think google will not have an easy time finding what you said 10 years ago, so it will not manage to do that 10 years from now, either. On the other hand, in those 10 years, technology will grow leaps and bounds - maybe in 10 years, you can just click on a photo of someone on the internet, and just right-click and select 'personal history' and the future google dredges up _all_ it can find on that person: from the 'more informed' comments that person might be making then, to childish comments uttered in the early 2000s.
http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html Lets face it social networks are scum. I do not do face palm, twitter or any other social networking sites. It is better for you not to follow the sheep for publicity use either as an individual or a business.
The best overview of Social Networks based on my life experience of well over 40 years, is simply like real life friends and so called friends. When you have money, a nice car, a nice house etc people want to know you. The same if you are famous. When all your money and fame disappears, so do the "flies around shit" and you are only left with a handful of true friends :)
Just like politicians and most media; they will run from one "Crisis to the next". Once you can get your mind around that truth... truly it really does help you feel more at peace with yourself and others.
All cows eat grass!
First of all, the analogies are all wrong. Cigarettes are never good, guns don't turn bad all of the sudden if they are misused — the user does. As for the "but it will stay there forever" — it's the point of the internet. What you want — is to allow personal form of censorship, but that is not what the internet is all about. If you don't want something on the internet — don't put it there. Period.
Do you really need to ask that? Just like with most terms, intent is what matters. If your intent is to store the item long term, then it's not a cache.
Contrary to what some people here seem to believe, this is also how the courts decide on things: Definitions of terms can be argued -- and they often are -- but trying to weasel out with some overly literal reading like you did will get you a nasty look from the judge and nothing else....
You make it sound like google has some kind of legal obligation to keep your g+ data alive. Had you PAID for their services you might have a leg to stand on, but at this point they're just being nice by NOT purging it!
I disagree with the earlier poster who said it was difficult to delete data once it was cached. That is not true. A data "cache" by its very nature is transitory; once the cache is routinely updated, "cached" data that has been deleted goes away.
That is one way of using cache, but not the only way. For example you could have an image cache that works on a LRU principle, give a hash get a picture in return. There's no "routinely updated", just that what hasn't been used in a long time falls off the cache. If a user deletes a picture - or what is really the reference to a picture, how long until you can be absolutely sure it's fallen off every cache and you've complied with the deletion request? Answer: You can't. You have to explicitly send all commands to every cache that if you have this picture, drop it. And that doesn't account for any and all backups you might have with it, that isn't cache but can also be very complicated.
Of course, if you delete the reference then in theory people can't reach it, but if the server is compromised then an attacker could get access to all of them, even "unlinked" pictures. Maybe it's obvious from the content, maybe you can find some logs showing what account it used to belong to, whatever. In any case you can't really say with certainty that the data really is gone until the picture itself has been deleted (or possibly wiped). And that can be a non-trivial thing to do on a huge infrastructure.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
True. And contrary to this news items title, this law will make true social networks thrive - just not corporate controlled ones. I already meet the letter of the law with Disapora, and am perfectly happy thank you.
Facebook will have no problems complying with the law. All the service providers working in the individual EU countries which protect privacy already do.
" that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks."
In my view it's the opposite. It makes it a consumer protected place. It should (in theory) protect users from spamware data mining "businesses" wich might also help prevent scams by making them less efficient at targeting new victims.
Nope, no problem at all. Unless one subscribes to the delusion that *information* that you give to all of the world can be considered "yours" and that you could still control it. (Otherwise known as the "intellectual property" protection racket.)
That works with *physical* objects in a world with a *police*. But not with *information* on the *Internet*. Ever. Just as DRM.
1. If you send a network packet with personal information of you to a server (like Facebook), with that law, then that server has to tell you before doing anything with it. Which will be solved with something as simple as: "I agree that that information will be sent to everyone who requests it from our server." On the input form where you enter that information. ;)
2. If you send your information out to anyone requesting it (e.g. from your own server, home server, Opera Unite, or something alike), without attaching any rules beforehand, then you have only yourself to blame and aren't entitled to anything.
3. In any case, denying that any rules attached in an information transaction are completely worthless and as stupid as copyright/DRM/IP/etc , since you won't have any control over what happens to it anyway, especially with untrustworthy recipients, *will* result in me coming over and handing you your own Darwin award after you've executed your chosen way to take yourself out of reproduction for your bio-mass and your ideas.
4. And third/fourth party (like Google and the Wayback Machine) that has a copy of any information that was freely available on the net, does not owe you anything and can do with it whatever it wants.
Of course, Facebook will still argue that those advertisement companies are really not third parties and part of them.
What I wonder though is what they mean with "Used". It is technically impossible to recieve a data packet and not "use" it, since processing it in any way, even by decoding it and caching it, would be "using".
Also, what is the point of deleting data that has been available freely on the net? You lost control, It's *too late*. You physically can't control it anymore, unless you suggest putting a TCPA/DRM chip in everyone's head.
But hey, this comes from the same people who think you could hide child porn from the net by redirecting DNS entries to another HTTP server, and act like it would prevent child porn, when all it does is help it stay undercover.
That's great, but I think we should push it further. Why not extend it to countries? Then Germany can go back to the innocent ideologies it argued in its youth, and erase them from history books. America can go and remove references to all the pesky slaughtering of indigenous inhabitants they did during their younger days. Why should there be any accountability for actions done in the past, now that those who did them are older and wiser?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I have never used Facebook, never signed in to their service, never clicked on a button to like anything but still they seem to have created a profile for me and started to spam trying to force me to sign in.
I tracked down the data to the (IMHO illegal) scan of address books of friends of mine who weren't aware that Facebook were to use this data to build profiles for people who don't use their service and then would start a spam regime to try to get those to sign in. If I were to pursue this issue currently I could only go after my friends but that would only reduce my real life social network not the phoney online community to which I have no ties whatsoever and to which I never ever want to have any ties in the future. If the new european law would be passed I could go after Facebook and finally get rid of this annoying garbage they send me every few weeks about what I am missing and who is missing me (the latter I know isn't true because I have regular real life contact with my friends) and who is playing which game now...
For me they could make FB and other data hogging social networks illegal and block traffic from their servers throughout Europe, most people would be far better off without them...
I have never used Facebook, never signed in to their service, never clicked on a button to like anything but still they seem to have created a profile for me and started to spam trying to force me to sign in. I tracked down the data to the (IMHO illegal) scan of address books of friends of mine who weren't aware that Facebook were to use this data to build profiles for people who don't use their service and then would start a spam regime to try to get those to sign in. If I were to pursue this issue currently I could only go after my friends but that would only reduce my real life social network not the phoney online community to which I have no ties whatsoever and to which I never ever want to have any ties in the future. If the new european law would be passed I could go after Facebook and finally get rid of this annoying garbage they send me every few weeks about what I am missing and who is missing me (the latter I know isn't true because I have regular real life contact with my friends) and who is playing which game now... For me they could make FB and other data hogging social networks illegal and block traffic from their servers throughout Europe, most people would be far better off without them...
Privacy?
No.
Exclusivity, however, is an entirely different matter. Personal data is personal, whether it can be read publicly or not. Processing personal data without permission is by default not legal (save for the exceptions covered in the law).
good point, and well played.
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*. The UK currently does not have any specific legislation on the *destruction* by request, of personally identifiable data, only the security and maintenance of same. It does, however, stipulate that any such data is accurate and kept up to date.
* ECHR decisions are read as advisories in the RCJ, the High Court and Supreme Court of the UK, nothing more, and when convenient (which is most of the time) completely ignored. I have sat in on cases where this has occurred, and left the building having been sick a little in front of the Judge.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
In particular, there's a notice inside there telling that if a web site indexed by Google is modified, it will be automatically updated, without the need for a direct intervention by the user to also update the indexed information.
I don't think Facebook will have much trouble implementing a similar system, if they already haven't one.
Wayback Machine would probably need more work; e.g. in case somebody discovers that his cell phone number ended up on a web page in 1997, I think that he probably could request that information to be removed (the phone number, not the web page). They can probably get away with providing an email address accepting privacy-related requests.
dont upload anything you dont want retained. remember when people understood what sayings like "the cat's out of the bag" and "you let the genie out of the bottle" meant?
what i'm really getting at is:
DONT UPLOAD IT IF YOU DONT WANT EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING TO SEE, READ AND ANALYZE IT.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Always happy to see there are areas left where politicians are not busy selling us out to corporations.
I absolutely want to have to give explicit permission before people use my data. And yes, I want to be able to remove my data.
Does it cause some additional work? Yes, it does. I have several web-based games that will be affected by a law like this. But seriously, what it means is an additional tick box during the signup ("by signing up I agree... bla bla") and having to track who posted what and removing it when he wants to. Probably easiest solution is to add a button saying "delete all my posts" somewhere.
So, all in all, an hour or two of work.
So, FB with your billions of revenue, stop whining.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not quite. I think search engines will adapt and provide a service you can use to censor information about you. With the right technology you can determine accurately if a piece of information is related to a certain person and that information comes from a social network. Given that the user will be able to filter any personal information about her.
I call BS!
Hostile to the present "give us all your data, they are our property forever, we won't even ask when collecting it, we will sell it to the highest bidder" model - yes. Hostile to Social Networks in general - resounding NO! In fact under such conditions I will open social network account which I will never do under the present paradigm.
Say Facebook et al. won't surrender to these new regulations, for whatever reasons. So according to the proposal, these social networks would no longer be allowed to do business on the EU's internal market â" which would be enforced exactly how? By blocking their DNS entries on a pan-European level, pissing of dozens of millions of users (i.e. voters); or at least those who aren't tech-savy enough to circumvent such futile attempts in the first place?
Bring it on, I'd say! Let's see who holds the whip hand.
If you want to pick on it, then you should educate yourself first. Cigarettes have significant benefits in short term, from neurological to cardiac. In this regard they can be compared to caffeine. Their major problem is severe damage caused to lung and thorax/mouth areas which massively outweighs benefits in long term.
You "usage" argument is also shaky. Everything humans use is a tool. Tools, among other things ENABLE action that would be otherwise impossible. Therefore it is indeed viable to argue that action can be influenced by presence and efficiency of a certain tool. Great example of this is indeed gun crime - for example in Kosovo (a well documented area) there has been a very significant increase in gun crime related to crimes of passion after war, due to significant increase of availability of assault rifles.
Make "selling" information what it is: Fraud and extortion. "Selling" something that can not be owned, sold, stolen or other actions that only apply to physical objects.
Nothing real was exchanged for that money. Certainly not any work.
If they did not do any work and gave you nothing, then they can't get money in return. Simple.
It's a crime,and it should be treated as such. Close their businesses, put them and their clients in jail, and this shit will soon stop.
Och so you decide for all of us what internet is all about? Is this it? How is it better than 'personal censorship' as you call it? There are clearly cases where some communications are unlawful. Not because they say President this is silly but because they cause people to kill very specific (or not so specific) other people. There are communications that albeit I was an author I would like to withdraw and I cannot. In a sense it is the same as being angry and telling your wife she is a stupid bitch and then trying to pull it back but you cannot. This is also beyond the fact that sometimes the stuff put on the internet about one person is put there by other person and possibly in illegal way. I think adding more of the same 'trying to pull it back but you cannot" to the overall human misery in modern society is not necessary especially if the only purpose it serves is to satisfy your need for your vision of internet (which is just a tool). Of course the measure is or may be ineffective but at least it may cause morons like Zuckerberg to rethink his policies and ideas. Not that I believe there is a good chance of that but at least somebody is trying. From this perspective I think the attempt is good (even if I look at almost all activities of the Commission and my own German Government with great and usually justified contempt).
or is 12 years old
must respect the laws and citizen rights of the country or GTFO. End of story. Nothing illogical here.
Once it is on the internet, it is there forever, for use by anyone with access. That is the way it should be.
Peace over Anger Honor over Hate Strength over Fear
A "cache" is a "store". In computer parlance it's a temporary store, but only CPU cache (or a RAMdisk cache) is actually volatile by definition. Any other type of storage cache tends to hold its contents until it degrades or they are *deliberately* erased.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's a solution but it's a risky one. I elaborate.
I'm 40+ now and I think about what I write publicly (yes even right now). But I'm not perfect nor foretelling so I can't be sure that anything I write is correct and I won't know better in future, or that I won't change opinion for any reason. Furthermore everybody starts young and with little foresight. One way to build up experience is making mistakes and those mistakes should not haunt people for all their lives because the Internet remembers them forever. We can't demand that children are born with adult minds. Not writing anything anywhere because it could come back to us in the future is a little bit too radical, a condemn to self-isolation and a risky proposition both socially and business-wise.
So either we stop paying attention to the past (impossible and undesirable) or the Internet stores only what we want it to store about us and let's us delete all the rest.
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The thing is, EU is pissed off that the Patriot Act can be used to spy on EU citizens on EU territory.
This law will require EU and the US to agree on changes to the Patriot Act, or US companies cannot do business in EU any more.
It was probably not such a good idea to pass the Patriot Act in the first place.
And yet again you are blaming an inanimate object that had no ability to "make itself more available". And as far as the "enabling" part you may want to check your history. Many millions more were killed with steel, bronze, and even probably stone before guns were invented than have ever been killed with guns given the same time length.
Well, it depends on the intent.
However, I must say that as far as I know, Google's use of the term "cache" is pretty loose and may in fact be technically incorrect, if I understand what they are actually doing. (I am presuming here that you mean how they make pages that are no longer normally available via a "cached" link.) I am not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure that those are actually copies of sites that are in long-term storage, not actual caches at all.
I suppose, if you really wanted to split hairs, a "cache" could last for 2 years, and still be a "cache", which is to say a temporary store, as long as it did expire at some point. But I'm not sure Google's use of it really meets the definition of a computer cache.
That's true. All I really meant was that a "cache" is supposed to be temporary in nature, and should expire after a time. As opposed to, for example, an archive.
I must agree with you. The internet is a place where you can find anything. I do advocate the "if you don't want it on the internet, don't put it there". Specially since if anybody really wanted to make sure something you (or anyone) said stays online it will be easier, faster and less costly for THEM to keep it online than for you to take it down.
On the other hand, the argument about: "I might argue about something and 20 years later I might say the opposite" just does not stand to be a valid one. At least not to me.
I guess it's just that I find it irritating that what the internet is for me - this free place where anything can last forever* - is being slowly legislated and with rules being thrown at it because people can't be bothered to think for themselves for a second, nor they can be bothered to be civilized enough as to understand what you, I or anybody may have done in the past is on the past.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
I'd rather give up my privacy than having to deal with an internet-wide TPM fueled sencorship framework.
Losing privacy is bad already, but sencorship is even worse!
Reeeeeaaaaalllyyy? JFK could have been killed with a stone from I don't know how many yards away? Instead, with all these bodyguard and protection, one could simply walk up to him an throw him to death? C'mon dude... Seriously... That the biggest bullshit I've read this entire month (that is including political bla bla from banks).
Pillock. You're comparing a rude kid online utterly irrelevant to everyone, to a nations killing millions?
Oh great, I just got used to this tinfoil hat, now I need to make a tinfoil cocoon!
Thanks a lot bud!
Ain't it just awful when people are forced to be responsible for their own words?
Practical solution: post anonymously. :)
The wayback machine is nice to look at some of your old work - but the wayback machine also allows you to remove your site from it - not an individual page or version, yes, but at least it does give you _some_ way to keep a lid on your data.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Welcome to life.
You have to own up to your mistakes.
Read Orwell's 1984 for a good debate on the merits of being able to negate history.
Another bad side may also be when you change opinions on something over time, and people find pages of you arguing 'the other side' - maybe you were against abortion at some point, now your pro abortion - and some of your pro-abortion friends might find pages of you advocating against (or vice versa).
There are certainly things I argued 20 years back (_on the net_) that are still visible, but that I now see fallacies of. And I have no chance of removing the old comments. If you discuss something just among friends, you can, at least, hope that they'll forget it over time - or that they will also see how your change of heart comes about and therefore ignore what you said before.
Yeah, it's an outdated concept, but when I was younger, we called it personal responsibility.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Yeah, just the other day I posted on my blog about how my BFF is a stupid dummy-head and now I'm screwed! Seriously, what?
This. It will be funny to see ancient facebook comments/pictures and amateur videos from when they were "18" come back to haunt politicians in 20 or so years.
can we get that passed here in the U.S. too?
Uh, what? EU directives absolutely do affect UK law. The ECHR is completely irrelevant to this, because it is from the Council of Europe, which has nothing to do with the EU. Your argument makes as much sense as saying that the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act doesn't apply in the UK is evidence that EU laws don't apply in the UK.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There's a difference between information uploaded somewhere and made publicly available, and information provided to a specific service. If I put something on a public web site that anyone can access, then it no longer counts as private information. If someone gives out my email address (or postal address) to an 'invite your friends' type form, or tags a photograph of me that's been uploaded and shared between friends, then that's still private information.
This will mostly affect Google because things like information about which link I click on in the search results are private information (if they are stored in any form other than aggregate data).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Imagine that there was a law that said a record must be written of every person you speak to - who it was and the time you spoke.
That's basically the EU Data Retention Directive right there.
When you are experiencing a popular uprising against your own abuse of personal information, how about trying to justify and compensate by clamping down on others' abuse of personal information? Sounds good!
"But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't."
If you say it to their face...or in earshot of other people...you can't erase it either. Your point?
Who wrote this summary anyway?
What is so *hostile* for social networks?
That when users press 'delete' on a post they made of facebook, then Facebook will actually have to delete the post instead of only hiding it like it does today.
If Facebook wants to play in Europe then either they start to follow privacy rules or they step aside and give someone else a chance that does.
I bet you anything that if facebook is faced with the choise of not doing business or folloing privacy rules, they will choose to stay in business.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Imagine that there was a law that said a record must be written of every person you speak to - who it was and the time you spoke.
We will get there, don't worry - For the safety of our children and to keep the terrorists at bay.
Furthermore the EcJ has ruled that EU laws can be used in lawsuits against governments. This specifically takes away a common reason for governments to delay issuing national laws. As the EcJ is supreme to national courts, the opinion of the UK courts is moot.
Yes. The weapon is called a sling, and they can be deadly at ranges up to 400 meters. World record is presently 477 meters. A crossbow would work at long range, as would a longbow, and they tend to be quite accurate as well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, there are reasons why it can't reasonably destroy all data - it would crash a lot of systems.
For instance - suppose you make a post about something. This post sparks a massive amount of responses. Now you delete your post. What is supposed to happen?
Should the entire discussion disappear? That seems unreasonable, as a lot of other people's time and effort has gone into debating this.
What if we leave the discussion, but erase everything you wrote? Well ... what if they quote you - should that also be erased? Again - the time and effort others put into the debate has to weigh in.
They could remove your account name and link and simply change it to "Anonymous", but then what happens when someone references you by name? Should that also be changed to Anonymous? What if your name is Bob, and the reference is simply "That's not what Bob said", and there are multiple Bobs in the discussion?
What about all the posts that someone else references later, and they spark debates? Twice removed? Thrice, etc.?
While it is relatively easy to remove the account, the posts that are connected to it is a completely different beast.
If you write something, and noone links or replies to it, removing it is easy.
I do agree it should be possible to delete my Google+ account - but I cannot reasonably expect everything to go away. I expect my personal details to disappear, the ability to easily check what I have posted earlier etc., but expecting that thousands and thousands of other people's work and effort should just disappear because I don't want my account to be active anymore is entirely too selfish for me to accept.
At least the "rude kid" bit is the same between the two...
Diaspora would comply
This is obviously the case for the social media outlets that this bill would touch (Facebook, Google+, etc.). It'll just be interesting to see where the governmental shoe falls. I'm not hopeful, but I suppose it's possible that people will be given priority as being just that versus their current social media status of product.
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.
European regulations work directly in all memberstates (even in the UK). For instance a the regulations on the Common Agricultural Policy work directly in memberstates. This is mostly about paying out European money. Other harmonisation in the EU works with directives, that the memberstates have to implement (and the EU commission has a right to sue memberstates who do not implement). I would presume that the data law is a directive: it would need implementation in the memberstates. Directives can have a direct influence: if a memberstate does not implement and the directive would give citizens a clearly identifiable right, you could use local courts to reach the European court. This has been happening at least since the sixties of the last century...
It would be less funny if a potential client or employer does the same thing.
[..] making Europe a hostile place for social networks.
More like making Europe a hostile place for hostile social networks. Keeping everything around forever, or at least until they decide it's no longer in their interest to keep it around, is the standard mode for social networks. Makes sense, since this is valuable data to mine or sell and implementing features that allow you to clean up after yourself isn't exactly free either.
But given the choice, I'd prefer something like Google+ that puts me in control of my own data - say Diaspora? Sure, companies like Google can still mine the data while I have it out there and I think that's fine. If I didn't, I'd put it somewhere more private. But when I decide I've had enough, I would like to have the freedom to quietly disappear.
I'm not sure if it won't be a problem for sites like the internet archive though. I mean, it's trivial for them to exclude the big ones, but what about smaller community sites that are automatically included? Whose responsibility is it to remove that information and how are users supposed to know something is even on there? Seems to me like the problems starts as soon as a site gets a copy of the data and starts making it available...
Correct, and using your own example, when iron sword met bronze in battle, bronze lost. This enabled extinction of entire tribes that would have been otherwise impossible. Same happened when rock throwers met bows, bows met guns and so on.
It's funny how people who try to twist arguments to justify their beliefs tend to pick ones that can be used against them far more then for them.
It is not about making "Europe a hostile place for social networks", it is about making the Internet a better place for everybody
What we aren't used to is how it works in the US and most assume that they have the same level of data protection on Facebook as they have with any local companies. Most people have no idea how little control or knowledge you have in the US over how companies uses your personal data.
Should be Global law!
Yes, people always rant and rave about the evils of big brother (government) but often are silent when little brother (business) is worse. As it is now, little brother has gotten bigger than big brother. They can ruin your life with frivolous lawsuits which, even if you win, can leave you with huge lawyer bills. They dictate how you can use a device or software through questionable EULAs, contracts or licenses. Often when you are in the right, they offer a settlement where they admit no wrongdoing and you have to accept a non-disclosure clause. You can't offer your side when others criticized you but can't speak on the subject to offer your side. To make matters even worse, business is accountable only to their shareholders and recently seem to have much more power than government.
Can someone explain how they will enforce, if servers are outside EU? Block IP? Even US won't do this for copyright violators.
Well, it will never be a problem if you don't use facebook or realize that nothing you post there is "private."
Well if you are really lazy you can always just delete the content contained in the post and leave any keys in place to maintain your referential integrity.
Could you explain to me, concisely:
1.) What an assault rifle is
And then, please explain to me in plain terms
2.) how said rifle is more dangerous than a shotgun - or even better - a hunting rifle.
I'm really curious.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.
That is not quite right. All EU laws must be enacted in national law and as such can be considered to supercede national laws. However, it depends on the type of EU law. An EU regulation is legislation that becomes effective immediately EU wide (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_%28European_Union%29) while an EU directive allows a certain leeway - it specifies what type of law has to be in effect within 5 years (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_directive).
It is well established in case law that this is always true. If Tastecicles would have correctly read the article, he would seen confirmation of this. Unfortunately the British sometimes are very EU, possibly because they do not appear to come to terms with them no longer being a superpower.
When iron sword meets bronze in battle, bronze wins. But iron swords are much cheaper, because iron is much more abundant and easily available. The win for iron was that armies with bronze equipment had just some leaders and knights in full armament, while the iron armies had the whole army clad in iron and with iron weapons for everyone. The change from the bronze age to the iron age was one of economics, not one of sharper swords.
That sounds... totally wrong to me. If I'm not mistaken, legislative decisions made by the EU in the areas which it has been given legislative power by its member states (agriculture, regional policy, fishing and maritime conduct and so on...) cannot be voided by national law; only reinforced or specified. Of course the union also releases recommendations and other non-binding statements, but directives should be supernational.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Legislative_procedure
It will be extremely interesting to see how this holds up in courts. It could impact a whole lot more than just social networks.
Need any dad jokes?
AFAIK (and I don't know an amazing amount about guns so correct me if I'm wrong) the term "assault rifle" generally means a fully automatic weapon. Personally I'd find a hunting rifle with a good scope to be more dangerous, but for a lot of people the ability to spray a ton of bullets into a crowd is more frightening.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
That would also make it awkward for search engines
I think it is high time that companies realize that if you find some data on the internet it doesn't mean that it is yours to keep forever and do with as you please.
That practice has to stop.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Generally the term assault rifle refers to rifles chambered for intermediate rounds and usable in both semi-automatic and fully automatic fire modes. They were invented by the Nazis after it turned out that most battles happened at ranges too long for submachine guns (fully automatic rifles that use pistol ammo) but not requiring as much precision as the slow semi-automatic or even bolt action battle rifles offer. ARs offer a higher rate of fire with less recoil than the full-sized-ammo-using battle rifles.
For spray and pray you'd probably want a submachine gun. A proper machine gun (light ones use full powered rifle rounds, heavy ones even bigger bullets, they're designed to fire hundreds of bullets) is probably too unwieldy for terrorism.
On the other hand all that heavy gear probably fits more into gang warfare than any reasonable legal scenario and would drastically increase the collateral damage of gang fights. The big guns aren't something you'd use for self defense or carry concealed, keeping them banned allows the police to arrest any gang members carrying them right away instead of waiting for the gang to start firing a heavy machine gun into the rough direction of their competitors.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Yes. I was demonstrating that it was only a difference of scale, not of kind.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Wouldn't any company that backup their data run afoul of these laws? Take your favorite social network site. They do a full backup that then gets shipped off to iron mountain. A user than deletes some data, unless they get the off site backs shipped back to them to delete the users data wouldn't they be in violation of theses proposed laws. This would then make it impossible to keep offsite backups and extremely expensive to even keep on site backups, since whenever, someone deletes their data all the backup tapes must be mounted and that data cleaned off.
You could have Googled 1) if you were actually curious. 2) is unrelated to anything in the post you were replying to, but I believe there are websites where people who are that way inclined discuss the relative merits of various weapons; Google will probably give some pointers here, too.
Sweet - a real answer. To be honest, what I was getting in with my awfully pointed original question, was that most people don't know what an assault rifle is, and the point is moot because you cannot purchase a full auto anything legally anwyays. You can; however, purchase semi automatic shotguns and long range, accurate hunting rilfes all day long that will do a sub .5in MOA at hundreds of yards. What you don't see, is people getting sniped all over the country or warfare happening all over just because these implements are available. People get stabbed to death in the UK, some people get thrown down stairs here. Some people get shot. It doesn't matter the tool, some people are murderous assholes and most are not.
I probably shouldn't care so much, but I think the last thing a dictatorship does (like the Nazi's you spoke of) is take away to common man's right to defend themselves and try their damndest to make every not trust eachother so they have to trust the gov (stranger danger, etc.)
I can see where people would be awfully nervous with other people lawfully owning firearms when everybody thinks that rapists and murderers are all over the place in mass quantities ( the irony here is deep, but I'll leave that alone)
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Assault rifle name comes from direct translation of original name of the gun that started this type of weaponry: STG-44 (Sturmgewehr).
The idea was a fusion of machine pistol (lightweight low caliber fully automatic weapon designed for close quarters combat), infantry rifle (medium weight long range, good accuracy weapon firing single shots of powerful ammunition) and a light machine gun (heavy infantry weapon designed for fully automatic engagements at medium ranges firing powerful ammunition but too heavy for close quarters).
STG-44 was the first time that a single weapon could perform all three roles successfully. It wasn't quite as good as a dedicated weapon in any of these roles, but it could perform all three competitively.
This is how assault rifle is more dangerous then shotgun or a hunting rifle. Shotgun is generally only good for close range combat (or with some specialized ammo, long range combat at cost of severe reduction of short range capability) and has no viable suppression capability of a machine gun due to low rate of fire. Hunting rifle is great for accurate fire at long range, but abysmal at close quarters combat and has little suppression ability due to low rate of fire even when semi-automatic. Modern assault rifle user can switch between these profiles with a flick of a switch and perform in all of these roles adequately. It can also function as a light machine gun in a limited fashion (usually limited by size of the clip and weapon barrel overheating from prolonged fire).
As a result of superiority of such a capable weapon, modern infantrymen who aren't specialists with extreme weapon requirements (such as snipers) usually use assault rifles.
I used to shoot recurve bows. A longbow is a plain wooden thing with no sights and is very difficult to use and aim. You could probably hit an army with it, most of the time, but hitting an individual would be very very difficult indeed. You also need to be very strong indeed to go any worthwhile distance (can you lift 50-100lbs with three fingers?). A very good recurve bow archer (not me) could probably hit an individual at 50m usefully frequently, providing the target was standing still and the archer had a chance to get the range right. Arrows from recurve bows drop very significantly in flight and are affected by exactly how much you draw that day (and probably by moisture and certainly wind), so having a moving target or being higher or lower than your target will make your life very difficult indeed. A compound bow would be a lot better....I've never tried one of those. A crossbow will give you one very powerful shot indeed followed by an awful lot of reloading.
So you might be able to assassinate someone, but bows really aren't guns, aren't nearly as efficient or easy to use and aren't something you could carry around casually for self-protection. You probably aren't going to have a loaded bow to hand if you get in to an argument or happen to feel suicidal. You won't be able to carry it along the street without someone noticing, unless it's in pieces in a box in which case you've got five minutes of assembly. They're difficult to carry, large (4-5ft long, say), very hard to conceal, recurve and compound bows weigh several kilograms and you have to hold them at arms length, you have to have some strength to draw them, you can't store them strung, they take some considerable time to prepare and you have to reload, re-draw and re-aim for each shot. They won't penetrate like a bullet and will certainly not pass through a human or tumble inside someone's body. You also need to pay a lot more attention to wind, range, height difference and movement.
I don't know about slings, but bows don't offer nearly the same opportunity for spontaneous stupidity or criminality to a wide audience the way guns do. There's a reason why UK criminals use knives or illegal guns (with a risk of a five year sentence just for possession) rather than a legal bow.
AHAAAAAHAHAHAAAAA! Said the troll hiding behind AC. Grow up you pathetic little worm.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
That's nonsense. I can put an arrow into the bullseye on a target with every shot until my pulling arm is so tired it's shaking, using a non compound bow. That's an area a lot smaller than your torso; I think I could put it through a fist-sized spot repeatedly, given time to aim and a predictable target. I've also seen experts, Japanese, who can hit a swinging fist sized target from the back of a moving horse -- every time. While wearing traditional armor. I think you just never developed much skill with a bow. Like any weapon, it rewards skill and penalizes the casual user.
Never seen a hunting arrowhead, eh? Nasty things. They do quite a bit of damage. No one has claimed they were bullets, though, most of what you had to say there is straw man stuff; the point is, you can kill people with them, as we well know from history, and of course, the bow hunters here kill animals with them all the time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Using your japanese example, bow samurai lost to muskets in close quarters aimed combat. Specifically because the highly trained bow samurai... could not aim as effectively. What the bow samurai excelled at on the other hand is high trajectory "shelling" of the enemy army from long range.
In other words, GP is correct. Normal bows are very difficult to aim in a useful fashion for direct fire, and are typically useful for raining death on top of armies rather then direct aiming. Same can be observed across countless other armies that met European firearms in battles with bows. You can, with significant amount of training, learn to use bow effectively in direct fire, but this would require a significant amount of very rigorous training. To achieve better results with a firearm, you need but a few hours on a firing range.
Sure, that keeps the database intact, but that'd make for a lot of interesting discussions, when the original post no longer exists.
Now imagine that fictitious discussion without the parent post:
Sure, your referential integrity is maintained, but the discussion integrity isn't.
You can't demand the total ability to delete the stuff you post on Internet discussion threads without incurring some sort of cost. There are already plenty of discussion boards where monitors delete objectionable content in a post and leave it in the discussion thread.
where it says difficult it does not say impossible, i'm sure there will be many ways to use these laws from both sides of the fight, its a step in the right direction
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?