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Germany's Federal Cartel Office Claims Facebook 'Extorts' Personal Data From Users (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Germany's Federal Cartel Office is examining whether Facebook essentially takes advantage of its popularity to bully users into agreeing to terms and conditions they might not understand. The details that users provide help generate the targeted ads that make the company so rich. In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Facebook is "extorting" information from its users, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer at Heuking Kuhn Lueer Wojtek in Hamburg. "Whoever doesn't agree to the data use, gets locked out of the social network community," he said. "The fear of social isolation is exploited to get access to the complete surfing activities of users." Andreas Mundt, the Cartel Office's president, said last week he's "eager to present first results" of the Facebook investigation this year. Like the EU's Google investigation, he said the Facebook case tackles "central questions ensuring competition in the digital world in the future".
US Judge: It's totally fine if Facebook is tracking you tighter than we'd let the FBI track Nazis.
German Judge: Stupid Nazi draconian Facebook terms and conditions are an Orwellian situation!
1) Pass wierd legislation authorizing huge fines for whatever
2) Levy huge fines against American companies
3) Profit!
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Just don't sign up; find real friends in the real world -- rather than a thousand people who you think are friends because they know what you had for breakfast.
Last I remember, Facebook and oh, wait, every other online activity is a voluntary participation. And I would hope that the German regulator realizes that the definition of extortion is: the demanding payment of money, property or services, while threatening to commit an illegal act if that is not fulfilled.
I would hope that a regulator would be a bit more conservative about extending its domain where it doesn't have the right to.
Please, the east germans were doing mass surveillance before lord admiral zuck was born. Things like FB are old hat to them; though Zuck and co has pretty much perfected it.
Or, alternatively... In Europe, we actually have pretty strong protections on our privacy, where companies aren't allowed to just grab all the data they can and run with it. Facebook tries to grab all our data and run with it, and unsurprisingly are being found to be outside the law.
I keep hearing about all these people feeling betrayed and abused by Facebook but what I'm not hearing is these same people deciding to no longer use Facebook.
Take some control of your life, nimrods!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I can see you don't understand, corporate serf.
The Lives of Others is a great movie about that:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
The Germans gleefully spied on each other. The Stasi at one point had over 90,000 employees in just East Germany, and over 2 million informants out of a population of about 16 million. That means that every one out of eight East Germans was spying for the government. Germany loves their mass surveillance.
The difference here is the European understanding of "privacy". While in the U.S., there is this "expectation of privacy", which is routinely denied if you are using a publicly accessible website, the European understanding is different. Here, privacy means that you have the right to control which information about you is publicly available and who has a right to make use of it. This was first established in 1983 in the landmark decision of the German Constitutional Court, which established the informational self-determination.
I respect that facebook needs to make money. I would like to see a user-paid option, thus allowing me to participate by spending my money to pay my own way, so that facebook can monetize me directly filter out all ads and protect my private info.
Participation was not optional, in my case, if I wanted to keep my high-paying IT job. Our clients used facebook as the sole method for registration and tracking in mandatory activities.
I objected strenuously on principle and offered several workable alternatives, including asking the organizers to make up a fictitious account for me to use (I didn't want to be the one committing fraud) and was told I was being a "P.I.T.A." about privacy, as the whole point was to use a single, consolidated, low-cost method for tracking/reporting registration, participation, etc.
You do realize...
If your friend didn't bother to contact you personally, and if none of your mutual friends bothered to contact you either, and no one happened to mention the upcoming wedding in your presence...
It may not have been an accidental oversight...
Right?
I think you missed the part where there was "something of value" involved. Or the part where we were talking about Facebook.
Either way, you missed the boat on one of the major prerequisites for it to be extortion.
isn't this argument valid for some other companies as well ???
No, it's not.
It's only valid for companies with deep pockets, which can have money extorted out of them by governments who have basically squelched their technology sector to the point there's no way in hell it could come up with something competitive with the company they are attempting to extort money from.
So you're fine with corporations and governments (who have more regulations about personal info) spying on you without your consent? Or you'd prefer to read 50 pages of TOS every time you use a website?
i see you have a username with Slashdot. You're fine with the parent company of Slashdot tracking your every move across the internet? They might already be, they just haven't told you.
Don't paint the German government as the bad guy with your populist straw man argument. The German government claims that facebook is abusing it's market position to force people into terms of use that they wouldn't accept otherwise. This is no different than, say a cable or energy company, abusing a dominant market position to drive prices unreasonably high. Basically it's a monopoly situation and should be scrutinized and penalized as such.
In contrast, before exercising some weak attempts at Euro-bashing you should consider that your American megacorps like facebook pay next to nothing in taxes in the US, because they prefer to be headquartered in Ireland. Something that the European Union is also fighting against.
The "laissez faire" capitalism that is so popular in the US, especially among Republicans promotes small government and power to the corporations. It will not protect the rights of ordinary citizens. Be glad that at least in some parts of the world the government still serves the people.
germany is a little slow when it comes to facebook. i guess.
Is it still worth the risk and costs? How to get your products over the new German digital wall.
You users expect the same US freedom of speech and freedom after speech they get from a trusted US brand.
Users know what they are signing up for and what they are doing with a US product and service they enjoy and want to use.
Germans reach out to a US brand and want to enjoy and use that brands features and services.
What is the solution given a new digital wall now surrounds Germany?
Create German support services in the USA? A lot of great people graduate from US universities with German skills? Hire them in the USA.
Get Germans to connect to the USA. If a German company wants to buy and sell, let them do it in the USA.
Avoid Germany but understand the needs of Germans in Germany looking for German products and services that can be supported via the USA.
For the Germans reading slashdot trying to understand what that US web service offering Germany service would have to look like on online, think back to reverse digital version of the Geschenkdienst und Kleinexporte.
The USA did not interact with Germany, Germany did not legally interact with the USA but the US product or service arrives in Germany via a payment to a trusted third nation.
Take the train or dive to a nation like Switzerland to build up funds in a US service?
A US server and brand, selling into the EU, products been sent into Germany via a third company in the EU or a by using a company totally outside EU, Germany or USA.
Totally avoiding any direct legal contact with the German government from the USA or a US company having to function in Germany.
Germans would have to absorb the repackaging and extra costs in the postage but could enjoy the freedom of speech, after speech, freedom to shop, review products only offered in the USA.
The US social media site hosted only in the USA becomes an interactive version of Geschenke in die DDR with the same complex postage and payment systems.
The more the German government bans US products and services the more people in Germany will talk about and then enjoy US freedoms.
US brands will respond with innovative ways to get their products and services into Germany and help Germans set up accounts.
Any VPN and site encryption will have to withstand the skills and spending of the German government trying to detect and report any Germans using that service. Hire the smartest staff in the USA to keep Germans safe in Germany as they use US networks and services.
A new digital wall will not keep Germans away from US freedoms. Very smart people in the US will always find ways to sell into Germany again.
Germans had to use tunnels, microlight aircraft, cars and hot air balloons to try and escape bad parts of Germany.
US brands now have to be as creative to help their German customers trapped in Germany enjoy digital freedom again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Basically it's a monopoly situation and should be scrutinized and penalized as such.
So ...much like the German position on what constitutes beer putting German brewers in a monopoly position, yes?
So the German brewers should be penalized as such, in order to make the German market safe for French beer, yes?
Yes, apparently you are not understanding the problem.
You compare the entirety of an industry with hundreds of competing individuals with one large social media conglomerate that has a monopoly according to German definitions. If there was such a single and huge beer brewery in Germany, controlling most of the market share, the cartel agency would be after them as well.
I think you have lost the plot:
Many Germans died in their extremely prolonged but eventually successful struggle to defeat mass surveillance, and somehow they resent the Americans imposing a considerably worse regime on them.
(The dead are presumably revolving at such high speed in their graves that it is causing a disturbance of the psyche).
I think you will find that quite a lot of the world's population feels much the same, and America's view of the world is not widely shared by others. Most of the world believes that government is a process whereby they collaborate to stop this kind of scummy exploitation by corporations, and not the other way round.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The German market is already safe for French beer. Actually, even safer than for German beer because the German position on what constitutes beer is only valid for beers brewed in Germany for the German market. Import beers have been exempt from this regulation for decades.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Fuck facebook.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Well the question here id, does thr german rules on beer prevent non germsn beer ftom beeing sold, or is it fust difficult to sell it with the word beer on the conrIner/menue/ price list, I must admit this is ghe first I’v heard if it since I’m never in Germany and don’t drink beer.
I'd leave Germany. Until things change. Too much hassle about Streetview? Sure, Germany. Poof! Gone. Happy now? Cr*p about news headlines and linking to articles? Sure. Poof. Gone. Oh and we'll also voluntarily remove any other links to your newspapers. Happy now? Oh? No? Oh we can do it again? Sure. Bang! Back. Just turn off Facebook.de with a nice explataory page with politicians' contact information to express unhappiness.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Since when is Spotify illegal in Germany?
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
You do know that the country of East Germany hasn't existed in 28 years, right - and when the wall came down and they merged it was the freedom loving West Germans who took over, right ? Right ?
If anything, the experience of a large number of their citizens who lived under the KGB and the STASI are a big part of why Germany is so obsessive about privacy rights these days - they've experienced the alternative.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I've heard language like yours before... where was it... where was it.. aah right, I remember.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
In a way it's surprising that the US doesn't have something similar, because in a very pro-capitalist society your personal data is an asset to be owned and monetized. Some people have aspects of their personal data covered by intellectual property laws, e.g. actors and their likenesses, but the average person doesn't seem to have any ownership of their data at all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Or, alternatively... In Europe, we actually have pretty strong protections on our privacy, where companies aren't allowed to just grab all the data they can and run with it. Facebook tries to grab all our data and run with it, and unsurprisingly are being found to be outside the law.
Facebook can't do that either.
You have to agree to it. No one requires you to agree with the terms of service: you just don't get to have service, if you don't.
Just because the Germans haven't been able to develop their own version of Facebook, doesn't mean that they should have any say in how the U.S. version of Facebook is run.
I hope Facebook does the same thing that a lot of other services do, when Europe passes some dumbass law and tries to fine them: pull the heck out of the country.
Remember how well the Spanish news sites did, after they tried to charge Google news excerpting fees?
Other sites (competition) closed down, e.g., StudiVZ, or do not play an important role,e.g., MySpace. Therefore, FB has a monopoly and can force people to accept term which they would not accept when real alternatives would exist. In Germany monopolies are considered bad for obvious reasons. Therefore, they are investigated by the anti monopoly authority.