Hey, minorities could just "do without" riding in the front of the bus, or vote with their dollars, but believe it or not markets aren't always as perfectly efficient as the Libertarian party would have us believe.
From time to time, economic interests and "social justice" do coincide, though. Look at Plessy v. Ferguson, for example. That case was an attempt to end the legal principle of separate-but-equal, brought at the behest of local railway companies. Why? Having separate facilities cost them more money. And who insured that separate-but-equal would continue for another 60 years? The government, in the form of the Supreme Court.
Are markets perfectly efficient? Of course not. But neither are cartels, be they oil, diamonds, or insurance. After all, if they were, the price of oil over the last 30 years would ALWAYS be EXACTLY what OPEC wanted. They haven't been, largely because in any cartel, there is an enormous incentive for the members to cheat at the expense of their co-conspirators.
The question, I think, is what will we decide are rights that must be available to all, and thereby provided by society at large, versus what should simply be opportunities for people to have (or provide for themselves) things they might *want*. Just because I think I have a natural right to daily handjobs doesn't mean that the 6 billion people who don't think it's my God-given right must provide it for me. If you're the only one with the belief that ass-chips are an affront, sorry, but you're SOL.
Does the free market solve all human problems? I think not (there goes my LP card), but more often than not, I think, we all benefit from it. Surely, as a general rule, more freedom is better than less....
I think the best post in this whole topic was the one about ass-chips
What other insurance company? The other one who wants the chip in your baby, or the OTHER, other one who wants the chip in your baby? Oh, you mean the one out of state that wants the chip in your baby?
Come on. If an ass-chipless (?) insurance policy is really important to enough people, why wouldn't someone step up to provide that service? If masses of people are demanding an end to ass-chips being required for insurance, I'll make a KILLING being the only one to provide that service. And the banks'll see that as well.
Or, alternately, if you're the one-in-a-million customer who cares about, and is offended by ass-chips, whereas the rest of use, as evidenced by our inaction, are perfectly content with ass-chips, you can simply do without insurance.
As an aside, I think I deserve some extra mod points just for multiple creative uses of the phrase "ass-chip"....
As soon as a politician is elected to office, they already have to worry about getting re-elected. Their party has to worry about getting re-elected, and getting more of their member elected into offices held by their opponents.
That is how our government is bought and paid for by big business.
That's certainly the politicians' reasoning behind campaign finance reform, anyway. Except that a corporation can't buy something (like a politician) that isn't for sale in the first place.
Don't you wonder, just a little bit, about the character and moral fortitude of a group of people (like, say, politicians) whose reasoning for finance reform is essentially "We'd be good, if only we weren't faced with all this temptation"?
That'll be my reasoning if I'm ever in court.
"Your Honor, I wouldn't have gotten drunk and run over those children if I hadn't been faced with the awful, awful temptation of the beer aisle of the supermarket."
"I wouldn't have taken his car, except he tempted me by leaving the keys in the ignition."
Or, the all time classic:
"Hey, it's not my fault she was dressed all sexy like that - she was tempting me...."
Do you really think Gracenote would sue Roxio without the solid belief that they could win?
Yes, I do. Particularly since Roxio just started trading publicly on May 14. A lawsuit, even if totally baseless, can damage a company new to the market and lacking any sort of track record, simply by scaring away potential investors. Viewed this way, it becomes nothing more than a legalized form of extortion. "Pay us, or we'll make your options worthless."
There is little doubt that there is stuff in the contract between the two companies that is not being made public. For all we know there could be something that bars them from switching services, or a million other possibilities.
Come on. Considering the PR disaster this has been for Gracenote, don't you think if that were ACTUALLY the case, they'd be shouting "breach of contract" from the rooftops?
You don't see them suing companies using other similar services, so I'm guessing their objection is to Roxio using one that's based on IP they fancy to be theirs.
See, when you want to set a favorable precedent for yourself, you always pick out the weakest possible opponent. They may not care if they can win. All they have to do is convince Roxio that it's in their best interests to roll over. THEN they start picking off others, once they have a precedent in their pockets. Others see that all those confronted before by the mighty Gracenote have surrendered, and it affects their judgement as well. Look at the playbook Rambus has been using, for example.
Comments about them suing because Roxio won't use *their* service are probably naive. Those would be totally baseless grounds to sue on...
They may very well be hoping that this never actually sees the inside of a courtroom. As long as the threat is credible to outsiders, they have accomplished at least one thing - damaging Roxio in the eyes of the public and investors. Why fight in court if you can convince your opponent to surrender first?
GeForce drivers are pretty much perfected.. no major improvements are going to show up in them.
Ha! Tell that to NVidia, so they'll stop fucking leaking about three sets of drivers a week...
Sorry about that - it's just that I get sick of _every_ geforce forum being nothing more than an extended testing lab, where nobody does anything other than compare one set of buggy beta drivers to another set of buggy beta drivers so the performance freaks can squeeze that extra 0.07% gain out of their cards...
I used to have two phone lines - one where I took sensible steps to prevent the number getting onto the wrong lists...
Well, now, isn't that what I've been arguing all along? That individuals should take sensible steps on their own to protect their privacy?;)
My customer (they bought me out) also exports stuff overseas to countries where different rules apply.
So other countries are going for a free market solution to the problem of junk calls. Good business for you while it lasted, hmm?
I tell you what - let's call a temporary truce and agree to disagree for now. Someday soon this will be resolved one way or the other - trade war or negotiated settlement. When it is, you or I should be sure to submit it to slashdot to evaluate the outcome and decide winners and losers (which side substantially gets their way, anyhow). And after that, next time I'm in London, loser buys the first round. Deal?
Well, in any case, we shall see what happens, but I'll let it go for now, except to ask one more question. If junk phone calls simply don't happen in Europe as a result of stringent privacy protection, why does your slashdot info say that you work on junk call blocking systems? After all, if they don't occur in the first place, why would you need to block them?
Well, if it's okay, I'll respond to both your posts in one. But first I'd like to say that this discussion has been most interesting for me - I don't think either of us has made much headway in persuading the other, but an airing of the issues and philosophies might at least be useful to others;) Anyway, this is definitely the most in-depth discussion I have seen on/. for some time.
I don't know that I have misjudged how seriously Europeans regard this issue - you are clearly very passionate in your defense of the privacy rights of EU citizens, and I expected as much. I think, though, it is equally important to understand that many Americans regard the more free-wheeling, open market approach we tend to take just as passionately. As you said, we draw the line one place, you draw it somewhere else. Each has its own benefits and costs.
There is no government issued number in the UK
which can be reliably used by companies to uniquely and reliably identify an individual.
So then each company just rolls its own. Isn't the end result the same? And the purpose of giving the SSN is the same as for you giving previous addresses, etc. - tying a customer to a credit record.
So you think that preventing companies from ramming piles of useless junk mail down our throats and buiding up unregulated databases of personal information has measurably damaged our corporations and our economy?
Not specifically, no. But I think a cogent case can be made that over-regulation is a major contributor to the phenomenon so charmingly phrased as "Eurosclerosis".
It is very simple - If US companies want to trade within the EU then they will be forced to trade according to EU law. Period.
This is not a principle capable of compromise - either the rules are the same for everyone - or they are not.
I agree, to a point, that the rules will be the same for everyone. But whether you agree with it or not, a compromise will be reached, if for no other reasons than that both sides have things the other wants, and that the costs of failing to reach some agreement would be punishingly heavy for both. Undoubtedly, the US will compromise by finding some way to tighten its domestic privacy requirements, and the EU will compromise by finding some way to loosen its requirements. It may offend your purist ideals, but this is the essence of negotiation. The devil, as they say, will be in the details, but the costs of hammering out a compromise are far less than the costs of failure. You say the law exists for the benefits of individual citizens - surely citizens receive more benefits by reaching a negotiated settlement and maintaining some semblance of normal trade than by the morass of sanctions, punitive tariffs, and trade wars that would inevitably ensue.
My quote of Marx was not intended to suggest that Europe is somehow sliding into communism, but instead that that principle is a logical conclusion to the path laid out before you. It's really quite simple, from my point of view. For every entitlement you and I create for ourselves, we create an obligation for someone else to provide that entitlement to us. Just because protecting your privacy is free to you doesn't mean it's free for everyone.
With respect to contracts and what-have-you, again, you draw the line one place, we draw it another. It's really a matter of comfort level. Europeans seem more comfortable turning some responsibilities over to government, whereas in the US, within limits, the general rule is CYOA ("cover your *own* ass", in case that lovely acronym hasn't made it across the pond) when making arrangements with others. Europeans, by way of a rather broad generalization on my part, seem more alarmed by potential or perceived abuses by Big Business. Americans, in a similarly broad generalization, are more concerned with potential abuses by Big Government. It works for us, and yours works for you. But as societies, both of us, to some degree, have crosses to bear as a result of the choices we have made and the institutions we have created.
My goodness, a post here, a post there, and suddenly I'm debating the entire EU:)
That's all very well, unless you want to open a bank account, sign up for an ISP, take out a mortgage, get a job, subscribe to a magazine, make a mail-order/on-line purchase, etc., etc.
And all of these are certainly things you might want, but none of them, I think, are things you are particularly entitled to have. So how badly do you want them? Badly enough to give over some personal information?
They don't actually care whether or not they loose me as a customer - but I might really need the service they have on offer.
And of course, since you "really need" that service, they are naturally required to provide it to you, no matter what the terms, good or bad, are for them, hmm? Why does this sound familiar? "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs." Is that where we're going?
I happen to think that the little guys matter.
As do I - I simply don't believe that they are as completely powerless as you apparently do.
That's because a sensible Gas supplier does actually need more than just Name and Address when deciding what terms to offer to a potential customer.
Really? Mine just asked for a name, address, and Social Security number. What sort of hoops did you have to jump through? Why did you have to give away any more than I did, especially in light of the wonderfully extensive protections your information is given?
The EU/UK approach to giving consumers privacy seems to work - we get real, meaningful privacy and corporations get the information they need to run they core business.
Perhaps. We could compare unemployment rates for the UK and US since 1985 to see if one economy tends to generate more jobs than the other, hence indicating the relative health of job-providers. Among other things.
If a US company wants to trade in the UK or the EU then they should be limited to these two choices :
A) Do it according to the same laws and rules as apply to all other companies trading in the UK/EU
B) Fuck Right Off.
Fortunately for both of our economies, the leaders of both sides have a great deal of incentive to find the middle ground that you so cleverly excluded.
What if those eleven gas companies make up an oligarchy? You'd have a very difficult time breaking into that market.
Well, if you'll look back, I was actually positing that I was already a player in the market (one of the dozen or so existing gas suppliers). So you're correct - I am overlooking entry barriers for new players, and concentrating on the existing players.
If you start up a business that is based on not doing $BAD_THING, but all your competitors do $BAD_THING, you're inflicting a handicap on yourself which you may or may not be able to afford.
Well, it may be a handicap - it really depends on how much people value their privacy, doesn't it? Or, in other words :
Why is it that you don't see (many) companies out there that offer privacy as a marketing point, given all the exposure that the issue has received?
Why don't you see this? Because people don't really value their privacy as much as they claim to. Or, at least not enough to clamor for an alternative, or to vote with their feet where alternatives exist. To be more specific, people who, in the abstract, support a general notion of privacy very often have no qualms about also signing up for the discount card at the local supermarket so they can get that nickel off a can of creamed corn.
There is at least one reason that a businessperson would prefer regulation over market dynamics: it would be unilaterally applicable. Sure, he/she would take a profit hit, but then, so would all of his/her competitors.
Oh, absolutely. Businesses are indeed rather quick to scream for relief, or at least an artificial leveling of the playing field, so that even if they are disadvantaged, all competitors are as well. This is clearly true, but obviously, given my position thus far, it would be logically inconsistent if I didn't find that disturbing and unnecessary as well, which I do;)
So to restate your basic thesis, since you don't like your current choices, it is then the proper function of government to require some third party to cater to you in the fashion in which you think you deserve?
Where I live I have the choice of :
* One supplier for water and Sewage
* Two suppliers for Telephone Service
* About a dozen electricity companies
* About a dozen gas companies
But if your information was really valuable to you and your neighbors, wouldn't the market reward companies who voluntarily protected it? Think about it - if I'm one of the dozen gas companies (which is 11 more than I have to choose from, BTW), and I make it clear to potential customers that I'm not like those other grotty bastards - all I want from you is a name and an address to send a bill to - shouldn't I receive a reward in the form of hordes of privacy concerned customers such as yourself descending on me to receive service? And then, seeing that, won't my competitors have to somehow respond in kind? I merely wish to suggest that in the absence of government coercion, these problems occasionally do resolve themselves.
At a minimum, I think we can agree that this discussion is perhaps symptomatic of a deep philosophical divide between the US and Europe. And perhaps we can also agree that these disagreements are best settled through diplomacy and negotiation, rather that through one party or the other attempting to impose its will on the other...
Hmmm, maybe not Life assurance, but isn't 3rd party car insurance mandatory in all the western countries? Therefore, If you didn't deal with the insurance company you couldn't drive legally, and that is not an option for most people.
Interestingly enough, this is not true in most states here. The law generally requires that you demonstrate financial security. Most people do this by carrying insurance, but many states will accept a bond as proof of security in lieu of insurance. I dunno - see if Irish law is similar.
I don't make any civil liberties arguments - merely the philosophical argument that people ought to be willing to take steps to protect their own information, if it is truly important to them. I'm big on personal responsibility. It's nice that the Irish government is concerned about your well-being. But my point is this - no matter how thoughtful and wise your representatives are (and I'm sure they're all fine and decent people), none of them can possibly know what's good for you better than YOU can.
Oh come on! You try living without a bank account, with your cash under the bed. No car, insurance, job (yes your employers have all your personal information. And your medical, if you had to undergo a medical). What the hell would you do? You are "effectively forced" because if you don't do it, you are excluded from the current global, digital economy, and the benifits thereof.
So because you don't LIKE your current choices, it is government's obligation to expand the menu for you, or worse, require someone else to do it? You know, I think I've eaten at all the fast food chains at one point or another, and their choices all suck. I think government must either open its own restaurant chain giving me what I want (drive-through surf'n'turf, mmmm), or require McDonald's to cater to me in the fashion I think I deserve.
You donkey! Think for a minute! I sincerely hope that you are just trolling for the hell of it, or to play devils advocate! Your personal information should NOT have any value to those companies that you give it to!
Tut, tut. I think diamonds shouldn't have any value to DeBeers - government should require them to give me one for free (that'll make my wife happy, anyway). Just because you insist that your data shouldn't have any value doesn't change the fact that it DOES have value, and that markets exist for it. I reiterate - if you give your information away, get the terms up front, or accept that it may be used in ways you don't approve of.
Err, missed the back half of your comment - sorry. If you and I have an agreement at the beginning that I will only make "X" copies of your data, and it will only be shared with specific third-parties under specific circumstances, and I then violate that by sending your information far and wide, I'm in trouble anyway. Criminal penalties for fraud and civil penalties for breach of contract already exist, both in the US and Europe.
No, I don't think new laws are a necessary part of the solution.
Think of it this way: I allow you to use some information of me anyway you like as long as you don't give it to anybody else. That has one price. A t-shirt might be enough. Or maybe I jus like you.
If you want to share my information with others, you need to pay me more.
And if you make those conditions clear *at the outset* ("and could we please put all this in writing" etc.) so that I can fairly evaluate your conditions and judge whether I still want to do business with you, then I have no problem with this at all. What I object to is people who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to expend the time and effort required to protect their own privacy, so they turn to the state to make someone else do it for them.
If they know and don't care, it wouldn't hurt you to tell them how you would use the information, and obtain their express approval, in which case you could use the data the way you wanted.
Or, to take the opposite tack, if they don't know but DO care, it would certainly help them to address those concerns at the outset, rather than trying to change the terms of the exchange after it has already taken place.
Well, I don't know about "on purpose", but I won't deny that a populace composed of individuals who are unwilling to think rationally for themselves has benefits for both big business AND big government...
But without the privacy laws that EU, and most of non-EU member European states have you have no control over what happens to that information once you've given it away.
That's right - you gave it away. Think about it. If I give away my car, should I really be able to restrict how the person I give it to uses it? If it's important to me to restrict how that person uses my car, shouldn't I make that an up-front condition of getting the car from me in the first place?
What if you give your data to your bank because you're applying for a loan? Should the bank be free to sell that data without letting you know, or asking for your approval?
What if you considered that BEFORE you filled out the loan application? You've given it away, and you got a loan in exchange - if you wanted more than that, shouldn't YOU be responsible for speaking up on your own behalf?
There's so many valid recipients of personal data out there, that keeping your data to yourself isn't an option for most people.
It's always an option. Paying cash eliminates the need for most of your financial information to be disclosed to most anyone. Fee-for-service medicine avoids prying personal health questions from insurers. But if you want modern services like insurance, mortgages, and credit cards, you should be prepared to accept the terms of some provider, negotiate better terms, or do without.
Did you tell them what you were going to do with it ?
I don't know - did they ASK me what I was going to do with it?
Fine, I am collecting it for "research purposes" - a sterling non-answer that seems to fit the letter of the law here.
We have decided that attempting to trick people into revealing personal data is dishonest.
I chellenge you to show me where, in my hypothetical situation, I attempted to gain information under false pretenses.
Not if there is no "elsewhere" which doesn't also try the scam. A choice is only a real choice if people have a real alternative.
No, the choice you have is the one you always had - if you can't find someone to offer you the service on terms you can accept, you either compromise or do without.
In reality people need things like insurance, so they have no real choice to withold information - the price would be too high for almost everyone.
You may have decided that you need insurance, but I fail to see how, for example, life insurance is a basic human right which must be extended to all, regardless of what conditions they put on it. Really, you do have a choice:
1) do business with a company on the terms they offer you;
2) shop around to find a better offer from someone else;
3) attempt to negotiate a better deal with someone;
4) do without whatever good/service it is we're talking about.
If people are effectively forced to reveal personal information to companies it seems reasonable that companies are legally oblidged to treat people's information with respect.
Now this is just a cop-out - there is no "effectively forced". Either you are ACTUALLY forced to reveal personal things about yourself, or you are not. I repeat - just because you demand particular conditions attach to a transaction involving you does not mean that someone should be obligated to step up, do business with you, AND satisfy all your conditions. But that's what this is all about - you've decided you're entitled to privacy, but rather than take responsibility for it yourself, you've chosen to push it off on someone else by coercing them. So, your "right" has now become someone else's obligation.
Come now - isn't this a rather naked attempt to use the power of the state to coerce individuals or businesses into giving you something for nothing? You get all the benefits of giving out your personal info, but the people you give it to are saddled with all the costs and obligations and left with no way to recover those costs with one of the few things of value you have given them.
Most of the people you ask know nothing about the ways their data can be analyzed. Thus, they are protected from their own stupidity.
Perhaps. Or possibly they know, and don't care. Shouldn't (presumably) educated people in (we assume) advanced nations have SOME responsibility for their own interests at the *front-end* of the whole data collection process? If you ask The Man why he asks so many questions, and what he's going to do with the answers, and you aren't satisfied with what his response is, perhaps you ought not to continue to answer questions. In any case, I suspect that completely idiot-proofing the world is a rather large task - most likely, A) impossible, and, B) not worth the cost.
I don't claim that business is more important to people, only that if your information is really that important to you, don't let it go, or at least get something worthwhile in exchange for it...
But they _did_ have a say in what happens to it - they could have chosen not to give it to me in the first place, particularly as I carefully avoided discussing WHY I might want such information. And if the people I might potentially sell it to are somehow less reliable than they might like, shouldn't they have taken that into account when choosing to respond to my questions?
I guess my point is that you always have a choice regarding how much information about yourself you make available to others - if your bank, insurance company, whatever, asks too many impertinent questions (from your point of view), you are free to take your business elsewhere. But once you've chosen to reveal it to someone/anyone else, then all bets are off. Data protection laws are an attempt, IMO, to bolt the barn door after the horse has fled.
To reiterate - if you insist on keeping some things secret, the only reliable way is to keep them to yourself in the first place. Your personal data is not a secret if you go around telling it to anyone who asks - and then act surprised when they do things you might not approve of with that information.
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, why should it be this way?
Suppose I call you and your neighbors and, very politely, explain that I am collecting information, and I ask each and every one of you a host of questions - how tall you are, how much you weigh, your age, how much income you received last year, and what you had for dinner last night. And just to sweeten the pot, I offer everyone a free trinket if they cooperate (along the lines of t-shirts for college students when applying for a credit card). After the requisite hangups, obscenities, etc., I collect what I deem to be a sufficient number of responses to my questions (enough to serve my purposes, whatever they may be).
Now, nobody that answered me was in any way coerced - they were all free to refuse to cooperate. And those who did answer got something in return. Why should I not be free to take this information that I have collected, categorized, and analyzed, and do what I want with it? And if these people were so awfully concerned with their privacy, why were they answering me in the first place?
I think that if you are truly concerned with keeping your personal information private, don't give it out...
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, minorities could just "do without" riding in the front of the bus, or vote with their dollars, but believe it or not markets aren't always as perfectly efficient as the Libertarian party would have us believe.
;)
From time to time, economic interests and "social justice" do coincide, though. Look at Plessy v. Ferguson, for example. That case was an attempt to end the legal principle of separate-but-equal, brought at the behest of local railway companies. Why? Having separate facilities cost them more money. And who insured that separate-but-equal would continue for another 60 years? The government, in the form of the Supreme Court.
Are markets perfectly efficient? Of course not. But neither are cartels, be they oil, diamonds, or insurance. After all, if they were, the price of oil over the last 30 years would ALWAYS be EXACTLY what OPEC wanted. They haven't been, largely because in any cartel, there is an enormous incentive for the members to cheat at the expense of their co-conspirators.
The question, I think, is what will we decide are rights that must be available to all, and thereby provided by society at large, versus what should simply be opportunities for people to have (or provide for themselves) things they might *want*. Just because I think I have a natural right to daily handjobs doesn't mean that the 6 billion people who don't think it's my God-given right must provide it for me. If you're the only one with the belief that ass-chips are an affront, sorry, but you're SOL.
Does the free market solve all human problems? I think not (there goes my LP card), but more often than not, I think, we all benefit from it. Surely, as a general rule, more freedom is better than less....
I think the best post in this whole topic was the one about ass-chips
Seconded
What other insurance company? The other one who wants the chip in your baby, or the OTHER, other one who wants the chip in your baby? Oh, you mean the one out of state that wants the chip in your baby?
Come on. If an ass-chipless (?) insurance policy is really important to enough people, why wouldn't someone step up to provide that service? If masses of people are demanding an end to ass-chips being required for insurance, I'll make a KILLING being the only one to provide that service. And the banks'll see that as well.
Or, alternately, if you're the one-in-a-million customer who cares about, and is offended by ass-chips, whereas the rest of use, as evidenced by our inaction, are perfectly content with ass-chips, you can simply do without insurance.
As an aside, I think I deserve some extra mod points just for multiple creative uses of the phrase "ass-chip"....
As soon as a politician is elected to office, they already have to worry about getting re-elected. Their party has to worry about getting re-elected, and getting more of their member elected into offices held by their opponents.
That is how our government is bought and paid for by big business.
That's certainly the politicians' reasoning behind campaign finance reform, anyway. Except that a corporation can't buy something (like a politician) that isn't for sale in the first place.
Don't you wonder, just a little bit, about the character and moral fortitude of a group of people (like, say, politicians) whose reasoning for finance reform is essentially "We'd be good, if only we weren't faced with all this temptation"?
That'll be my reasoning if I'm ever in court.
"Your Honor, I wouldn't have gotten drunk and run over those children if I hadn't been faced with the awful, awful temptation of the beer aisle of the supermarket."
"I wouldn't have taken his car, except he tempted me by leaving the keys in the ignition."
Or, the all time classic:
"Hey, it's not my fault she was dressed all sexy like that - she was tempting me...."
...whereupon you take your business to some other insurance company who has terms more to your liking.
;)
Next issue?
And who bought Big Government to bring you that war?
;)
Even corporations can't buy something that isn't for sale...like, say, a government that isn't corrupt.
Round and round we go
the newfies practically *are* Scots.
;)
More than just "practically" - I daresay that there are Newfoundlanders that have more Scottish blood in them than some Scotsmen.
Sorry, what was the topic again?
Do you really think Gracenote would sue Roxio without the solid belief that they could win?
Yes, I do. Particularly since Roxio just started trading publicly on May 14. A lawsuit, even if totally baseless, can damage a company new to the market and lacking any sort of track record, simply by scaring away potential investors. Viewed this way, it becomes nothing more than a legalized form of extortion. "Pay us, or we'll make your options worthless."
There is little doubt that there is stuff in the contract between the two companies that is not being made public. For all we know there could be something that bars them from switching services, or a million other possibilities.
Come on. Considering the PR disaster this has been for Gracenote, don't you think if that were ACTUALLY the case, they'd be shouting "breach of contract" from the rooftops?
You don't see them suing companies using other similar services, so I'm guessing their objection is to Roxio using one that's based on IP they fancy to be theirs.
See, when you want to set a favorable precedent for yourself, you always pick out the weakest possible opponent. They may not care if they can win. All they have to do is convince Roxio that it's in their best interests to roll over. THEN they start picking off others, once they have a precedent in their pockets. Others see that all those confronted before by the mighty Gracenote have surrendered, and it affects their judgement as well. Look at the playbook Rambus has been using, for example.
Comments about them suing because Roxio won't use *their* service are probably naive. Those would be totally baseless grounds to sue on...
They may very well be hoping that this never actually sees the inside of a courtroom. As long as the threat is credible to outsiders, they have accomplished at least one thing - damaging Roxio in the eyes of the public and investors. Why fight in court if you can convince your opponent to surrender first?
GeForce drivers are pretty much perfected.. no major improvements are going to show up in them.
Ha! Tell that to NVidia, so they'll stop fucking leaking about three sets of drivers a week...
Sorry about that - it's just that I get sick of _every_ geforce forum being nothing more than an extended testing lab, where nobody does anything other than compare one set of buggy beta drivers to another set of buggy beta drivers so the performance freaks can squeeze that extra 0.07% gain out of their cards...
I used to have two phone lines - one where I took sensible steps to prevent the number getting onto the wrong lists...
;)
:)
Well, now, isn't that what I've been arguing all along? That individuals should take sensible steps on their own to protect their privacy?
My customer (they bought me out) also exports stuff overseas to countries where different rules apply.
So other countries are going for a free market solution to the problem of junk calls. Good business for you while it lasted, hmm?
I tell you what - let's call a temporary truce and agree to disagree for now. Someday soon this will be resolved one way or the other - trade war or negotiated settlement. When it is, you or I should be sure to submit it to slashdot to evaluate the outcome and decide winners and losers (which side substantially gets their way, anyhow). And after that, next time I'm in London, loser buys the first round. Deal?
Feel free to get in the last word
Well, in any case, we shall see what happens, but I'll let it go for now, except to ask one more question. If junk phone calls simply don't happen in Europe as a result of stringent privacy protection, why does your slashdot info say that you work on junk call blocking systems? After all, if they don't occur in the first place, why would you need to block them?
;)
Just curious
Well, if it's okay, I'll respond to both your posts in one. But first I'd like to say that this discussion has been most interesting for me - I don't think either of us has made much headway in persuading the other, but an airing of the issues and philosophies might at least be useful to others ;) Anyway, this is definitely the most in-depth discussion I have seen on /. for some time.
I don't know that I have misjudged how seriously Europeans regard this issue - you are clearly very passionate in your defense of the privacy rights of EU citizens, and I expected as much. I think, though, it is equally important to understand that many Americans regard the more free-wheeling, open market approach we tend to take just as passionately. As you said, we draw the line one place, you draw it somewhere else. Each has its own benefits and costs.
There is no government issued number in the UK which can be reliably used by companies to uniquely and reliably identify an individual.
So then each company just rolls its own. Isn't the end result the same? And the purpose of giving the SSN is the same as for you giving previous addresses, etc. - tying a customer to a credit record.
So you think that preventing companies from ramming piles of useless junk mail down our throats and buiding up unregulated databases of personal information has measurably damaged our corporations and our economy?
Not specifically, no. But I think a cogent case can be made that over-regulation is a major contributor to the phenomenon so charmingly phrased as "Eurosclerosis".
It is very simple - If US companies want to trade within the EU then they will be forced to trade according to EU law. Period.
This is not a principle capable of compromise - either the rules are the same for everyone - or they are not.
I agree, to a point, that the rules will be the same for everyone. But whether you agree with it or not, a compromise will be reached, if for no other reasons than that both sides have things the other wants, and that the costs of failing to reach some agreement would be punishingly heavy for both. Undoubtedly, the US will compromise by finding some way to tighten its domestic privacy requirements, and the EU will compromise by finding some way to loosen its requirements. It may offend your purist ideals, but this is the essence of negotiation. The devil, as they say, will be in the details, but the costs of hammering out a compromise are far less than the costs of failure. You say the law exists for the benefits of individual citizens - surely citizens receive more benefits by reaching a negotiated settlement and maintaining some semblance of normal trade than by the morass of sanctions, punitive tariffs, and trade wars that would inevitably ensue.
My quote of Marx was not intended to suggest that Europe is somehow sliding into communism, but instead that that principle is a logical conclusion to the path laid out before you. It's really quite simple, from my point of view. For every entitlement you and I create for ourselves, we create an obligation for someone else to provide that entitlement to us. Just because protecting your privacy is free to you doesn't mean it's free for everyone.
With respect to contracts and what-have-you, again, you draw the line one place, we draw it another. It's really a matter of comfort level. Europeans seem more comfortable turning some responsibilities over to government, whereas in the US, within limits, the general rule is CYOA ("cover your *own* ass", in case that lovely acronym hasn't made it across the pond) when making arrangements with others. Europeans, by way of a rather broad generalization on my part, seem more alarmed by potential or perceived abuses by Big Business. Americans, in a similarly broad generalization, are more concerned with potential abuses by Big Government. It works for us, and yours works for you. But as societies, both of us, to some degree, have crosses to bear as a result of the choices we have made and the institutions we have created.
My goodness, a post here, a post there, and suddenly I'm debating the entire EU :)
That's all very well, unless you want to open a bank account, sign up for an ISP, take out a mortgage, get a job, subscribe to a magazine, make a mail-order/on-line purchase, etc., etc.
And all of these are certainly things you might want, but none of them, I think, are things you are particularly entitled to have. So how badly do you want them? Badly enough to give over some personal information?
They don't actually care whether or not they loose me as a customer - but I might really need the service they have on offer.
And of course, since you "really need" that service, they are naturally required to provide it to you, no matter what the terms, good or bad, are for them, hmm? Why does this sound familiar? "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs." Is that where we're going?
I happen to think that the little guys matter.
As do I - I simply don't believe that they are as completely powerless as you apparently do.
That's because a sensible Gas supplier does actually need more than just Name and Address when deciding what terms to offer to a potential customer.
Really? Mine just asked for a name, address, and Social Security number. What sort of hoops did you have to jump through? Why did you have to give away any more than I did, especially in light of the wonderfully extensive protections your information is given?
The EU/UK approach to giving consumers privacy seems to work - we get real, meaningful privacy and corporations get the information they need to run they core business.
Perhaps. We could compare unemployment rates for the UK and US since 1985 to see if one economy tends to generate more jobs than the other, hence indicating the relative health of job-providers. Among other things.
If a US company wants to trade in the UK or the EU then they should be limited to these two choices :
A) Do it according to the same laws and rules as apply to all other companies trading in the UK/EU
B) Fuck Right Off.
Fortunately for both of our economies, the leaders of both sides have a great deal of incentive to find the middle ground that you so cleverly excluded.
What if those eleven gas companies make up an oligarchy? You'd have a very difficult time breaking into that market.
;)
Well, if you'll look back, I was actually positing that I was already a player in the market (one of the dozen or so existing gas suppliers). So you're correct - I am overlooking entry barriers for new players, and concentrating on the existing players.
If you start up a business that is based on not doing $BAD_THING, but all your competitors do $BAD_THING, you're inflicting a handicap on yourself which you may or may not be able to afford.
Well, it may be a handicap - it really depends on how much people value their privacy, doesn't it? Or, in other words :
Why is it that you don't see (many) companies out there that offer privacy as a marketing point, given all the exposure that the issue has received?
Why don't you see this? Because people don't really value their privacy as much as they claim to. Or, at least not enough to clamor for an alternative, or to vote with their feet where alternatives exist. To be more specific, people who, in the abstract, support a general notion of privacy very often have no qualms about also signing up for the discount card at the local supermarket so they can get that nickel off a can of creamed corn.
There is at least one reason that a businessperson would prefer regulation over market dynamics: it would be unilaterally applicable. Sure, he/she would take a profit hit, but then, so would all of his/her competitors.
Oh, absolutely. Businesses are indeed rather quick to scream for relief, or at least an artificial leveling of the playing field, so that even if they are disadvantaged, all competitors are as well. This is clearly true, but obviously, given my position thus far, it would be logically inconsistent if I didn't find that disturbing and unnecessary as well, which I do
So to restate your basic thesis, since you don't like your current choices, it is then the proper function of government to require some third party to cater to you in the fashion in which you think you deserve?
Where I live I have the choice of :
* One supplier for water and Sewage
* Two suppliers for Telephone Service
* About a dozen electricity companies
* About a dozen gas companies
But if your information was really valuable to you and your neighbors, wouldn't the market reward companies who voluntarily protected it? Think about it - if I'm one of the dozen gas companies (which is 11 more than I have to choose from, BTW), and I make it clear to potential customers that I'm not like those other grotty bastards - all I want from you is a name and an address to send a bill to - shouldn't I receive a reward in the form of hordes of privacy concerned customers such as yourself descending on me to receive service? And then, seeing that, won't my competitors have to somehow respond in kind? I merely wish to suggest that in the absence of government coercion, these problems occasionally do resolve themselves.
At a minimum, I think we can agree that this discussion is perhaps symptomatic of a deep philosophical divide between the US and Europe. And perhaps we can also agree that these disagreements are best settled through diplomacy and negotiation, rather that through one party or the other attempting to impose its will on the other...
Hmmm, maybe not Life assurance, but isn't 3rd party car insurance mandatory in all the western countries? Therefore, If you didn't deal with the insurance company you couldn't drive legally, and that is not an option for most people.
Interestingly enough, this is not true in most states here. The law generally requires that you demonstrate financial security. Most people do this by carrying insurance, but many states will accept a bond as proof of security in lieu of insurance. I dunno - see if Irish law is similar.
I don't make any civil liberties arguments - merely the philosophical argument that people ought to be willing to take steps to protect their own information, if it is truly important to them. I'm big on personal responsibility. It's nice that the Irish government is concerned about your well-being. But my point is this - no matter how thoughtful and wise your representatives are (and I'm sure they're all fine and decent people), none of them can possibly know what's good for you better than YOU can.
Oh come on! You try living without a bank account, with your cash under the bed. No car, insurance, job (yes your employers have all your personal information. And your medical, if you had to undergo a medical). What the hell would you do? You are "effectively forced" because if you don't do it, you are excluded from the current global, digital economy, and the benifits thereof.
So because you don't LIKE your current choices, it is government's obligation to expand the menu for you, or worse, require someone else to do it? You know, I think I've eaten at all the fast food chains at one point or another, and their choices all suck. I think government must either open its own restaurant chain giving me what I want (drive-through surf'n'turf, mmmm), or require McDonald's to cater to me in the fashion I think I deserve.
You donkey! Think for a minute! I sincerely hope that you are just trolling for the hell of it, or to play devils advocate! Your personal information should NOT have any value to those companies that you give it to!
Tut, tut. I think diamonds shouldn't have any value to DeBeers - government should require them to give me one for free (that'll make my wife happy, anyway). Just because you insist that your data shouldn't have any value doesn't change the fact that it DOES have value, and that markets exist for it. I reiterate - if you give your information away, get the terms up front, or accept that it may be used in ways you don't approve of.
Err, missed the back half of your comment - sorry. If you and I have an agreement at the beginning that I will only make "X" copies of your data, and it will only be shared with specific third-parties under specific circumstances, and I then violate that by sending your information far and wide, I'm in trouble anyway. Criminal penalties for fraud and civil penalties for breach of contract already exist, both in the US and Europe.
No, I don't think new laws are a necessary part of the solution.
Think of it this way: I allow you to use some information of me anyway you like as long as you don't give it to anybody else. That has one price. A t-shirt might be enough. Or maybe I jus like you. If you want to share my information with others, you need to pay me more.
And if you make those conditions clear *at the outset* ("and could we please put all this in writing" etc.) so that I can fairly evaluate your conditions and judge whether I still want to do business with you, then I have no problem with this at all. What I object to is people who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to expend the time and effort required to protect their own privacy, so they turn to the state to make someone else do it for them.
If they know and don't care, it wouldn't hurt you to tell them how you would use the information, and obtain their express approval, in which case you could use the data the way you wanted.
Or, to take the opposite tack, if they don't know but DO care, it would certainly help them to address those concerns at the outset, rather than trying to change the terms of the exchange after it has already taken place.
Well, I don't know about "on purpose", but I won't deny that a populace composed of individuals who are unwilling to think rationally for themselves has benefits for both big business AND big government...
But without the privacy laws that EU, and most of non-EU member European states have you have no control over what happens to that information once you've given it away.
;)
That's right - you gave it away. Think about it. If I give away my car, should I really be able to restrict how the person I give it to uses it? If it's important to me to restrict how that person uses my car, shouldn't I make that an up-front condition of getting the car from me in the first place?
What if you give your data to your bank because you're applying for a loan? Should the bank be free to sell that data without letting you know, or asking for your approval?
What if you considered that BEFORE you filled out the loan application? You've given it away, and you got a loan in exchange - if you wanted more than that, shouldn't YOU be responsible for speaking up on your own behalf?
There's so many valid recipients of personal data out there, that keeping your data to yourself isn't an option for most people.
It's always an option. Paying cash eliminates the need for most of your financial information to be disclosed to most anyone. Fee-for-service medicine avoids prying personal health questions from insurers. But if you want modern services like insurance, mortgages, and credit cards, you should be prepared to accept the terms of some provider, negotiate better terms, or do without.
That wasn't so hard, was it?
Did you tell them what you were going to do with it ?
I don't know - did they ASK me what I was going to do with it?
Fine, I am collecting it for "research purposes" - a sterling non-answer that seems to fit the letter of the law here.
We have decided that attempting to trick people into revealing personal data is dishonest.
I chellenge you to show me where, in my hypothetical situation, I attempted to gain information under false pretenses.
Not if there is no "elsewhere" which doesn't also try the scam. A choice is only a real choice if people have a real alternative.
No, the choice you have is the one you always had - if you can't find someone to offer you the service on terms you can accept, you either compromise or do without.
In reality people need things like insurance, so they have no real choice to withold information - the price would be too high for almost everyone.
You may have decided that you need insurance, but I fail to see how, for example, life insurance is a basic human right which must be extended to all, regardless of what conditions they put on it. Really, you do have a choice:
1) do business with a company on the terms they offer you;
2) shop around to find a better offer from someone else;
3) attempt to negotiate a better deal with someone;
4) do without whatever good/service it is we're talking about.
If people are effectively forced to reveal personal information to companies it seems reasonable that companies are legally oblidged to treat people's information with respect.
Now this is just a cop-out - there is no "effectively forced". Either you are ACTUALLY forced to reveal personal things about yourself, or you are not. I repeat - just because you demand particular conditions attach to a transaction involving you does not mean that someone should be obligated to step up, do business with you, AND satisfy all your conditions. But that's what this is all about - you've decided you're entitled to privacy, but rather than take responsibility for it yourself, you've chosen to push it off on someone else by coercing them. So, your "right" has now become someone else's obligation.
Come now - isn't this a rather naked attempt to use the power of the state to coerce individuals or businesses into giving you something for nothing? You get all the benefits of giving out your personal info, but the people you give it to are saddled with all the costs and obligations and left with no way to recover those costs with one of the few things of value you have given them.
Most of the people you ask know nothing about the ways their data can be analyzed. Thus, they are protected from their own stupidity.
Perhaps. Or possibly they know, and don't care. Shouldn't (presumably) educated people in (we assume) advanced nations have SOME responsibility for their own interests at the *front-end* of the whole data collection process? If you ask The Man why he asks so many questions, and what he's going to do with the answers, and you aren't satisfied with what his response is, perhaps you ought not to continue to answer questions. In any case, I suspect that completely idiot-proofing the world is a rather large task - most likely, A) impossible, and, B) not worth the cost.
I don't claim that business is more important to people, only that if your information is really that important to you, don't let it go, or at least get something worthwhile in exchange for it...
But they _did_ have a say in what happens to it - they could have chosen not to give it to me in the first place, particularly as I carefully avoided discussing WHY I might want such information. And if the people I might potentially sell it to are somehow less reliable than they might like, shouldn't they have taken that into account when choosing to respond to my questions?
I guess my point is that you always have a choice regarding how much information about yourself you make available to others - if your bank, insurance company, whatever, asks too many impertinent questions (from your point of view), you are free to take your business elsewhere. But once you've chosen to reveal it to someone/anyone else, then all bets are off. Data protection laws are an attempt, IMO, to bolt the barn door after the horse has fled.
To reiterate - if you insist on keeping some things secret, the only reliable way is to keep them to yourself in the first place. Your personal data is not a secret if you go around telling it to anyone who asks - and then act surprised when they do things you might not approve of with that information.
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, why should it be this way?
Suppose I call you and your neighbors and, very politely, explain that I am collecting information, and I ask each and every one of you a host of questions - how tall you are, how much you weigh, your age, how much income you received last year, and what you had for dinner last night. And just to sweeten the pot, I offer everyone a free trinket if they cooperate (along the lines of t-shirts for college students when applying for a credit card). After the requisite hangups, obscenities, etc., I collect what I deem to be a sufficient number of responses to my questions (enough to serve my purposes, whatever they may be).
Now, nobody that answered me was in any way coerced - they were all free to refuse to cooperate. And those who did answer got something in return. Why should I not be free to take this information that I have collected, categorized, and analyzed, and do what I want with it? And if these people were so awfully concerned with their privacy, why were they answering me in the first place?
I think that if you are truly concerned with keeping your personal information private, don't give it out...