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German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

reuters.com

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Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#301

Post by rock_hard »

lima wrote: post #59
waytogo wrote: post #18

Wait until GDPR is in place in May and German and other EU courts will rule FB to death. IDK how FB will ever be compliant with GDPR and survive that huge upcoming fines in the long term or in the worst case the withdrawal from these markets.

The GDPR isn't actually as bad as people claim. The law is actually pretty reasonable. It is the result of years of discussion and deliberation. In fact, privacy watchdogs are complaining that it doesn't go far enough - it leaves plenty of holes. Most of the GDPR is about informed consent, having a valid reason for processing personal data and individual rights. Facebook will do just fine, they had years to prepare a…

As I wrote already in another comment: all these regulations will end up doing is strengthen the market position of the established players and cripple any competition from new incumbents :(

It’s the end of an era...not too long ago anyone could compete with the big players...soon nobody will

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#302

Post by ryandrake »

dmix wrote: post #299
ethbro wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've listened in on various conversations around health products over the years. HIPAA is a common reason given for not getting into the healthcare space and focusing elsewhere. A lot of smart people and smart products that could have been focused on health just never turn up at all, because of the vagueness, poor drafting and expansive reach of such things. As someone who worked extensively on HIPAA covered data a…

HIPAA (and PCI compliance) has done little to prevent 1) in practice, especially when balanced against the huge costs it has on industry and the 'hidden' cost of crippled innovation. You can't measure the true cost of hundreds of thousands of projects and startups that were never realized because HIPAA scared them away...and this is stuff that would have saved billions in healthcare costs, improved the public's healt…

As a consumer, my view is: if a potential idea is abandoned out of fear of HIPAA then HIPPA is working and I am thankful that that idea went nowhere. Soon, s/HIPPA/GDPR

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#303

Post by Barrin92 »

rock_hard wrote: post #301
lima wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR isn't actually as bad as people claim. The law is actually pretty reasonable. It is the result of years of discussion and deliberation. In fact, privacy watchdogs are complaining that it doesn't go far enough - it leaves plenty of holes. Most of the GDPR is about informed consent, having a valid reason for processing personal data and individual rights. Facebook will do just fine, they had years to prepare a…

As I wrote already in another comment: all these regulations will end up doing is strengthen the market position of the established players and cripple any competition from new incumbents :( It’s the end of an era...not too long ago anyone could compete with the big players...soon nobody will

given the feedback loop of social networks there wasn't much of a reason for viable competitors to emerge in the first place.

The lack of competitors here is structural, not everything is an issue of 'we must remove the red tape!' That would do nothing because nobody is voluntarily going to switch away from an established social network monopolist. It's a nash equilibrium of sorts.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#304

Post by ethbro »

dmix wrote: post #299
ethbro wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've listened in on various conversations around health products over the years. HIPAA is a common reason given for not getting into the healthcare space and focusing elsewhere. A lot of smart people and smart products that could have been focused on health just never turn up at all, because of the vagueness, poor drafting and expansive reach of such things. As someone who worked extensively on HIPAA covered data a…

HIPAA (and PCI compliance) has done little to prevent 1) in practice, especially when balanced against the huge costs it has on industry and the 'hidden' cost of crippled innovation. You can't measure the true cost of hundreds of thousands of projects and startups that were never realized because HIPAA scared them away...and this is stuff that would have saved billions in healthcare costs, improved the public's healt…

I hear you that it makes things more difficult, but I think it's hard to overstate how terrible & uninterested conservative revenue stream businesses (e.g. insurance, utilities) are at keeping up with IT trends.

Based on what I saw in a couple of the top 5 largest insurance companies, these are IT departments that would be storing personal data in databases open to every employee of the organization, were there not a law discouraging them doing so.

Why?

Because IT isn't their business. That perspective is changing (gradually), but the resistance to anything aside from business as usual is staggering.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#305

Post by killjoywashere »

lima wrote: post #246

That article doesn't summarize the ruling very well. Here's a short tl;dr of the actual ruling[0]: Part A: Privacy settings - Facebook tried to claim that it is only subject to Irish law. Court disagrees since Facebook operates in Germany, so local law applies. [side note: this kind of confusion is exactly why the GDPR is needed] - Law states that the imprint must be "easily" accessible. Court found this not to be th…

> It is very clear that the courts take the requirement of "informed consent" very seriously

The modern understanding of "informed consent" came out of the Nuremberg trials. Not sure if the concept was strong in German law before that, or the German courts are now particularly interested for historical reasons, but it's not all that surprising that German courts would be keen on that.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#306

Post by mirimir »

rock_hard wrote: post #300
lima wrote: post #246

That article doesn't summarize the ruling very well. Here's a short tl;dr of the actual ruling[0]: Part A: Privacy settings - Facebook tried to claim that it is only subject to Irish law. Court disagrees since Facebook operates in Germany, so local law applies. [side note: this kind of confusion is exactly why the GDPR is needed] - Law states that the imprint must be "easily" accessible. Court found this not to be th…

It’s interesting...implementing these changes won’t hurt Facebook...but they will kill any competition from other (smaller) players. This ruling will in the end contribute to Facebooks long term success and will cement its market position.

It'd be very cool if they lost the real-name policy.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#307

Post by perl4ever »

pavlov wrote: post #72
LanceH wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is pretty easy to argue that someone has the freedom to put their info on a website that will use it according to the terms of service.

30 years ago everyone had the freedom to choose between restaurants that allow smoking and those that don’t — except that no businesses wanted to provide the latter. Without government intervention we’d still be wading through cigarette smoke in bars. Facebook’s reckless use of private data is a public hazard not unlike passive smoking. It’s not going to be solved by an asymmetric fake free market where customers are…

Are you referring to Germany or the US?

In my recollection, in the US, 30 years ago restaurants had "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections. And non-smokers sometimes complained bitterly about smoke wafting into the "non-smoking" section. Which in fact led to some restaurants being all non-smoking before government intervention. The NY statewide ban on smoking in workplaces was only passed 15 years ago.

I don't know about bars 30 years ago, though. Because drinking has always been considered a "vice", I think people tended to group it with smoking and think if you're going to tolerate one, why not the other.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#308

Post by tsbertalan »

peoplewindow wrote: post #223
ncallaway wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is the law reasonable? It's not even clear what is allowed under it and what isn't. The EU refuses to clarify anything, the only time any decision will be made is by courts, if there's an actual dispute in progress. How is that different from a US law like HIPAA? The structures of the law seem largely the same, in that they give you guidelines to follow, but provide no clarity about what specifically is require…

HIPAA and other mega-regulations like them have the same problems. And they do cause people to just give up rather than deal with the risk. I've listened in on various conversations around health products over the years. HIPAA is a common reason given for not getting into the healthcare space and focusing elsewhere. A lot of smart people and smart products that could have been focused on health just never turn up at…

If GDPR analogously has a chilling effect, reducing the proliferation of "social" products, I'd consider that a positive outcome. I don't really buy that any of these are "making the world a better place" as Zuck loves to say, though you might have a better case with the health products.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#309

Post by blaedd »

SCHiM wrote: post #211
peoplewindow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I followed the shopping case closely. At no point was it obvious what Google did wrong, or why providing shopping results is a problem but not maps or videos, or how you would predict and avoid such problems in a new company and product line. Nor are any of the other cases clear cut. Apple's case isn't even about Apple, it's more like a power struggle between the Commission and the Irish government. We sa…

I must admit that I've not followed the case all that closely. But, assuming that the document does not lie, this part looks like a huge problem: > "Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down" I think this is a death sentence for any website whose that previously depended on unbiased search results.…

You're missing the bit where the sites in question are basically zero value link farms, who got downranked for low quality content.

Don't get me started about the maps thing. They're very keen on defining Google search as Web search, and neatly divided search engines. Don't know about you, but if I put an address into Google search I expect a map back, and it's daft to expect Google to guess how to find it on a competitors sites when they have (likely better) data at their disposal. And yes, they got ruled against for this.(giving a helpful Google map result if I input an address)

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#310

Post by cbhl »

lima wrote: post #246

That article doesn't summarize the ruling very well. Here's a short tl;dr of the actual ruling[0]: Part A: Privacy settings - Facebook tried to claim that it is only subject to Irish law. Court disagrees since Facebook operates in Germany, so local law applies. [side note: this kind of confusion is exactly why the GDPR is needed] - Law states that the imprint must be "easily" accessible. Court found this not to be th…

> - It's OK to have the user agree that he's 13 years or older. Facebook cannot possibly check whether it's true, and the age doesn't matter anyway since the contract would be valid even if it weren't the case.

I suspect this clause is actually due to US law (COPPA).

Also, are kids allowed to agree to contracts in Germany? I believe that's not the case in the US.

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