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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#321

Post by catmanjan »

sjy wrote: post #229
wombatmobile wrote: post #207

Obviously the Australian government is trying to make google pay just because Murdoch told it to. But the pretense is bizarre - that google has to pay Murdoch because it steals his content. Google doesn't republish News Corp content! It just lists headlines with URLs that readers click to go through to News Corp! Google is giving News Corp 70% of its traffic. Bizarre. What's to stop google from simply ceasing to inde…

Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.

That is utterly false

The Australian government isn't forcing Google to index content, and I suspect what op suggested is what will happen and News corp will beg for reindexing

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#322

Post by kiplkipl »

barry-cotter wrote: post #294
berkes wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, If you ignore who does it worst in pracice, the most important argument becomes apparent: The Austrialian government is a democratically assigned entity; one that has (or should have?) checks and balances in place; one that is closely monitored as your various references prove. Google, a foreign private entity has no su…

So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.

I find the elected fascist to be an interesting thought experiment. If someone was fairly elected on a platform of genocide, would you comply? If someone doesn't, does that mean democracy is second to morality? And, if they don't, do they think that person should be allowed to stand on that plaform?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#323

Post by Tainnor »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #313
barry-cotter wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.

Hitler got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. But I agree that democratic government doesn't automatically justify everything. Minority and fundamental individual rights are a problem. There are a lot of tricky issues with self referentiality if you think about independence movements for instance.

Yep, Hitler being elected Chancellor was well within the legal framework of the Weimar constitution (even if it was kind of a shady backdoor deal). Him rigging the 1933 election and later grabbing all the power through the Enabling Act wasn't.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#324

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]

No, no it can't. I don't know how the media managed to get this so wrong and how so many people just accepted it without questioning it.

The law explicitly limits, and limited from the start, the effect that a government request could have [0]: a request cannot introduce a "systemic weakness".

Some relevant quotes of what a systemic weakness can entail:

- "one or more actions that would render systemic methods of authentication or encryption less effective"

- [when targeting a particular person] "any act or thing that will, or is likely to, jeopardise the security of any information held by any other person."

Note that this is a restriction on the "effect" that a notice can have. It's not just the the government can't ask for this, it's that the government can't ask for anything that would result in this.

So no, there are no backdoors.

What there is, is a a requirement to assist when it can be done in a way that doesn't have any of these effects. For example if the government wanted to intercept WhatsApp messages, it could require that WhatsApp introduce a hard-coded identifier into the app and if a user matches that identifier, then copies of every message would be sent to the Australian government. This doesn't introduce any systemic weakness and doesn't compromise anybody else's data, so should be permitted.

And I don't see how the above could be considered a "backdoor", as it requires that the app be pushed through the app store, a capability that WhatsApp already has.

[0]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#325

Post by rbg246 »

thisrod wrote: post #299
squiggleblaz wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it's much harder to find out about Australian politics because we all spend our time as a minority on an American web and our media just aren't doing (can't do?) a great job.

Which Australian media do you follow? I'd say that Crikey covers politics as well as the best newspapers do overseas, and most countries dream of having a TV show like 4 Corners. The media is certainly getting smaller—everywhere, not just in Australia—and important things aren't getting reported. The answer to that is pretty boring, though: pay your subscription fees already.

If I may add:

theguardian.com/au

michaelwest.com.au

theconversation.com

themonthly.com.au

All do decent analysis of policy and economics and holding government to account.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#326

Post by dutch3000 »

google search is already going down the tubes. for example, i search every variation of “when is grass fungus active” and am served up with results on how to cure grass fungus. just one example of many in how there search engine cannot deal with different angles to a search and has huge delivery buckets that aren’t useful, if you need a more granular search ability

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#327

Post by BLKNSLVR »

inopinatus wrote: post #289
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may sound like a technicality, but what I said was that this is the Government that the Australian people want. Reason being that they voted it in … again. It's not as if the current government have changed their stripes since the election before last. Australians have become, in my view (happy to be proven wrong), very conservative because of the fact we've had it so good for so long, and therefore are a bit we…

Giving me a choice of two or three mendacious, self-serving, incompetent cliques and then saying the one I grudgingly picked as the temporarily least appalling is what I /wanted/, is a bit of a long bow to draw.

Point soberly taken and understood through the scarring of experience. But then, what's the alternative to the cookie-cutter alternatives?

Start yet another micro political party doomed to the fringes? Even Nick Xenophon gave up after a few years.

Revolution? If you can't succeed as a political party how are you going to build a revolution? And does the ends justify the everything-in-between, along with the very high likelihood of potential failure and after-effects of such failure?

Maybe the silent majority have just done the maths already?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#328

Post by stephen_g »

harry8 wrote: post #221

Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.

We definitely do need to close up loopholes that multinationals use to avoid paying tax here (and really, everybody should have a look at Michael West’s Top 40 Tax Dodgers [1] - apparently Google avoids being on the list by directly booking a fair bit of their Australian profit offshore, but wouldn’t be that high compared to the likes of Chevron, Exxon and others). But we need to keep in mind that this proposed bill has been pushed for pretty much solely by a single American company that controls 70% of our media and also doesn’t pay tax!

In this case, I’d prefer Google wins - tax reform can come after. Or we could use it as a compromise - “OK, we’ll drop the News Corp Subsidy Bill, but in return you stop the tax avoidance”

1. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/australias-top-40-tax-dodgers...

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#329

Post by mcv »

berkes wrote: post #314
mcv wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and I absolutely support regulation where necessary. I strongly support regulation that require companies to handle user data in a confidential manner, for example. But that doesn't make all regulation automatically good; I strongly oppose regulation that requires companies to share sensitive user data with anyone who asks for it, for example. And forcing a company to do business it does not want to do, seems u…

I'm not saying this specific law is any good (I think it is not). But I am saying that when we compare who is to allow or deny us access to news and knowledge, and who should be able to track our every move, a democratic elected goverment is better suited to do so, than a private entity.

That sounds completely contrary to the concept of a free press. If the government gets to decide access to news, then independent checks on the government can become impossible. It would be the end of a free press.

This is absolutely a big problem with democracy: on the one hand, it requires a free press to inform voters about the state of the country and the government, but on the other hand, there's no way to guarantee that the press will provide the necessary information; the press needs to be funded, but if the government funds it, the government controls it. If the people pay for it in a free market, then the press will publish what the people want to pay for, rather than what is necessary for them to know about their government.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#330

Post by peterkelly »

throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #324
discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1] No, no it can't. I don't know how the media managed to get this so wrong and how so many people just accepted it without questioning it. The law explicitly limits, and limited from the start, the effect that a government request could have [0]: a request cannot introduce a "systemic weakness". Some relevant quotes of what a sys…

Any property of a system that makes it possible to intercept the communication of specific users is, in and of itself, a systemic weakness.
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