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Google's campaign for a free and open internet

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Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#21

Post by ihsw »

jfaucett wrote: post #16

Maybe this is a good campaign maybe not, from the site though there's a huge problem of basically no details, references or data anywhere. How can 3 paragraphs without anything to back it up convince so many people to submit their names for something? Here's a link to one article I quickly found just looking for a perspective on this. http://www.brecorder.com/it-a-computers/206/1260960/ Anyone have others?

People rallied against SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA without knowing any details. These acronyms are all outlining pro-censorship, government-sponsored, broad-sweeping and baseless monitoring of citizens -- that much is certain.

I'd hate to sound like a rabid Ron Paul fan but he had a point in his farewell speech, "They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties."

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#22

Post by spindritf »

bosch wrote: post #11

It should have a * at the end of the statement that reads: * As long as Google can track you.

How so? Is Google requiring all your connections to go through their servers?

Are they hiding some important information from you, maybe Ghostery is not showing up in your search results? Perhaps they provide a browser that you have to use in which you cannot install Adblock, or stop it from accepting third party cookies?

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#24

Post by magicalist »

slaven wrote: post #19

The page is completely broken on desktop Safari without Flash installed. Kinda ironic: http://cl.ly/image/1M233A072M06

Leaving aside the fact that a "free and open internet" doesn't preclude plugins that receive and transmit data via the internet (the opposite, in fact), it looks fine in Safari here. It uses the HTML5 youtube player instead of the Flash one, but it does the layout just fine. Maybe you have an old version of Safari?

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#25

Post by magicalist »

magicalist wrote: post #5

Great site (and I agree with the cause), but it's pretty light on the actual info and analysis side of things. You need a good, clear hook to get people invested enough to stick around the site, granted, but there should be a page on the site with a lot more information for people that want it. Otherwise it's (partly) reducing an attempt to educate the public to asking people to sign a petition that says "evil shadow…

For other commenters that really haven't heard about what's going on with the ITU, Timothy Lee at Ars Technica covered it (Google's side, at least) pretty well a few days ago:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/google-rallies-op...

ICANN is in no way ideal, but shady ACTA-style agreements that would increase the ITU's power is not an acceptable solution.

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#26

Post by lwf »

zaknanny wrote: post #15

did anyone else notice one of the thing they said on the what's at stake page? I think this my be their hidden motivation for doing this. "Other proposals would require services like YouTube, Facebook, and Skype to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders."

Yes, which makes innovation sad.

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#27

Post by irahul »

magicalist wrote: post #5

Great site (and I agree with the cause), but it's pretty light on the actual info and analysis side of things. You need a good, clear hook to get people invested enough to stick around the site, granted, but there should be a page on the site with a lot more information for people that want it. Otherwise it's (partly) reducing an attempt to educate the public to asking people to sign a petition that says "evil shadow…

I think Google is going for something which a vast majority can relate to. Making it detail oriented might give the perception that whatever this is, it only affects the techies.

That said, it should have still have details for those who fall in the category "I would like to know, but if it's not mentioned here, I am not going to do my own research".

When it says YouTube can be tolled, a detail page explaining that currently YouTube doesn't have to pay anything to the providers as consumer pays for it, and this is how it always has been, and how tolling will affect the overall web can help put things in perspective.

I doubt many people know how the internet works, and how putting barriers will affect them. Light details on how the internet works, with some scenarios on how it will affect a normal consumer will be the right mix.

Re: Google's campaign for a free and open internet

#29

Post by millstone »

spindritf wrote: post #22
bosch wrote: post #11

It should have a * at the end of the statement that reads: * As long as Google can track you.

How so? Is Google requiring all your connections to go through their servers? Are they hiding some important information from you, maybe Ghostery is not showing up in your search results? Perhaps they provide a browser that you have to use in which you cannot install Adblock, or stop it from accepting third party cookies?

You may recall Google being fined $22.5 million for sneakily bypassing Safari's privacy settings earlier this year.

But more to the point is Google's lobbying. Google spends far more on lobbying than do Apple, Facebook, or Microsoft. Google is required to report which issues they lobbied on, but not whether they are for or against proposed legislation.

In some cases we can speculate. Google reports high spending on the "Global Online Freedom Act of 2011," which would make it a crime for companies to cooperate with foreign government (cough China) censorship. I do not know which way Google lobbied on this bill, because they won't say (which is itself suggestive). But I suspect they lobbied against it, i.e. would like to be able to censor, because it seems strange to spend so much money supporting a bill that could criminalize their behavior and make it more difficult for them to grow in China. So there is a potential example of Google defending censorship when it aligns with their interest.

Overall, it's a fair guess that their lobbying efforts are for less Internet regulation, and also less consumer privacy protections, because that's where their financial interests lie.

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