This idea is a pipe dream. It would be nationalizing property, it's never going to happen in the US.
If you want to enforce anti-trust actions against google's app store policies, I'm all for that. But forcing them to give away property is insane.
If you want to enforce anti-trust actions against google's app store policies, I'm all for that. But forcing them to give away property is insane.
The author references precedent in the 1956 consent decree with Bell Labs [1]. If anything, that was more extreme. AT&T developed those patents.
The author's proposal doesn't involve Google surrendering its algorithm. Just the index it compiled from public resources using a publicly-subsidized Internet infrastructure. All without content owners' permission.
[1] https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/how_antitrust...
This is a failed model. There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy. It’s a solution suggested by lawmakers who fundamentally don’t understand how computers work.
How is this different from the 1956 consent decree? AT&T spent money developing its patents. But on the basis of longstanding law around public interest, it was forced to license them to third parties. (Note: not give them away.)
> and continues to dedicate to keep the index up to date?
The author explicitly contemplates, again within the context of the 1956 consent decree and many subsequent and preceding actions by the U.S. government (mostly around pipelines, et cetera), use fees paid to Google.
> There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy
Google wouldn't be permitted to maintain dual states. Its algorithms would have to use the public index.
The article makes the conceit of equating an online data store to the telephone infrastructure. Google is not preventing other companies from indexing the internet in any way, shape or form. There is no barrier to another company building a similar data store from scratch using the existing internet infrastructure. On the other hand, laying out your own wires has physical limitations, especially when another company has claimed the most optimal route. In such a scenario, your costs will always exceed theirs (more infrastructure to reach the same consumers).
Regarding forcing Google to use the same index: How does DoJ plan to enforce this? How would DoJ ever be sure that Google is in compliance? I once again assert that the law magically assumes new technology to solve old technology problems without fundamentally understanding how computers work. Computers are copy-on-write by design. Delete always requires an extra step, and the verification that only one copy exists is impossible to make in the digital domain.
AT&T wasn't blocking anyone from laying interstate copper. It's just prohibitively expensive to do so. The analogy, down to the network effects, is quite apt.
Google can't have a monopoly on data gathered from the publicly available internet, that's absurd.
This is a rare instance where anti-corporate leftists and dejected right wingers could actually do something substantive together.
In most cases I would agree with you the defenders of private industry are pretty fierce in the US, but all that ideology sort of dissipates when you feel like you are being oppressed (whether or not, or to what degree it is true).
I think we're heading towards political ideologies having the same protection as religious institutions (which IMO, are exactly the same in all practical matters).
The government has never had the right to meddle in what publishers decide to publish (with exceptions for regulations on pornography and classified information). I can't imagine the government forcing Mother Jones or The Nation to print conservative viewpoints. If the platforms become "publishers" their power to select what information is available increases. They become liable for more of the content on their sites, but they also gain full control over content.
The only way I see to protect freedom of access to information would be to declare certain spaces (Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, etc.) as "privately-owned public forums" where suppression based on ideology would be heavily restricted.
For instance, if you're a newspaper, and you publish "Politician X is a rapist" and you don't have a way to back up that allegation in court you're liable. As a platform, you're not liable for the content your users post.
If you are allowing people to say "Politician X is a rapist" but not allowing people to say "Politician Y is a rapist", you've crossed into the land of publisher in some people's minds.
Simply being a platform on the web is 'doing business' if you're getting revenue from that operation. Can a platform specifically reject a religious group from their site? Can a platform demonetize a religious group?
I personally don't believe in protected groups, but if we're going to have protected groups, we should apply the same protection to all groups, equally, even if the group size is 1.
Liable is incredibly hard to prove in court, and usually cases are taken in civil court not criminal court.
Can a platform ban specific groups? I see where your argument is coming from. Commerce is allowed by the Constitution for the common good (to serve everyone). Could Walmart, for example, say that conservatives are not allowed to shop there? Definitely not.
However, it has recently been established, through a series of court cases culminating in the Gay Wedding Cake case, that you cannot compel speech from an individual that they don't believe in. Corporations in the US are often given rights similar to individuals. I can see this going to the Supreme Court under a similar argument with Google, etc. (you can't compel us to disseminate what we deem as immoral, anymore than you can make a Christian baker bake a gay wedding cake).
Ironic because leftists were livid with that decision, but it may be the one that allows private companies to censor you on their networks.
> Liable is incredibly hard to prove in court, and usually cases are taken in civil court not criminal court.
Going to court is expensive, even if you win. Thus, the protections for platforms allow an avenue of easy dismissal of cases, preventing from go very far in the court system in the first place.
> Google, etc. (you can't compel us to disseminate what we deem as immoral, anymore than you can make a Christian baker bake a gay wedding cake).
Sure, but I think then they would qualify as a publisher and not a platform according to some. Compare the results from Google to Bing for the query 'Trump is a'. Did Google hand-tune their algorithm for their results? Did they tune their algorithm to weight more heavily organizations that share their political bias? EG, Prefer CNN over Fox News (or vice versa). Do some sites have insider knowledge to better game the system?
I can remember a time when there were no news results in a google search. It was a better internet.
This is commonly repeated but not true. In fact, the opposite is true.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
Scroll down to section C.
1. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
2. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
2.a any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
2.b any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]What is 'good faith' and 'otherwise objectionable' in this context? Is removing all content from a religious group afforded in this definition, as long as the provider considers it objectionable?
'whether or not such material is constitutionally protected' has almost no meaning because almost all speech is protected.
Another interesting point is, while it's allowable by the law to restrict content you deem objectionable, is it allowable to promote content you prefer over other content? Or de-promote the content but not remove it?
Is it acceptable to remove religious content with no explanation as to why? Is it acceptable to ban or demonetize a religious group without explanation?
> is it allowable to promote content you prefer over other content? Or de-promote the content but not remove it?
Legally it is allowable since the law makes no distinction between "promotion" and "curation".