Privacy consultant challenges Meta under Ireland's computer abuse law | Hacker News Reader

Privacy consultant challenges Meta under Ireland's computer abuse law

theregister.com

144 pointsgslin33 comments

That is a well-spoken and sympathetic plaintiff.

But the HN title is really misleading. This is only about a private criminal action by a private citizen. The bar for filing a "complaint" like this appears to be pretty low, akin to a civil lawsuit. HN's current title sounds like Irish prosecuting agencies are investigating FAANG's for crimes committed, but that is not the case!

TIL: Irish private citizens can file criminal suits. i wish the US had that. The FBI only cares about big fish and does not mess with corporations that help it with other high value investigations (e.g.: don't mess with ISPs that let them spy on possible terrorists, even if they are breaking a lot of laws).

> TIL: Irish private citizens can file criminal suits. i wish the US had that.

They cannot. Making a complaint is just reporting an alleged crime. This is exactly the same process as if your house was burgled and you can identify the burglars. It would normally be confidential, but in this case it was made by a "privacy activist" who publicised it himself.

The Gardai and the DPP (prosecutor) make the decision to prosecute or not. If (when) they decide to drop the case, the activist can follow up to get a statement in writing about why the DPP determined it wasn't worth a criminal prosecution. That's all he's likely hoping to get out of this.

The US, on the other hand, does have private criminal prosecutions in many jurisdictions, but they aren't very common or effective.

Kaplan v DA lol

Thanks for clearing that up. It's very unfair when prosecutors refuse to prosecute and you are the victim. The burden of justice is transfered then to the victim to run a campaign against the DA and at best he loses an election, the original wrong is still not righted! It should fall upon a jury or grand jury to reject an indictment.

Short of that, the victim must be allowed to present evidence of a crime before a judge, where the prosecutor has refused to prosecure. if there is merit the why shouldn't there be a prosecution? At least for crimes where there is an actual victim. This idea that financial compensation is enough is ludicrous.

Some US states do allow private criminal prosecution. New Jersey allows them with approval of a judge and prosecutor. Other states allow private citizens to file charges directly with a magistrate - I think maybe Wyoming or Montana?

It's usually a holdover from English common law.

Won’t they have to investigate once a complaint like this is filed? It seems like the activist is trying to get more attention to this to hurry the investigation?

Isn't it the opposite? Usually private prosecution prevents gov filing charges due to double jeopardy concerns.

Not Irish or a lawyer but I would expect their DPP to have very similar powers to their English friends allowing takeover of private prosecutions. With the caveat that Irish private prosecutions are a much less well-trodden path.

Edit- not that it matters here, since it’s a regular criminal complaint to the garda and not a private prosecutions at all.

A lot of private criminal "cases" are not popular and tend to be limited to upper class folks playing tiddlywinks with the criminal justice system to screw with their "offenders" (those who offend them or are strategically inconvenient).

I don't see why they need to distinguish since they are both technically prosecutions and it seems to be the only way to go after evils and bullshit that every government is allowing to stand no matter how depraved or illegal it is

Ok, we've changed the title to use some language from the article body instead. Thanks!

Google game plan:

1. Push people to stop using ad blockers via client side tech so they can harvest and profile our data.

2. Push out a browser with a trusted computing model around it that prevents ad blockers from being used and allows tracking to take place.

My game plan:

1. Steal the content with yt-dlp and NewPipe and give them the middle finger.

It's not even stealing. You are archiving it for your own personal use without an intent of ever distributing it. There are a number of valid reasons: heading to offline zone (no internet), having a metered connection so repeatedly streaming it is not viable, traveling to more authoritarian country, etc.

I wish them luck defeating that argument in court.

I don't care if I am or aren't stealing. They face no consequences for blatant GDPR and privacy violations. Why should I take the moral high ground if there isn't one?

>You are archiving it for your own personal use

That is not the usual definition of archiving. That is just piracy.

So what does personal archiving mean? Storing it and never consuming it?

Kind of a non-sequitur from you here.

> So what does personal archiving mean?

Insofar as it maps to anything that has special status in copyright law distinct from making a copyright-violating unauthorized copy, it means making a copy of a computer program (not any other kind of work, such as an audiovisual recording) of which you own a physical copy to safeguard against the risk of destruction, media failure, etc., of the original copy.

("Personal archiving" is also commonly used to refer to making backup copies of one's own works and documentation that one owns that is not creative work subject to copyright, but that is less relevant here.)

How is that different from recording a TV show with your VCR (and fast-forwarding over the ads), which is completely legal?

>How is that different from recording a TV show with your VCR

That is considered time shifting which is not what downloading a YouTube video is.

It's not just time shifting - as far as I know, there's no law that requires me to erase the tape after watching it once. After I've recorded the tape, I can keep it forever and watch it as many times as I want, even years after the show has gone off the air. It becomes an archived copy.

Does YT own the content? Its not exactly the same as movies, music or TV shows. He is downloading a video made by another user and uploaded to a publicly accessible website. Account is not even required to watch YT unless its +18 content. So what is Google going to argue here that user X stole users Y content and they are just good middle man samaritan?

>Does YT own the content?

No, they don't.

>He is downloading a video made by another user

Without a license from that user to make a copy of their video.

Yeah, if that other user copyrighted the video.

Works are automatically copyrighted when they are created

There is a copy of the video on your device every time you watch it.

I like the idea and agree with the arguments to some extent. Improving performance of ads by collecting information on how one uses a service - sure. Monitoring one's every move, click and activity across 3rd party websites... then combining and selling the entire "persona" - no, no, no.

It also feels like we've reached the end of the rope when it comes to targeted ads, it was fun, but we need an alternative that doesn't depend on people being transformed into a "behavioural commodity".

And also YouTube running fancy scripts to detect ads loading - my browser, my choice!

I am in the process of moving to newpipe.net - no ads. More importantly not the same 5 ads being recycled at me over and over. Why tf yt would think I'm into gamesm i don't know, but if that's 'targetting', they missed - and lost a customer.

The easy, albeit not simple, solution is for the bulk of people using these services to pay and to make it frictionless for everyone who can. Getting the companies offering said services to start treating their users as customers while not double dipping will be the hard part. I'm sceptical the FAANGs of the world are capable of this, which is why I'm watching Meta's "experiment" in the EU with some interest.

I used to spend $100+ on super-chats a month, of which Google made $30+.

But they needed to double-dip, insisting on showing ads or giving them an extra $10.

So I stopped super-chatting on YouTube.

I'd be curious what kind of precedent a ruling against anti-adblockers would set for anti-cheating or anti-tampering software that are commonly present in games, and sometimes involve invasive kernel-level drivers for the sole purpose of monitoring what's running on a user's device. These are significantly more invasive and reveal far more private information about someone compared to just a simple check for whether or not an adblock extension is active

I prefer the dollar vote to remove the kernel level drivers from software.

I refuse to purchase or utilize software with kernel level anything.

Kernel level attacks are hell to mitigate, solve, or remove. The larger the install base, the larger the target.

No thank you.

Do Experian next.

what would we do without europe seriously

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