me and the amoral menace
In the Guardian of London, Henry Porter says that “Google is just an amoral menace.” His evidence?
Google presents a far greater threat [than Scribd] to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community. One case emerged last week when a letter from Billy Bragg, Robin Gibb and other songwriters was published in the Times explaining that Google was playing very rough with those who appeared on its subsidiary, YouTube. When the Performing Rights Society demanded more money for music videos streamed from the website, Google reacted by refusing to pay the requested 0.22p per play and took down the videos of the artists concerned.
It does this with impunity because it is dominant worldwide and knows the songwriters have nowhere else to go. Google is the portal to a massive audience: you comply with its terms or feel the weight of its boot on your windpipe.
So let me get this straight: if Google/YouTube chooses to take down music videos rather than pay the fees their makers request, this constitutes a boot on the windpipe of the musicians? Moreover, for the musicians there is “nowhere else to go”: YouTube is the only site on the whole internet where music videos may be posted and viewed. (Who knew?) And this situation is so intolerable that “it may be time for the planet's dominant economic powers to focus on the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet.”
An interesting argument. And presumably Porter would extend this model to other forms of content. For instance, I have recently been asserting my legal claim to the books I wrote that have been scanned by Google Books, according to the (tentative) terms of the Google Book Settlement. If the settlement holds, Google is going to pay me sixty dollars for the right to scan each of my books. (There are some interesting complications regarding terms of distribution that I will write about another time.)
Now, according to Henry Porter, I should have the right to determine my own price for the scanning of my work, and Google should not have the right to refuse to meet my terms. If I demand a thousand bucks per book, then Google needs to fork over, or its boot is on my windpipe and I have every justification for asking the world’s dominant economic powers to intervene to force Google to pay me what I want.
I am so buying this argument.
(Cross-posted from Text Patterns)
This was written (not by me) about a different issue, but probably works here too:
What I find interesting about this issue is that it appears to signal a shift in the dominance cycle, at least to my way of looking the iWorld (I’ve been looking since before Electropolis, if that title means anything to anyone).
In other words, that Google, whose recent marketing efforts pose a significant incursion into the Empire of Redmond the First (not deposed, but “retired”), is now “managing” things like the language of sex and evoking a response is a sign that they are almosts certainly beginning the slow shift in a downward spiral.
Is Google overreaching? My sense is yes; but that doesn’t mean they won’t be replaced by something more hegemonic. For the time, there’s no Google street view of where I live, and if the came out this way, I’d say there’s at least a 50/50 chance they be met by armed resistance. (How’s that for idiosyncratic, Jim!)
Still, I do like the service. You’d be amazed how many people in the movie business put stock photos of impressive looking office buildings on their websites, when in fact they’re doing business out of a UPS mail drop.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 7, 12:54 PM · #
This argument doesn’t impress me. But is Google a menace? Yes. Anyone who has any interest at all in privacy, information consolidation or the effects of powerful media should be very afraid of Google. You don’t put that much power and that much information into the hands of one corporation, and what is very disappointing and obvious is the fact that simply having the motto “Don’t be evil” somehow placates people. That’s never been anything else than a slogan. It’s pure marketing.
— Freddie · Apr 7, 01:36 PM · #
This is kind of like arguing that as long as one has a fireplace, one has real control over the gas company. The Internet was supposed to bring innovation, but we have one primary reference site (Wikipedia), one primary shopping site (Amazon) and one primary search site (Google). Right of Refusal does not equal choice. Rents are different economically than goods. Rents are prone to abuse. That is why rents, be it your electrical or gas connection or your phone connection or your apartment, are almost always regulated.
— Badger · Apr 7, 02:40 PM · #
Freddy,
Stay off the interenet, pay in cash, rendevouze with your mistress in a different town.
— cw · Apr 7, 02:55 PM · #
And when we ask the government to regulate the internet, they will for sure respect our privacy, unlike the evil Google.
You guys are wack. You have the greatest resource in human history right at you fingertips for pennies a day and you are complaining. So google knows that you like to watch girls pooping (I’m still trying to access that website). Visa knows what kind of shoes you buy, The Feds know how much money you made last quarter, the phone company knows how many times you talked to you mistress last month, teh electric company can tell you are growing pot in you basement, the credit agencies know that you skipped out on an entire life in Barstow three years ago. Someday soon the Nike will link all the data bases and with a press of a button create a profile of your psychology which they will sell to the feds and whoever else wants to buy it and they you will put you on a bunch of different watch lists and Canada will refuse you entrance and you will be turned down from a managment position at Dominos and your children will be rejected by all but the most mediocher state colleges and they will only be able to make less than mediocher marriages and their children will be assigned at infancy to the newly created 003 caste which means that they can only work as organ harvesters.
What is the solution?
— cw · Apr 7, 03:16 PM · #
I’m dispositionally-inclined to minimize my dependence on Google; I use gMail only as my “throwaway” address for site registrations/shopping/other potential spammers, I use Search as one alternative among others, etc. There is absolutely nothing they offer that isn’t, or couldn’t easily be, provided elsewhere (often much better). PhanFare beats Picasa, many beat Maps, even gMail has its betters. Their ONLY real “strength” is the ads, and that completely relies on the ubiquity of their easily-replicable services. The only “scary” semi-exception is Google Books.
With Google Books, they’ve done something that isn’t easily replicated. But it CAN be replicated (though at great cost). They can’t patent/copyright the entire canon.
So, at the end of the day, I don’t think we have anything to truly fear, so long as we don’t set legal precedents for regulating the electronic cloud.
That’s the ironic rub. By trying to regulate Google, we end up ensuring their dominance forever. Think about it. So long as the ‘Net is “laissez-fairrish,” Google is always endangered by the “next brilliant thing.” That’s the best possible regulation. It wasn’t any court or regulator that kept Redmond in its place; it was the market. We need to ensure that the same threat remains real for Google. Because as soon as we begin regulating effectively, the “Man” takes over. Google can’t compete on every front indefinitely forever with regulatory protection; as soon as regulation is established, they just “buy” the process. Suddenly the potential competition is locked out.
So long as Google has no “overlord” that they can simply buy off, and the field is open, their only privilege is size. I’m confident that there will always be Davids to sley such Goliaths, so long as we don’t start a regulatory process that, history teaches us, can only end with the Googliaths owning the battlefield.
— tim a · Apr 7, 04:53 PM · #
Privacy concerns, especially in regards to data-mining, have always struck me as somewhat narcissistic. Who do you think cares what you buy, which books you read, what sites you go to?
Sure, maybe if you run for public office, then those details of your private life become interesting potential liabilities. Gosh, if only there was some kind of “Congress”, were precisely those kinds of elected public officials (who have a legitimate self-interest in preserving personal privacy) might have some way to craft legislation about issues that concerned them!
— Chet · Apr 7, 04:59 PM · #
That should have been:
Google can’t compete on every front indefinitely forever without regulatory protection.
Sorry.
— tim a · Apr 7, 05:00 PM · #
In the end it will just be google and wiki monopolizing all our easy information.
— E.D. Kain · Apr 7, 06:05 PM · #
<i>even gMail has its betters.</i>
Like what?
— Trumwill · Apr 7, 06:10 PM · #
Yes, I’m curious about David to gmail as well. Also, I think cw’s advice to Freddy is something we can all take to heart.
— c.t.h. · Apr 7, 07:19 PM · #
“Don’t cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!” – Billy Bragg.
— Klug · Apr 7, 09:15 PM · #
Yes, that’s advice you can take to heart— if you don’t want one company running a trouble breathtaking amount of the information and services available on the Internet, don’t use the Internet at all.
Some day, Google is going to be broken up, and it’ll be better for everyone.
— Freddie · Apr 7, 09:45 PM · #
I can’t wait until we get the Transparent Society, where, when you plug into the network — phone, highway, internet, sidewalks, public hearings, city councils — everything you do is recorded and accessible. And where, when you’re off-grid, you have an expectation, and therefore Constitutional protection, of privacy. It’s already built into our Con-Law. (Oh, and seriously, I think this plus a relaxed criminal code would be shiny).
I’m not sure what happens with The Artist, though.
— JA · Apr 7, 10:49 PM · #
JA,
Huh?
How exactly do we define “On-” vs. “Off-” grid?
“The Artist?” Would that be the formerly and once again known as Prince? For whom the most intimate expressions of life are made public, and the normal matters of commerce, exchange and sociability are made perversely private?
I’m a newbie around here, but this comment is much harder to decipher than Poulos’ last essay, or even matoko_chan’s stuff.
— tim a · Apr 7, 11:37 PM · #
I’m a newbie around here, but this comment is much harder to decipher than Poulos’ last essay, or even matoko_chan’s stuff.
You made me spit my wine!
— Tony Comstock · Apr 7, 11:51 PM · #
Trumwill and c.m.h.,
I relent re: gMail, I got carried away and overstated. I should have said “even gMail has its equals,” and qualified it with “for any particular set of user requirements.” For my purpsoses, the combination of a proprietary host, PPC and desktop applications serves me perfectly. But it isn’t “free.” For others, security considerations, capacity, etc., may take on significance that preclude gMail. Technically, nothing about gMail isn’t replicable with <1 million startup capital, but such a David is not currently on the scene providing a free service.
This was a throwaway point to my larger argument and I should have left it out. Hey, I’m just a newbie here.
— tim a · Apr 7, 11:52 PM · #
Alan, you just had a Dr. Evil moment. Google has billions of dollars, and you’re asking for a few thousand?
More substantively, it’s kind of crazy to say wikipedia is our only reference site on the web. To name three that I use regularly, there’s the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sensei’s Library (for the game of go) and Mathworld, each of which surpasses Wikipedia in its proper domain. Wikipedia is just the easiest reference to find, and the broadest one.
There are even wiki based reference works for decade old computer games. But I won’t further incriminate myself by naming them.
— Justin · Apr 8, 05:11 AM · #