[IP] devilizing or divinizing Google (was: for a billion of pages or justone,the decision - andlogic - should be the same
Begin forwarded message:
From: pat hache <tercasa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 3, 2006 11:41:53 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: devilizing or divinizing Google (was: for a billion of pages
or justone,the decision - andlogic - should be the same
I think Pat has overlooked one distinction in the google issue
when he says
or should we consider that Google is acting as a judge deciding
what,s good or bad, for any reason they should be solely responsable
to appreciate ?
The article notes that it was a Brazilian _court_ who ordered the
records, vs the US _Justice_Department_ (a division of the executive
branch). Now, I will not pretend to understand the Brazilian system
of government, but both Wikipedia and the CIA Factbook seem to
indicate that the Judicial branch is independent of the Executive
branch, much as it is in the US. Assuming the similarity, I hope we
can see the difference:
- In this case, a judge _has_ reviewed the request and ordered the
information be turned over. Google is complying with what appears
to be a legal request.
- In the US case, there has been no such review, so Google is
(apparently) perfectly within its legal rights to refrain from
turning the information over.
ok . but let's keep on on such idea. an administration in some
country , being such any part of the executive or the judiciary
branch, asks or orders the local branch of a multinational internet
service provider to execute or just obey instructions and give a
page or a billion pages.
as Allen wrote
Now, what if some country (and I will not name names) that did not
have such protections in place made a request, no matter how legal it
was in that country? What is Google's legal obligation? What is the
obligation of the international community? Doing or not doing evil
is, unfortunately, not always black and white, no matter what a motto
might declare.
who will define the level of necessary protections to the users of
the service and the "legality" of the administration asking for the
information ? the local manager of the service, the local Human
rights commission, an international court of Justice in Den Haage ?
the legal dept inside the local service or their headquarters ?
So, if in some country where human rights are not exactly following
the desiderata of the members on this list , the local service
provider (eventually following orders from his central headquarters)
refuses to comply a "legal" order to turn over the information asked,
who will decide when some "internationally valid" consensus should be
applied to solve the point ? There is no international court to
decide as for human rights,war crimes or commercial matters.
Meanwhile comes again the point about the decision of the service
provider to quite completely and solely "decide" the quantity and
the quality of the information he could or coudn't turn over . To
create with each request and their response a kind of "English common
law" about what to do, combining the necessity to keep his customers
protected even from legal inquiries if he decides so, like when a
journalist protects its sources when "transmitting" information
through some newsmedia or even the internet, if such service
provider so decides to deny turn "over" the information he compiles
or transmits through any(?) medium.
-- The progressively created "common law" could then be used locally
at least, until internationally promoted and accepted as
international common practice of the "WWW" law.
-- meanwhile what's is the legal obligation of an internet service
provider when asked to reveal information about the activities of any
user using their channel to access sources they compile on their
servers ? (btw service providers already use such information ,like
patterns and the sites you refer to, f.i. sending you cookies...and
sell it to gain profit , and there the legal problem is stil
pending, and will probably become much more important in the future
than the turn over to legal inquiries of any amount of pages of info)
-- then imagine, just imagine, what happened when the first monks or
priests were asked (by a secular authority) to reveal the information
compiled from religiously motived confessions and figured how to
refuse answering, and compare that with the progressively quite
similar traditionnal rites some www service providers are imposing by
the evolution of our times and the modern necessities and amenities
we use on a permanent basis relying sometimes blindly on those
services and their oligopole ? Having "Blind Faith" (?) in those ?
shouldn't those service providers in wich so many commons and lords
have by necessity such blind faith become kind of sacred ?
leaving the horrible secrets or silly things they compile away from
state inquiries, any kind , for any reason ?
Will Google be authorized de facto to act as a devil or a divine
providence regarding those legal matters ?
Isn't Google already some "kind of divine" (?) providence for
information seekers ?
just a few silly thought this sunday morning, as instead of going to
a mass ritual nearby, i participate to another ritual of apparent
intercourse of ideas , on the already quite sacrosaint web.
Patrice.
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