J.R.McHale

+ **Background**: The European Court of Justice [**ruling**](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=EN&text&pageIndex=0&part=1&mode=DOC&docid=152065&occ=first&dir&cid=437838) and [**factsheet**](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf).

+ [**Righting the Right to be Forgotten**](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/futureoftheinternet/2014/07/14/righting-the-right-to-be-forgotten/) – Harvard professor, **Jonathan Zittrain**:

>> “[T]he incongruity of having Google – or any private party, for that matter – as a decision maker about rights. To place Google in that role is to diminish Europe’s sovereign power, not enhance it, even if the role is compelled by European authorities. It turns a rights problem into a customer service issue, and one that Google and others in its position no doubt rightly disdain. If Google can process 70,000 requests, so can and should the data protection authorities. And not every public decision needs the full, lawyer-heavy trial format to be sufficient to the cause – any more than Google is using it now. This would place decisions about rights in the public sphere where they belong, and limit the scope to the sovereign’s jurisdiction, so a European decision would still not affect use beyond the relevant country-specific Google portals.”

>> **–** Professor Zittrain also puts forward the sensible proposal that redactions pursuant to the “right to be forgotten” be limited in duration, with claimants required to pursue renewals – after all, information not relevant today for public policy purposes could become so tomorrow.

+ [**We Need to Talk About the Right to be Forgotten**](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/10/right-to-be-forgotten-european-ruling-google-debate) – David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, writing in **The Guardian**:

>> “[T]he European court found that people have the right to ask for information to be removed from search results that include their names if it is ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive’. In deciding what to remove search engines must also have regard to the public interest. These are, of course, very vague and subjective tests . . . [W]e obviously respect the court’s authority and are doing our very best to comply quickly and responsibly. It’s a huge task, as we’ve had over 70,000 take-down requests covering 250,000 web pages since May. So we now have a team of people reviewing each application individually, in most cases with limited information and almost no context . . . When it comes to determining what’s in the public interest, we’re taking into account a number of factors. These include whether the information relates to a politician, celebrity or other public figure; if the material comes from a reputable news source, and how recent it is; whether it involves political speech; questions of professional conduct that might be relevant to consumers; the involvement of criminal convictions that are not yet ‘spent’; and if the information is being published by a government. But these will always be difficult and debatable judgments.”

+ [**Rights That Are Being Forgotten: Google, the ECJ, and Free Expression**](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/rights-are-being-forgotten-google-ecj-and-free-expression) – **Electronic Frontier Foundation**:

>> “The issue with the ECJ judgement isn’t European privacy law, or the response by Google. The real problem is the impossibility of an accountable, transparent, and effective censorship regime in the digital age, and the inevitable collateral damage borne of any attempt to create one, even from the best intentions. The ECJ could have formulated a decision that would have placed Google under the jurisdiction of the EU’s data protection law, and protected the free speech rights of publishers. Instead, the court has created a vague and unappealable model, where Internet intermediaries must censor their own references to publicly available information in the name of privacy, with little guidance or obligation to balance the needs of free expression. That won’t work in keeping that information private, and will make matters worse in the global battle against state censorship.”

+ [**EU ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Law Unenforceable, Says [UK] Justice Minister**](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/09/eu-right-to-be-forgotten-law-unenforceable-justice-minister-simon-hughes) – **The Guardian**

+ [**Right to Be Forgotten? Not That Easy**](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/business/international/on-the-internet-the-right-to-forget-vs-the-right-to-know.html?hp&_r=0) – **New York Times**

+ [**EU High Court Grants “Right to Be Forgotten” and Expands Privacy Jurisdiction Over Foreign Companies: What Should Businesses Operating Outside of Europe Do Now?**](http://ehoganlovells.com/rv/ff0017abaeb3d7a1fa921ef258449804c8b39636) – law firm **Hogan Lovells** privacy alert (also **Norton Rose Fulbright’s** [**overview**](http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3f9ddd42-5414-41ec-b719-235ab7b16fa1))

+ [**The Myths & Realities Of How Of The EU’s New “Right To Be Forgotten” In Google Works**](http://searchengineland.com/eu-right-forgotten-191604) and [**How Google’s New “Right To Be Forgotten” Form Works: An Explainer**](http://searchengineland.com/google-right-to-be-forgotten-form-192837) – **Search Engine Land**

+ [**Google Removes First Search Results After EU Ruling**](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/26/us-google-searches-eu-idUSKBN0F116O20140626) – **Reuters**

+ [**Public Criticism Forces Google to Restore Right to be Forgotten Links**](http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/public-criticism-forces-google-restore-right-to-be-forgotten-links)

The well-reviewed (Rotten Tomatoes: [90% fresh](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_internets_own_boy_the_story_of_aaron_swartz/)) documentary on **Aaron Swartz** is now a creative commons licensed free [**download**](https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz) at **The Internet Archive**.

**Chief Justice Roberts**, writing for a unanimous **Supreme Court** in [Riley v. California, 573 U. S. ____ (2014)](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf), held today that the police generally may not, in the absence of a warrant, search digital information on a cellphone seized from an individual under arrest:

>”Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life’ . . . . The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get a warrant.”

This decision calls into serious question the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk data collection and will likely impact other areas as well, such as cases involving access to cloud-based data and the third-party doctrine.

**More**:

[**In Riley v. California, a Unanimous Supreme Court Sets out Fourth Amendment for Digital Age**](http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/06/symposium-in-riley-v-california-a-unanimous-supreme-court-sets-out-fourth-amendment-for-digital-age/) – **SCOTUSblog**

[**The Supreme Court Brings the Fourth Amendment into the 21st Century**](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/bringing-the-fourth-amendment-into-the-21st-century-16927207?click=pm_news) – Law Professor **Glenn Harlan Reynolds** in Popular Mechanics

[**Why the Supreme Court May Finally Protect Your Privacy in the Cloud**](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/why-the-supreme-court-may-finally-protect-your-privacy-in-the-cloud/) – **Wired**

Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends [**slide presentation**](http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends) (164 slides).

+ [**The Internet With a Human Face**](http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm) — from a talk given by **Maciej Cegłowski**, founder of Pinboard at **BeyondTellerand** on May 20, 2014:

>> “Recall that advertising is when someone pays you to tell your users they’ll be happy if they buy a product or service . . . . Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they’ll get when you finally put ads on your site . . . . Most startups run on investor storytime. Investor storytime is not exactly advertising, but it is related to advertising. Think of it as an advertising future, or perhaps the world’s most targeted ad. Both business models involve persuasion. In one of them, you’re asking millions of listeners to hand over a little bit of money. In the other, you’re persuading one or two listeners to hand over millions of money . . . But investor storytime is a cancer on our industry. Because to make it work, to keep the edifice of promises from tumbling down, companies have to constantly find ways to make advertising more invasive and ubiquitous. Investor storytime only works if you can argue that advertising in the future is going to be effective and lucrative in ways it just isn’t today. If the investors stop believing this, the money will dry up. And that’s the motor destroying our online privacy.”

+ [**Snowden and the Future**](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartI.html) — a talk given by **Eben Moglen**, law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, at Columbia Law School in Fall 2013 (video, audio and transcript: [**Part I**](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartI.html), [**Part II**](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartII.html), [**Part III**](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html), [**Part IV**](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIV.html)):

>> “We need to decentralize the data, you understand. If we keep it all in one great big pile—if there’s one guy who keeps all the email and another guy who does all the social sharing about getting laid—then there isn’t really any way to be any safer than the weakest link in the fence around that pile. But if every single person is keeping her and his own, then the weak links on the outside of that fence get the attacker exactly one person’s stuff. Which, in a world governed by the rule of law, might be exactly optimal: one person is the person you can spy on because you’ve got probable cause. Email scales beautifully without anybody at the center keeping all of it. We need to make a mail server for people that costs five bucks and sits on the kitchen counter where the telephone answering machine used to be, and that’s the end of it. If it breaks you throw it away. Decentralized social sharing is harder, but not so hard that we can’t do it. Three years ago I called for it. Wonderful work has been done that didn’t produce stuff everybody is using, but it’s still there: it can’t go away, it’s free software, it will achieve its full meaning yet.”

+ [**Everything is Broken**](https://medium.com/@quinnnorton/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1) — **Quinn Norton** at **Medium**:

>> “As our desires conflict with the [intelligence community], we become less and less worthy of rights and considerations in the eyes of the [intelligence community]. When the NSA hoards exploits and interferes with cryptographic protection for our infrastructure, it means using exploits against people who aren’t part of the NSA just doesn’t count as much. Securing us comes after securing themselves. In theory, the reason we’re so nice to soldiers, that we have customs around honoring and thanking them, is that they’re supposed to be sacrificing themselves for the good of the people. In the case of the NSA, this has been reversed. Our wellbeing is sacrificed to make their job of monitoring the world easier. When this is part of the culture of power, it is well on its way to being capable of any abuse.”

+ [**Netflix and Net Neutrality**](http://stratechery.com/2014/netflix-net-neutrality/) — **Ben Thompson** at **Stratechery**:

> “This [Comcast-Netflix] deal is in many ways a win-win for Netflix: they are likely paying less for better quality . . . . Currently non-Netflix broadband subscribers are effectively subsidizing Netflix viewers; they use much less capacity, yet pay the same price. This needs to change for the sake of true net neutrality, and if it results in Netflix losing subscribers, so be it. Unfortunately, this agreement and the others that are soon to follow makes such an arrangement unlikely. Comcast and company are getting paid, so they’re happy, and Netflix is disguising their true cost to end users so they are happy as well. It’s non-Netflix users, and, more distressingly, the startups and services that have yet to be created who are ultimately paying the price”

+ [**Should We Worry that Netflix is Buying Transit Rights from Comcast?**](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/02/should-we-worry-that-netflix-is-buying-transit-rights-from-comcast.html) — **Tyler Cowen** says no, at **Marginal Revolution**

+ [**Inside The Netflix/Comcast Deal and What The Media Is Getting Very Wrong**](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html) — **Dan Rayburn** at **StreamingMedia.com**

+ [**Here’s How The Comcast and Netflix Deal Is Structured, With Data & Numbers**](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-netflix-deal-structured-numbers.html) — **Dan Rayburn** at **StreamingMedia.com**

+ [**Comcast’s Deal with Netflix Makes Network Neutrality Obsolete**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/23/comcasts-deal-with-netflix-makes-network-neutrality-obsolete/) — **Timothy B. Lee** at **The Washington Post**

+ [**The Internet is F*cked (but we can fix it)**](http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked) — **Nilay Patel** at **The Verge**:

> “[T]he entire problem, expressed in four simple ideas: the internet is a utility, there is zero meaningful competition to provide that utility to Americans, all internet providers should be treated equally, and the FCC is doing a miserably ineffective job. The United States should lead the world in broadband deployment and speeds: we should have the lowest prices, the best service, and the most competition. We should have the freest speech and the loudest voices, the best debate and the soundest policy. We are home to the most innovative technology companies in the world, and we should have the broadband networks to match.”

+ [**You Won’t Have Broadband Competition Without Regulation**](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/02/21/you-wont-have-broadband-competition-without-regulation/) — **Felix Salmon** at **Reuters**:

> “[W]e already have perfectly adequate pipes running into our homes, capable of delivering enough broadband for nearly everybody’s purposes. Creating a massive parallel national network of new pipes (or pCells, or whatever) is, frankly, a waste of money. The economics of wholesale bandwidth are little-understood, but they’re also incredibly effective, and have created a system whereby the amount of bandwidth in the US is more than enough to meet the needs of all its inhabitants. What’s more, as demand increases, the supply of bandwidth quite naturally increases to meet it. What we don’t need is anybody spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out a brand-new nationwide broadband network. What we do need, on the other hand, is the ability of different companies to provide broadband services to America’s households. And here’s where the real problem lies: the cable companies own the cable pipes, and the regulators refuse to force them to allow anybody else to provide services over those pipes. This is called local loop unbundling, it’s the main reason for low broadband prices in Europe, and of course it’s vehemently opposed by the cable companies.”

+ [**America’s 10-Year Experiment in Broadband Investment Has Failed**](http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-20/americas-10-year-experiment-in-broadband-investment-has-failed#r=rss) — **Brendan Greeley** at **Bloomberg**:

+ [**Why Super-Fast Internet Is Coming Super Slowly; The FCC Could Change this Overnight by Focusing on What’s Best for the Economy, Not Just for Those it Regulates.**](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304315004579381463769362886) — **Andy Kessler** at **The Wall Street Journal**

#### Cyber Law, Tech and Policy

+ [**Comcast and Us**](http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/02/16/comcast-and-us/) — **Jean-Louis Gassee** at **MondayNote.com**:

> “We need a set of rules that would allow Microsoft, Google, Roku, Samsung, Amazon, Apple — and companies that are yet to be founded — to provide true alternatives to Comcast’s set-top boxes. Today, you have a cable modem that’s so dumb it forces you to restart everything in a particular sequence after a power outage. You have a WiFi base station stashed in among the wires. Your set-top box looks like it was made in the former Soviet Union . . . . You have to find your TV’s remote in order to switch between broadcast TV, your game console, and your Roku/AppleTV/Chromecast…and you have to reach into your basket of remotes just to change channels. Imagine what would happen if a real tech company were allowed to compete on equal terms with the cable providers.”

+ [**The Real Problem with the Comcast Merger**](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/the-real-problem-with-the-comcast-merger.html) — **Tim Wu** at **The New Yorker**

+ [**Comcast’s Time Warner Deal Is Bad for America**](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/comcast-s-time-warner-deal-is-bad-for-america.html) — **Susan Crawford** at **Bloomberg Opinion**

+ [**How Slow, Expensive Internet Is Holding Back Our Economy**](http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/01/23/how-slow-expensive-internet-is-holding-our-economy-back/) — **Alexis Caffrey** at **The American Interest**

+ [**Fast Internet Is Chattanooga’s New Locomotive**](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/technology/fast-internet-service-speeds-business-development-in-chattanooga.html?_r=0) — **Edward Wyatt** at **The New York Times**

+ [**U.S. Takes Steps to Bolster Patent System, Cut Frivolous Lawsuits**](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/20/us-usa-patents-frivolous-idUSBREA1J1WG20140220) at **Reuters**.

#### <General Interest

+ [**Why People Work For Rewards They’ll Never Get to Enjoy – a/k/a Why Do Rich People Work So Much?**](http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/why-people-work-rewards-theyll-never-get-enjoy) — **Nicholas Hune-Brown** at **Hazlitt**:

> “The researchers call this behaviour ‘mindless accumulation’—the tendency for people to forgo leisure to work towards rewards they’ll never be able to use. They argue that it’s a distinctly modern problem. For much of human history, earning rates were low and people needed to work as much as possible just to survive. The idea that you could ‘overearn’ simply wasn’t realistic. If you’re one of today’s highly paid office workers, however, earning comes comparatively easily, yet the drive to hoard as much as possible remains.”

+ [**Moving South and West? Metropolitan America in 2042**](http://www.newgeography.com/content/004153-moving-south-and-west-metropolitan-america-2042) — **Wendell Cox** at **NewGeography.com**