FTC

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “The De-Americanization of the Internet” -- here.  

America's dominance of the Internet has peaked. Read why and what it means. 

• It is Part 3 of my “World Changing Internet” research series.

World Changing Internet Series

Part 1: Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet

Part 2: Twitter’s Realpolitik & the Sovereign-ization of the Internet

For satire to work, one has to have something to work with. Well Google doesn’t disappoint!

Please don’t miss the grins and aha-s from this playful satire -- here.

Google represents its new default policy -- taking a user’s name and picture and putting it in their ads without permission or compensation -- as “Shared Endorsements.”  This deceptive and unfair business practice is more aptly named Google-YouAd, “Pirated Endorsements,” or “Swindled Endorsements,” because they are taken deceptively without permission or compensation.

To Google, people apparently are just another form of digital content that should be open and free to exploit without asking the owner for permission and without any expectation of payment from Google for the value that Google generates from the taken content.

We should not be surprised. Google is treating their users, not as humans with privacy and ownership rights, but as inanimate products, content, and “targets” of their advertising model. Notice that they are treating people’s unique identities just like they treat others valuable content that is trademarked, copyrighted, patented, private, confidential or secret. Simply they take it without permission or compensation until an authority that they fear compels them to cease and desist.

Just like the wisdom that one cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear; one cannot make “modern” FCC policy from obsolete communications law.

Apparently that is not stopping Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and Greg Rosston from trying in their new white paper: “Articulating a Modern Approach to FCC Competition Policy.”   

Their paper contrives:  “three different competition policy approaches: the classicrole of regulating terms and conditions of sale, the modernrole of using various tools to create largely deregulated, multi-firm, competitive markets, and the laissez-faire approach of believing that unregulated markets, even if monopolized, will produce the best outcome.”

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed – “Implications of EU Ruling Google Abused its Search Dominance” -- here.

Google Unaccountability Series

Part 0: Google's Poor & Defiant Settlement Record [5-1-12]

Please don’t miss my latest op-ed: “Congress: Restore Our Rightful Privacy Ownership” – here.

It makes the case that privacy is a form of property under the Constitution and that Congress must step up and legislate in order to restore Americans’ reasonable expectation of privacy online -- regardless of what technology is involved.

Own your privacy.

Privacy Theft Series

Google can expect a big rest-of-world trust problem when it rolls out Google Glass overseas, because of: foreign fallout from Edward Snowden’s illegal disclosures of NSA surveillance activities; Google’s reputation for aggressive and pervasive spying on people’s privacy; and Google’s cavalier legal stance that people have “no legitimate expectation of privacy.”

Please find the new Precursor online Research Library -- here -- which will be kept up-to-date going forward.

• It presently catalogues links to ~270 pieces of Precursor research in ~20 ongoing research series.

This should make it much easier to scan and find particular research of interest by subject and theme.

• An outline of subjects and themes are below.

Thank you.

Scott Cleland

Precursor LLC – Proven Thought Leadership

Anyone interested in Google Glass should not miss CNET Molly Wood's "Google Glass Rant."

In a short and very entertaining ~2 min video, she explains, and acts out, why she believes: "Google Glass is a new frontier in human rudeness, inattention, and danger." And she concludes that "the world is not ready for Google Glass."

Simply, she understands that the real problems with Google Glass are not so much problems for the actual users of Google Glass, but for other people who happen to find themselves in proximity of glass users.  

Yet again, Google has violated the first rule of holes; when in a hole, stop digging.

Google is unwisely keeping the story alive that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said this to Charlie Rose on air: [Google] “took our stuff and … that was wrong. This really bothers me. I don’t see how [Larry Page] thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff.” 

In a Google+ post to his followers, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt responded: “We typically try to avoid getting dragged into public battles with other companies. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Larry Ellison’s claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff”.  It’s simply untrue -- and that’s not just my opinion, but the judgment of a U.S. District Court.” 

Does Google really want to engage in a broader public conversation about the truth and facts of Google’s serial disrespect for the property of others?