Reply to post: Re: Who decides what is illegal?

Re: Who decides what is illegal?

Graham - the analogy with the hotel is interesting, and made me think.

If Google were like the hotel then it wouldn't know anything about it's customers other than name, length of stay and whether they'd stayed before - and in that case I'd agree with your analogy. Google would be a channel, just like the hotel, the Royal Mail and the local bus.

If the hotel were like Facebook then it would know lots about the customer - voting and sexual preferences, shopping likes, friend, acquaintances, and would have a history of messages, friends, etc., etc., and it *would* have cameras in every room, and also on the streets around the hotel, and in the local buses and taxis. It would know where you'd been, who you'd talked to, what you've just bought and where you're going tomorrow. If it wanted, the hotel could guess to a high level of certainty whether its customers were up to nefarious deeds or not before they even set foot in the room

OK - so that's egging the cake a bit, but Google/Facebook/etc. are not passive channels in the way that a hotel, Royal Mail and the local bus service are. They can, and do, read, analyse, synthesize and profit from the information which users post on their platforms. In my opinion (others are available) it is this agency which differentiates them from the notice board in the window of the local newsagent and with agency comes responsibility.

BTW - I'm disinterested in whether we should have an x-hour takedown law. My interest in the debate is simply that I don't believe Google et al should be above the law. I agree that bad law would be a bad thing, but the argument that it would be too difficult for the Googles to police needs to be tested a little more than simply believing it - and they haven't walked away from other countries who have implemented takedown limits.