Posts by wag 15 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2011
"But the rules are not new; the obligations have applied to websites since 1995. The difference is that it now applies to search engines."
So if the obligations already apply to websites, such content should be dealt with by issuing a request to the publisher themselves to take down the offending content. Then the search engine bots would automatically remove the links - hence there's no need for this stupid "right to be forgotten" ruling at all.
I don't use iTunes (or similar sites) for that very reason. I don't think Willis has a leg to stand on from a legal point of view as the terms are pretty clear and he presumably agreed to them when he signed up. But if he does take action I hope he succeeds.
The whole "digital legacy" issue is becoming more and more important to consumers and the big tech companies should stop brushing it under the carpet.
Well said that man. One of the most annoying things I've heard said about Steve Jobs over the last few days was that he was a "pioneer". That's cobblers. The Macintosh was not the first PC, the iPod was not the first MP3 player, the iPhone wasn't the first smart phone, the iPad wasn't the first tablet PC, the Newton wasn't the first electronic organiser... have I missed any? Oh yes, Pixar wasn't the first animation studio.
That's to take nothing away from his achievements - he took existing concepts, tarted them up a bit and sold them for a fortune. Bully for him.
If you give someone your phone number, they will probably store it somewhere. In the olden days that used to be in a paper address book. A decade or two ago it might have been an electronic address book on a desktop computer, perhaps as part of email software. Think Outlook. Nowadays, people use more than one "device" (home computer, work computer, phone, perhaps they have both a desktop and tablet PC at home, etc.) and want to access their information (including your phone number) from all of them, and so store that information in the cloud. I don't understand why that comes as such a shock to people who are, presumably (since they read El Reg), reasonably tech savvy.
Equally Facebook does not pull your phone data without your permission. Nobody will get to see your phone number on Facebook except for those people you've already shared it with. If you put your phone number on Facebook and share it with your friends, then it's no surprise that it appears in their Facebook contacts list (which has been a feature of the site for many years now) - and not only is it no surprise, it's no big deal. You put your phone number on Facebook, you make it available to all your friends, you make someone your Facebook friend, they can see your phone number. That is not new, shocking or surprising in any way.
Yes the features of Google+ are all, individually, better than their Facebook counterparts. But there's more to it than that. Google's famous argument with Facebook over the ownership of data should mean that, once Google+ is properly up and running, it should integrate with my Gmail contacts. Properly. So if a friend of mine changes his mobile phone number, BAM, it's updated in my contacts.
Facebook insist that, although my friends have all made conscious decisions to share their phone numbers, email addresses etc. with me on Facebook, I'm not allowed to download that information. Google have long been arguing for portability, and Facebook have long refused. So features aside, Google+ is a winner simply because when you share information on it, you really do share information on it, and when you want to keep things limited to a certain group, you can do so easily. That's not just a matter of a feature that's missing from Facebook, it's a whole philosophical difference, and it's why I for one am looking forward to leaving Facebook behind.
I trust Google a lot more than I do Facebook. I'd happily switch to Google+ when it becomes available, but (a) unless my friends on Facebook also make the switch there would be no point and (b) there are still some things that Facebook has got right that Google aren't offering - tagging people in images being one that springs to mind.
Ultimately the hardest thing about moving away from Facebook is the whole reason we all hate it so much - you can't download all the stuff you have access to on there and take it with you to a different application - Facebook keeps its customers not by attracting repeat business but by locking them in.
Still, I'll give G+ a try and see where it leads...
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