Last month the Supreme Court decided a case against an Internet giant: Google v. Gaos.
The terms of the final agreement required Google to include certain disclosures about referrer headers on three of its webpages; however, Google may continue its practice of transmitting users’ search terms in referrer headers. Google also agreed to pay $8.5 million, which will mostly be distributed to six cy pres recipients, nonprofit organizations whose work, in this case, is to promote public awareness and education, and/or to support research, development, and initiatives, related to protecting privacy on the Internet.
How could it help the bigger problem of the general public’s violated privacy rights for Google to pay damages to these “cy pres recipients”? Is this enough? How do we keep these online monopolies accountable for their actions in the future?
I think it may help up the privacy rights and help users. I think if google says that they are going to protect recipients, they should. So they should have to pay. We should enact some kind of law that says that if they are held accountable for anything that goes wrong, they should pay for whatever it is.
ReplyDeleteI believe it will help privacy rights. We use the internet every day. There has to be something set in place to protect the people from others stealing our information. To keep online monopolies accountable the people just have to continue suing.
ReplyDeleteIt is a tough debate regarding the privacy infringement of large companies. People definitely should have their privacy protected when using the internet, including protection from large companies such as Google. However, it becomes difficult when one considers that these companies are privately owned corporations. It is similar to the debate regarding suppression of freedom of speech with companies such as Twitter. There must be a line drawn that defines the limit in which companies can violate the rights of their users. I do think that there needs to be much more regulation on companies so that they cannot violate the rights of people. However, there should not be an overbearing amount of regulation that stifles the companies ability to operate effectively.
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