The German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has declared the retention of telecommunication connection data by service providers and the access of law enforcement to these data as unconstitutional. It said in its judgment from March 2nd, 2010 that data retention is not proportionatley adequate and violates article 10, paragraph 1 of the German Basic Law.
The Judicial Art of Living in the German Surveillance Society: German Constitutional Court Declares Data Retention as Unconstitutional
christian fuchs, March 7th 2010
Remarks on the BBC documentary “Virtual Revolution: The Cost of Free “
The BBC recently aired a documentary in its ”Virtual Revolution“ series that focused on ”The Cost of Free“. The overall topic were the risks and problems posed by Internet platforms that are operated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, News Corporation, and others.
Critical political economist Dallas Smythe in his seminal paper “On the audience commodity and its work” suggested that advertising business models of the media are not primarily based on the commodification of content, but the commodification of the audience. In case of the Internet, one can speak of the Internet prosumer commodity.
christian fuchs, February 18th 2010
Google Buzz: Economic Surveillance – Buzz Off! The Problem of Online Surveillance and the Need for an Alternative Internet
Google Buzz is part of Google’s empire of economic surveillance. It gathers information about user behaviour and user interests in order to store, assess, and sell this data to advertising clients. Google’s online product advertising for Buzz says: “The first thing we all do when we find something interesting is share it. More and more of this kind of sharing takes place online. Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos, and more”.
Do people really want to share vast amounts of private data and location data not only with their friends, but also with Google? Can Google be considered as a friend of all humans, or doesn’t it rather accumulate power that can also cause great harm to humans? Do people really always want to tell others where they currently are? Are people really interested in sharing their location data not only with selected friends, but also with Google?
christian fuchs, February 14th 2010
Information, Communication & Society Journal: Special Issue on Sustainable Information Society
The journal Information, Communication & Society features a special issue on “Sustainable Development and ICTs” in its current issue (Volume 13, Number 1)
christian fuchs, February 14th 2010
Google Buzz and Economic Surveillance
I find interesting about the NY Times article and the reactions of some users to Google Buzz that they primarily stress the danger that China, Iran, etc could use Buzz for engaging in the (political) surveillance of political oppositionists and that they label such endeavaours totalitarian, while at the same time they do not provide a critique of the economic surveillance machine constituted by Google’s expanding services, its collection, storage, analysis, and commodification of personal data, and its market dominance.
christian fuchs, February 13th 2010
Jörg Haider – Zitate, Jörg Haider – Quotations
“Außerdem ist das Recht der Inländer auf Heimat stärker als das Recht der Ausländer auf Familienleben. Österreich soll daher von der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention abgehen”. (Salzburger Nachrichten, 6.10.1995) “Also the right of natives for their country is stronger than the right of foreigners for family life. Austria should therefore eixt the European Human Rights Convention” “Dieses [...]
christian fuchs, October 19th 2008
Right-wing extremists reach 29% of the votes in Austrian general elections
The Austrian general elections on September 28, 2008, resulted in a strong shift towards the right. The Social Democrats SPÖ (29,7%) and the Conservatives ÖVP (25,6%) reached their worst results ever, also the Green Party lost (9,8%) voters. The big winners are the Freedom Party FPÖ (18,0%, +7,0%) of Heinz Christian Strache and the BZÖ (11,0%, +6,9%). These two right-wing parties together now hold 29% of the votes.
christian fuchs, September 29th 2008
STANDART: Analphabet Wilhelm Molterer, Illiterate Wilhelm Molterer
The Austrian conservative front-runner Molterer proves his lack of knowledge of German.
christian fuchs, September 25th 2008