SV: [governance] regulating global digital monopolies

[parminder]

On Friday 23 September 2011 02:16 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
> Parminder:
> Can a small country in Africa or Asia do such an inquiry against google today?
>
> Wolfgang:
> Germany is certainly not a "small country"

You are right. :). It is not at all a small country. It is the biggest 
economy in the EU, and EU is a big player.
> but a good example how "global" and "local" works together. When the Germans protested against Google Street View in 2010, Google changed its policies according to the German wishes and made clear that it respects national law. I can not see that Google will ignore a law in Kenya or Botswana just to squeeze our more business from those countries.
Not so, except in crisis level cases implicating security, or assertion 
of political/ cultural control by a government, which too will depend on 
the assessment of the strength of the government, and in nay case is 
largely on an ad hoc basis.

In case of most social, economic, cultural norms and laws, these mega 
digital businesses generally play in a lawless field, in fact through 
their dominance and control of the digital space they are setting the 
norms, and as Lessig would say, also policy and law.

You read the long discussion a few weeks back on this list on how when 
asked to implement a consumer law by Taipei government, Google instead 
chose to withdraw the availability of Android market. This with the kind 
of market power (a very inadequate term with regard to the level of 
power that is involved here) that google has, can in effect be  a 
blackmail. Such is the dependency that has been created on these 
controls of the global digital space.

In face of these clear manifest trends, how can you assert that national 
and local jurisdictional have more or less uniform leverage over global 
digital businesses? Interesting, Milton had the following to say, about 
the Taipei- google stand off. (Wonder if plans to go and tell off UN 
senate committee for being 'parasitical' for inquiring into possible 
anti-trust violations by google)

Below are quotes form Milton's emails during the Taipie-google stand off 
discussion.

    I asserted that a government that tries to regulate a virtual business - basically, software downloaded from the internet - with no physical presence in its jurisdiction is being parasitical (Milton). .....


    Please tell me how 100,000 different local governments "exercising policy on Google applications" keeps the internet "well." (Milton)

    No one in their right mind would support the idea that mere publication of an app by an innovator in, say, Mexico City should make that publisher subject to the regulations of a Thai municipality (and 100,000 other jurisdictions) simply because someone in Thailand accessed it over the internet. That is almost a perfect reduction ad absurdum of territorial government. I reiterate my perhaps blunt and deliberatel;y strong but fundamentally accurate charge that anyone who advocates such a thing is anti-internet, anti-growth, anti-economy and/or has no clue regarding the practical consequences of what they are saying. (Milton)












>   BTW that is one reason why I proposed in the CSTD IGF Improvement Working Group to enhance the IGF, inter alia, towards a "watchdog". If something goes wrong, the IGF can ring the alarm bells and moblize the broader public (including governments) to stop unfair or illegal activities by large corporations or undemocratic governments.
>
>
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