Quinta’s weblog

Prof. Lessig correctly says that “code is law”, as software controls who can do what, without exceptions. There has been growing discontent around the world towards the control of code by the multinational giants GAFAM, and many states are introducing “digital sovereignty” rules to assert their right to determine how software should be managed. In fact, limiting oneself to the sole consideration that they don’t like GAFAM-controlled code, is short-sighted. By putting more focus on it, before making missteps, one should ask, “and so, who should control it ?” Control of the public administration software/data is a major power as…

There was an advertisement when I was a kid that spelled “What to give to a man who has everything ? More of the same”. It was a whiskey. Now we have an issue about excessive profiling, excessive market power, excessive political influence. How can we intervene ? Apple would like to curtail advertising based business models, thanks to a tight control of their OS and app environment, which would stregthen their gatekeeping position on the app market. Google would like to get rid of cookies, promoting a technology that would make them more than today, the platform controlling the…

AT&T ends zero rating. This is more than a win for net neutrality, it’s the confirmation that – contrary to old telcos’ narratives – zero rating made little business sense. (as those readers who follow me since several years already knew very well) If we look at the huge data packages that can be bought for few euros/month, prices brought down by competition, Zero rating makes little sense for consumers. It would make sense if lack of competition would cause rival mobile operators artificially limiting the size of data packages provided to users. But when you have competition, you will…

I hear people saying that a vaccination passport will be paramount to enable resuming international travel. AFAIK, it is not at all clear that a vaccination will make people not contagious. (nature) Covid19 vaccines helps not getting the covid19 disease, it doesn’t imply that people is not going to be contagious. If you are a vaccinated person travelling to the UK, the vaccination passport only tells the UK administration that you are not going to cause burden onto the NHS (National Health Service). As we will be more and more vaccinated, to resume travelling, we will need to strenghten the…

Scrivevo… Un’ulteriore criticità della proposta di Google riguarda il possibile assetto competitivo del mercato della pubblicità online. Google possiede decine di brevetti che riguardano il “Federated Learning”, che è il meccanismo alla base della proposta FLOC, ed il suo uso. Se non indirizzato, il tema della proprietà intellettuale su un ambiente che dovrebbe essere destinato ad essere la base del nuovo meccanismo di pubblicità online, potrebbe avere effetti anticompetitivi notevoli. via Google senza cookie? Ma per la privacy bisogna restituire controllo agli utenti | Agenda Digitale. Proprio oggi… Google’s initiative to get rid of traditional user-identifying cookies in its Chrome…

Google is sending the text below (in italian) to influencers who monetize youtube by doing so, the U.S. taxes income for content generated in Italy, by Italian citizens, watched by U.S. public. it is a change in the current taxation principle: the income is no longer taxed where the producer or where the server is but where the consumer is. Ti contattiamo perché entro la fine dell’anno (a partire da giugno 2021) Google sarà tenuta a dedurre le imposte statunitensi dai pagamenti corrisposti ai creator al di fuori degli Stati Uniti. Nel corso delle prossime settimane, ti chiederemo di fornirci…

the negative energy that is poured into driving violence emerges in large part from the sense of protection and power we have, encapsulated in our automotive exoskeleton a similar sense of protection and power we experience at home, unseen, behind the keyboard, and we pour out our negative tension in online hatred then there’s some complement of a “horde” effect like the one people feel at the stadium where they are surrounded by people that agree with them; an echo chamber in social network terms.

Can a president of a nation be deleted from Twitter or Facebook ? They are private services that have no obligation of universality, so the short answer is: yes, there is not an a-priori right to participate in a social. In some cases, however, some courts have ordered the companies to reinstate the excluded user because his expulsion was not legally valid and would have generated damage. Can being on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok be an a priori right? If we’d ask a teenager, the answer would obviously be yes. A very important part of their relational life takes place…

  Here all the documents published today. I *love* the regulatory ladder.

So today VP Vestager and Commissioner Breton introduced the drafts of the new EU digital  regulation. A very nice piece of work, I must say. There are some very fine grained measures and more general principles. Among the latters I think that the regulatory ladder, interoperability and device neutrality are particularly worth of consideration. Also the Digital Services Coordinator is a good general principle: a nice idea to improve effectiveness of the regulation itself. Let’s think of future amendments… Auctioneers implement an number of strategies to push auction prices up. Not only the auction mechanism itself like the second price…