OTM: Safe Harbor No More.

Lately a small battle has been won in the war of internet privacy; The high court in Europe ruled on the side of Max Schrems, a law student from Austria who received evidence from facebook that his rights were being infringed upon. This ruling will hopefully help Americans wake up to the use and abuses of their private data; it has certainly woken up some of the companies at fault in the USA as to having just as manly customers in Europe as in the states and how they have to change their policies in order to not be banned from European servers and clients. This is foreshadowing of events and court cases to come Max and the host of OTM think as this ruling will be just the tip of the iceberg that follows making a better future for the internet and the people who use it.

Physical: The court ruling will start stricter laws that affect internet traffic that comes and goes out of europe. Some of these new rules will enable their citizens to be forgotten by companies; for example, after a period of time a company has to delete any data on that person which gives a whole lot more privacy to that individual than what they had before.

Temporal: This court ruling sided just last week so it is very relevant to us right now; however, it has taken some time to come fourth. From the story, big internet companies like facebook have been ignoring privacy laws set up by the Europeans for quite sometime time now as Max found out about it in 2010 five years ago. It is interesting what other counties will come next to defend their people.

Psychological:  Like Max more people are becoming concerned about the use and storage of their private web data. They are demanding more privacy and stricter laws on how companies use this data and how long they can keep it. Max and others like the hosts of OTM hope that this court case and its ruling will stir-up people in the US to stand up against companies for their personal data rights.

Social: This could start snowballing all the way around the globe and be big enough for when it hits the US it will no longer be able to not care about this issue, particularly because the US is the leader in internet businesses. With more and more people around the world becoming educated on the internet and how internet companies behaved I think we’ll see a huge movement for change; like the guest host said during the broadcast, the internet is more like the wild west now than it ever was before. Like the wild west, the internet will settle down from the coming of regulations that will protect people from present day data barons, data ransom outlaws, data rustlers, and virtual vigilante gangs.  

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