back to article Google sets up €4.5m academic legal institute in Berlin

Google will fund a research centre at Humboldt University in Berlin, which from October will examine the evolution of the internet and its impact on society, science and economy. The Berlin University of Arts, the Social Science Research Center Berlin and the Hamburg Hans-Bredow-Institute are also involved in the project at …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Arse about face?

    Surely, the internet developers, such as Google, need to catch up with the laws of the places where they want to operate. Just because they can does not mean they should be able to ride, rough-shod, over law, peoples' privacy and so on, just becaus it inconveniences their business plans.

    I suppose sellers of revolvers could say that British law needs to catch up with the firearms age and let all and sundry by and carry revolvers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Can't believe...

      ...someone downvoted this post.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wouldn't it be amusing

    If this new institute came up with a report saying that what the world needs is stronger laws against the appropriation of other peoples ideas and intellectual property,...and that Google was evil.

    1. multipharious

      Not far off the mark

      Depending on who they hire. The Germans are pretty privacy oriented. Somehow, I bet they will wind up loading the deck with critics of the stringent individual oriented Datenschutz laws.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    It's about time someone started looking into this. The Internet spans national boundaries but the laws governing its use do not, by and large. Generally speaking, the laws applicable to you are those in force where you are and, in the case of a multinational, where the parent company is hosted. When you don't have any physical presence in the country whose laws you must abide by then you run into difficulty. When you combine legal things (taking photos or videos in the street) with other legal things (publishing legally gather photos and videos on the web in another country) then you discover that there are laws of which you were previously unaware and perhaps didn't even previously exist in a recognisable form.

    Google has an obvious interest in all of this, but I think a lot of other people do as well. Me included. And you as well, in all likelihood.

  4. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Thumb Down

    Shame...

    What the world really needs is cheaper medicines, better availability of contraception, better education, real world sustainable solutions to the foods and fuels issues, and more hospitals.

    But hey Google, if the best you can do with your billions upon billions of dubiously gained ad-money is an institute "to examine the evolution of the internet and its impact on society, science and economy" - which we all know is a really just a goodwill gesture to placate Germany for your past illegal practices, then you go for your life...

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like