The E.U. pwns Google. You own your IP address. PWN!

Is the E.U. trying to fake us out?  Are they REALLY coming down this firmly on the side of the individual when it comes to online privacy?  If you believe everything you read on Teh Netz, they are.

Deutschland's data protection commissioner (Do we have one of those yet?) Peter Scharr is gearing up to smack Yahoogle and Macrosoft across their red white & blue faces, in preparation for more online regulation within the borders of our new favorite country - Europa.   We've already emailed Herr Scharr and offered to crouch silently behind them, while he pushed them from the front.  We await his reply.. but we DO realize that he's a little busy right now.

So what exactly IS all the hubbub about?  Well for one, people should think seriously about using the word 'hubbub'.  There's no way that's gonna make it through the English > German translator without sounding super naughty.

Traurige, deutsche Freunde! Wir entschuldigen uns für unseren freien Mangel an kultureller Empfindlichkeit und bitten Sie, dieses Paar reale amerikanische bluejeans als Friedensantrag anzunehmen. Wir wissen, daß die hart, hinter ' der Wand ' zu erhalten sind. Erklären Sie Bob Geldof, das wir denken, daß er VIEL besser ohne Augenbrauen schaut.

There.  NOW where were we?  Oh yes.  Scharr seems to think that an IP address can and should be 'generally regarded' as 'personal information'.  Whoa... whoa there big guy.  While we certainly applaud your commitment to making Schmidtey cough soy milk out of his nose, have you actually thought this one through?   Our minds are positively swimming with questions!

Did you mean assigned IPs?  My DHCP is hurt and confused.. and it don't know what to do. Or maybe you were just referring to the host address?  I'll trade you five network addresses and a VG-NM `86 Bonds Fleer card for it!  What about my fax machine's IP?  Did our printers just gain individual rights?  The things are already finicky enough.  If I have to start providing them health insurance and lunch breaks there's gonna be a problem.  Have you ever even hosted a LAN PARTY dude?  You're freaking us out!

OK, deep breath.  We're not total rubes.  More like half rube, half amazing.  *posterizes you*  So we can grasp the concept that an IP identified with a human being accessing information online would be the basic place to start for 'ownership' of an IP address.  The way Google sees this is that the IP only identifies a LOCATION.  Most people use the same computer consistently for accessing the netz so that's a toss up.... really a matter of opinion.  We'd go so far as to say that an IP address exists as combination of location and personal identification that shifts regularly depending on the behavior of the individual attached to the address.  (Yes you can quote us.)

Fer instance..  who 'owns' your street address?  You?  Or does everyone who lives at your address own it?  Just the street number or the unit number too?  What about your landlord or your mortgage company?  Are you merely leasing or renting that address from them?  Or do you 'own' it as long as you pay them a set fee every month?  Even leaving analogies aside, what about PCs in internet cafes, or your office computer?  What kind of sick content is that cleaning crew streaming on your workstation after hours.. and why does your office chair always smell so musky?

Clearly these are heady questions that must be worked out to the satisfaction of all economically vested entities, but we're sure glad we don't have to think about it after we hit the submit button.  So why bother even thinking about it at all?  Because it's most likely going to affect you personally, whether you know it or not. 

Companies like M.S. and Googs collect your data and use it in all kinds of clever ways.  One of those data pieces they keep track of and store is your IP address.  This does indeed help them to regionally customize the information you are given when making a request.  If someone in Dublin, VA types 'cricket' into GoogSearch, they get one set of results.  When someone in Dublin, Ireland types in 'cricket' it's a whole different ballgame.  They also use this kind of stuff to prevent click fraud on Adsense and just generally make sure they keep the clever exploits and workarounds to a minimum.  Nothing wrong with that at all.  What many people raise an eyebrow at is the way Privacy Policies are kept in a perpetual state of elevated complexity, effectively preventing many if not most people who live under their influence in the dark.

Granted, it can be a daunting task to try and communicate such a variegated set of regulations to a general public who, quite honestly, don't really care too much about their own online privacy.  In a world where people still assume their IM conversations are private and that most music, film and game reviews aren't bought and paid for - replacing your site logo with a Privacy Policy link might not even do the trick.  Peeps don't wanna read about consent and opt-ins and cookies.  (Mmmm... cookies.)  Nobody reads the tag on their mattress before they go to sleep at night.  Not unless they have some major OCD kickin' upstairs.

Even though we love to make predictions here, we're not gonna touch this one.  Honestly we can see both sides of this issue and just hope that the E.U. can use their increasing influence to add some weight to the side of the users when it comes to protecting their personal information.

In the end, MicroYahoogle will just end up buying the European Union with stock options to shut them up and use your data however they want, but at least we get to watch a good fight in the meantime... until IPv6 gets here anyway.

Google's 'Privacy FAQ'
MS's 'Privacy Statement'
Y! Privacy Policy