Guardian, The

Google, YouTube and Facebook could escape having to make billions in payouts to press publishers, record labels and artists after European Union lawmakers voted to reject proposed changes to copyright rules that aimed to make the tech companies share more of their revenues.

Privacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of th European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC. An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic” rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to.

Facebook has long had the same public response when questioned about its disruption of the news industry: it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company. But in a small courtroom in California’s Redwood City, attorneys for thecompany presented a different message from the one executives have made to Congress, in interviews and in speeches: Facebook, they repeatedly argued, is a publisher, and a company that makes editorial decisions, which are protected by the first amendment.

Aleksandr Kogan, the academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fiction.”

Antitrust has two main theories of competition. One is to try to ensure that lots of rivals compete in open markets to create better products and services. Call this the democratic theory. The other is to allow a few giants to control everything, then use antitrust only to make sure there are enough giants to create some competition, here and there. Call this the Godzilla versus Rodan theory. Godzilla is, of course, the Japanese irradiated sea monster and Rodan is a flying beast strong enough to fight Godzilla.

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.