Tech Policy

After already making similar deals with Comcast and Verizon

Despite its public war against interconnection fees, Netflix has signed another paid peering deal with an Internet Service Provider to improve the quality of its streaming and reduce buffering for its subscribers.

“We reached an interconnect agreement with AT&T in May and since then have been working together to provision additional interconnect capacity to improve the viewing experience of our mutual subscribers,” Netflix spokesperson Anne Marie Squeo said in an emailed statement. “We’re now beginning to turn up the connections, a process that should be complete in the coming days.” AT&T spokesperon Mark Siegel offered a nearly identical statement. Netflix will pay AT&T for this additional capacity, but the payment amount hasn’t been disclosed.

Such fees have become a hotly debated topic among Internet giants this year. Netflix believes it shouldn’t have pay ISPs like AT&T to deliver its video content because consumers are already paying for Internet access. The streaming service argues that these tolls could be used to discriminate against certain Internet companies, and it has conflated the issue with the ongoing debate about net neutrality.

The ISPs disagree. In a March blog post, AT&T executive Jim Cicconi called Netflix “arrogant” for trying to dump its cost of doing business on all subscribers to an ISP. “When Netflix delivered its movies by mail, the cost of delivery was included in the price their customer paid,” he wrote. “It would’ve been neither right nor legal for Netflix to demand a customer’s neighbors pay the cost of delivering his movie.”

For now Netflix has come to an uneasy truce with AT&T in a deal similar to those already established with Verizon and Comcast. But the company is lobbying to get these tolls outlawed when new rules for net neutrality are drafted by the Federal Communications Commission later this year.

Edith Ramirez is probably not the most popular person in Seattle right now. As the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, she’s currently suing two of the city’s biggest tech companies: Amazon, for allegedly making it too easy for kids to rack up in-app purchases on their parents’ Kindles, and T-Mobile, for allegedly cramming unwanted charges into customers’ phone bills. That’s to say nothing of the recent settlements with Snapchat over false marketing and Apple over in-app purchases. It’s all come under the watchful eye of Ramirez, who assumed the chairwoman’s position in March 2013 and has taken a laser focus to the activities of tech companies, particularly in regards to mobile.

The new FTC head talked to TIME about the hidden permissions lurking in terms of service agreements, Facebook’s controversial mood study and whether Americans should ever expect a “right to be forgotten” online. An edited version of the conversation is below.

TIME: How important is the technology sector as a whole for the FTC right now? Is it an area of focus for you personally?

Ramirez: Our fundamental mission is to protect consumers and promote competition and so we are going to be wherever consumers are. The reality is that technology has been playing a critically important role for the agency for a number of years. Because we see consumers really gravitating to mobile devices, it’s crucial that the agency be very much informed about and keenly aware of what’s happening in the mobile sphere.

TIME: What are the biggest challenges or dangerous that consumers can face with the rise of mobile?

Ramirez: You want consumers to be able to partake in all of the terrific innovation we see in the marketplace. One way to assure that is to make sure the products that are out there take into account what’s of concern to consumers—that includes, among other things, taking into account concerns about data security and privacy, and also making sure that some of the basic protections that we’re all used to when we walk into a grocery store or a local convenience store, that we also have those basic protections available to us when we’re engaging in a transaction on our smartphone.

Data security is paramount in my view. The more connected we are, the more information and data that is being gathered by all sorts of different companies. It’s crucial that this personal information that is being collected and being used, that companies take reasonable steps to ensure that data is protected.

TIME: We live in this era now where people sign up for services and they don’t read the fine print. Do you think there’s a base level of privacy or control that Internet companies should be affording their customers?

Ramirez: I do. We realize that consumers aren’t going to be poring over long, confusing privacy policies. Now that we’re in a mobile world, what’s the likelihood that anyone’s going to be scrolling through on a mobile device some lengthy privacy policy? That’s become increasingly unlikely.

Companies need to be thinking about privacy from the get-go, when they first start conceiving of any new product or service. If you’re developing an app that’s a flashlight app, do you really need to have access to my contacts? Do you really need to have access to my geolocation? If they want to access information that goes beyond what one would expect, they ought to be asking for permission to do that.

I think we’ve seen a tremendous improvement, even in the course of the time I’ve been at the agency. We’ve seen companies realize that consumers really do care very deeply about maintaining their information [security] and they want to also exercise greater control. At the same time I think a lot more needs to be done in this area. A lot in this area still continues to take place behind the scenes in a black box. Consumers may not fully appreciate the extent of data-sharing that’s taking place.

TIME: Last month people were upset because Facebook did this experiment where they were altering people’s News Feeds to change their mood in some way. Do you think that experiment was appropriate for them to do?

Ramirez: I can’t really comment on the specifics of what Facebook did, but I think what it does show is again the need for consumers to be in the driver’s seat. They want to know what companies are doing, how they’re using the information that they’re sharing. It just goes to show that consumers don’t want to be in the dark about this. That’s a basic responsibility companies have—they ought to be transparent about what they’re doing, they ought to give consumers an opportunity to have control over how their information is being used, what information is being collected. Simply because [consumers] are receiving a service, and even it happens to be free, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to be in control.

TIME: Does the FTC plan to investigate the Facebook issue formally?

Ramirez: We can’t comment on how investigations we conduct. What I can tell you is these are issues we are concerned about and we are monitoring the marketplace.

TIME: In Europe, the courts recently enshrined a “right to be forgotten,” so people can delete articles about themselves from search results. Do you think that’s something Americans should have the right to for privacy reasons?

Ramirez: Of course we’re operating here in the U.S. under a very different legal regime than folks are in Europe. An expansive “right to be forgotten” is not something that’s likely to pass Constitutional muster here in the United States because there is a First Amendment right to both access to public information and freedom of expression. At the same time, I do understand the need for us to think about controlling our own information. By way of example, I know that consumers want to be able to delete information. If they’re on a particular platform, they will want to be able to be assured that if they close out their account that their information will be deleted. This is exactly an element of an order we have with Facebook. It’s not an expansive right to be forgotten, but there are certain controls and tools that I think U.S. consumers would like to have.

TIME: As we see these tech companies like Google and Amazon getting bigger and bigger, taking up a larger portion of their sectors, do you think there are antitrust issues with these companies as they continue to grow?

Ramirez: With any large company, if they have market power, monopoly power, we would be looking closely at how they use that. We did conduct an investigation relative to Google a couple of years back. In that particular investigation, we opted not to take action.

TIME: A lot of times when FTC settlements come out, people see the dollar figure, and it seems like a slap on the wrist to these companies that are generating billions of dollars in revenue every year. Are the actions you take actual deterrents to stop companies from abusing consumers in various ways?

Ramirez: We do not have general civil penalty authority. We can’t assess a fine when we find a violation of law under our general statute. What we can do is seek to obtain consumer redress or we can, if appropriate, ask a company to disgorge any unlawful gains that resulted from the unlawful conduct.

In any particular case, the amount that you may see, you may think, ‘Well how does that compare to the profits of a company?” But that’s not really the analysis. The analysis on our end is, “Are we successfully recovering money that would compensate consumers for the damage that they have suffered.”

I think our enforcement work is sending important signals to the marketplace. In the privacy arena, Facebook, Google, Twitter [are] under order. It’s sent important signals to them, and I think as a result of the action that we’ve taken, companies are more aware of what their responsibilities are.

TIME: How are you able to strike a balance between this goal of consumer protection and allowing companies to innovate and try new things?

Ramirez: Whether it’s having information about what you’re paying for, whether it’s knowing what information an app might want to have access to when I’m downloading it—all of these things really work side by side with innovation. I don’t think consumers should have to sacrifice their privacy, the security of their information…when they avail themselves of all these terrific products that we see today. In fact I think for companies to flourish, it’s really important that consumers feel they can trust the products that they’re using, that they feel that they know the full extent of what is happening when they download a service. Companies will flourish all the more if they provide basic protections.

Twitter has become the largest media platform for minority voices on the planet. Everything from the Trayvon Martin case to the BET Awards has become the equivalent of a front-page headline on the site thanks to the social network’s trending topics, which aggregate the most popular conversations and present them to all Twitter users. Blacks over-index heavily on the site, with 29 percent of black Internet users in the U.S. reporting that they actively use Twitter in a recent Pew Research Center survey, compared to 16 percent of whites and Hispanics. In the same way Twitter owes much of its success to the early adopters who gave the site structure and the celebrities who gave it clout, it can also thank black people for helping it reach critical mass and climb to 255 million monthly active users.

So it’s disappointing that the company is so far resisting a positive trend in Silicon Valley, the disclosure of employee data related to race and gender. Chances are, Twitter’s employee roster looks a lot like its Bay Area competitors—overwhelmingly male and white. That’s not a dirty little secret in the Valley; it’s been the modus operandi for decades. The common race and gender tropes of tech startups are so ingrained that we now have an HBO sitcom to mock how far removed the tech scene is from the way the rest of the world lives.

Most tech firms have spent years resisting past entreaties to cough up demographic data. But the stonewalling ended in May, when Google published a diversity report revealing that the company is about 70 percent male, 61 percent white and 30 percent Asian. That set off a domino effect that led Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook and others to publish similar data. But huge consumer tech companies like Apple, Twitter and Amazon have so kept their own figures to themselves (Apple CEO Tim Cook has said the company will release its data “at some point“). Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson is planning an online petition and a social media campaign Friday to convince Twitter in particular to disclose its employee data. None of the companies mentioned responded to multiple emails from TIME asking whether they planned to release diversity reports in the future.

All of these companies, of course, are free to hire whoever they please. They work in a field so hyper-competitive that Google was once willing to give employees offered jobs by Facebook counteroffers within an hour. But anyone who’s ever held a professional job knows who you know matters as much as what you know, and many people in our so-called melting pot continue to maintain friendships exclusively within their own race. Minorities are at a natural disadvantage trying to crack into a world where no one looks like them.

Meanwhile, software development is one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the U.S., expected to grow by 23% from 2012 to 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Historically underrepresented minorities are showing a greater interest in the field—20 percent of the students who graduated with a degree in computer and information sciences in 2012 were black or Hispanic, up from 16 percent a decade prior (at Google, by comparison, 5 percent of workers are black or Hispanic and 4 percent are multiracial). Making a commitment to diversity now means that a wider number of people will have access to these well-paying jobs in the future, a result that will help the tech sector remain prosperous and in-tune with cultural shifts as whites continue to decline as a percentage of the overall U.S. population.

Perhaps the companies that have yet to speak up on diversity fear the negative headlines that will come from admitting that their organizations are mostly comprised of white males. But an annual diversity report is a flag in the sand that indicates inclusiveness is important to a company, important enough to stake its reputation on. Diversity in the workforce has proven benefits for business, and it’s a savvy long-term marketing tool to help recruit employees who value diversity in their work life. The public pressure that naturally stems from such transparency will also encourage tech firms to partner with organizations already looking to boost involvement by women and minorities in computer science, such as Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code and the national societies for black and Hispanic engineers.

Obviously this is not just an issue that affects Silicon Valley. My own industry has seen a declining percentage of minorities working in newsrooms, and men still outnumber women in journalism jobs nearly two-to-one. We could use some more transparency on these issues as well. All U.S. companies with more than 100 employees are required to send detailed demographic data to a federal agency called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission each year, so there’s no reason they can’t share it publicly. The European Union passed a law in April requiring firms with more than 500 employees to publicly release data related to workforce diversity, environmental sustainability and human rights.

It shouldn’t take a government mandate to introduce transparency, though. Right now the tech giants are uniquely positioned among American businesses to take a leadership role on the issue of diversity in the workplace. Our country’s two most valuable companies, Apple and Google, reside nine miles from each other in Silicon Valley. They and their smaller competitors are constantly crowing about how their disruptive products and progressive worldviews are changing the world for the better. Well, here’s a dead-simple way to help fix the world: take that race and gender data you’re already collecting and let everyone else see it. Public scrutiny of the information will inevitably beget positive change.

The latest salvo in an ongoing PR battle between the streaming company and the ISPs

Got buffering problems? It’s all Netflix’s fault, says Verizon. The Internet Service Provider published a lengthy blog post Thursday arguing that Netflix’s mismanagement of its video streaming traffic has led to slower speeds for users. It’s the latest salvo in a months-long public relations battle over who should pay for Internet traffic.

Following users’ complaints about slow speeds, Verizon says it studied congestion across many points in its network using a test case in Los Angeles. The company looked at both the point where content is delivered into users’ homes and the interconnection points where transit providers deliver data from content companies like Netflix to consumer-facing ISPs like Verizon. For most content delivered to Verizon’s network, there was no congestion. However, Netflix content approached 100% capacity during peak utilization hours, which can lead to slower buffering speeds for end users.

According to Verizon, Netflix is to blame for this because the company didn’t reserve enough capacity, either through the transit providers or through Verizon directly, to accommodate the massive amount of video traffic it sends out on a daily basis.

“For whatever reason (perhaps to cut costs and improve its profitability), Netflix did not make arrangements to deliver this massive amount of traffic through connections that can handle it,” Verizon said in its blog post. “Netflix knew better.”

Netflix countered in a statement of its own, saying that ISPs are responsible for controlling congestion levels on their networks.

“When Verizon fails to upgrade those interconnections, consumers get a lousy experience despite paying for more than enough bandwidth to enjoy high-quality Netflix video,” a Netflix spokesman said in an email. “That’s why Netflix is calling for strong net neutrality that covers the interconnection needed for consumers to get the quality of INTER-net (sic) they pay for.”

Netflix has been advocating for months that video providers should not have to pay fees to ISPs to deliver their content efficiently (even though Netflix has in the past paid third parties such as Cogent for this service). The streaming service has tried to conflate the issue with net neutrality, arguing that such fees amount to a toll ISPs can use to prioritize certain Web-based services above others. ISPs such as Verizon and Comcast have pushed back, saying that Netflix and its customers should foot the bill for delivering its massive video traffic, not all the subscribers of a particular ISP.

For now, Netflix has agreed to pay both Verizon and Comcast fees to boost buffering speeds for customers. And the streaming service has abandoned an earlier strategy to blame Verizon directly within its app for slow streaming speeds. The Federal Communications Commission will likely be the final arbiter on who is to blame for slow buffering — the agency is currently investigating the dispute between Netflix and ISPs and may provide guidance on the issue when it drafts new regulations for net neutrality later this year.

The controversial TV-streaming service Aereo’s business methods were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, dashing the startup’s plans to disrupt the well-entrenched pay-TV industry. That’s particularly bad news for media bigwig Barry Diller, who helped the startup get off the ground when his company IAC led a $20.5 million funding for Aereo back in 2012.

Diller is a former chief executive of both Paramount Pictures and Fox who has since leaped into the digital age full-bore. His current company IAC owns hot digital properites such as CollegeHumor, Vimeo and OkCupid. Aereo fit in nicely with his vision of the digital future, and he rewarded the startup with considerable cash. In addition to the original $20.5 million, IAC was also involved in later funding rounds of $38 million and $34 million for Aereo, according to Crunchbase.

Now it’s unclear whether the startup will have any future at all. Diller had previously said there was “no Plan B” if the courts ruled Aereo illegal. On Wednesday, he seemed willing to accept defeat. “We did try,” he told CNBC, “but it’s over now.”

Diller told Bloomberg that though the millions dumped into the company weren’t a significant financial loss for IAC, blocking Aereo’s technology was “a big loss for consumers.”

Netflix is once again making headlines because of a very public spat with an Internet Service Provider. This week Netflix placed a message on the buffer screen of its app blaming Verizon and its FiOS Internet service for slow streaming speeds. Verizon took offense and issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Netflix remove the message. Now Netflix has just a few days to prove that it was appropriate to blame the ISP, or Verizon may take legal action. This recent bickering is just the latest step in a winding saga that also involves Comcast, Google and the future of the Internet. Here’s a quick Q&A to get you up to speed on the story behind the Netflix-Verizon feud.

OK, so why exactly is Verizon mad at Netflix?

Netflix has been testing a new version of the buffering screen on its app that gives customers more specific information about why a video is loading slowly. On Tuesday a Vox Media employee spotted the new screen, which placed the blame for sluggish streaming squarely on Verizon. “The Verizon network is crowded right now,” a message on the screen reads.

Oh snap, netflix. pic.twitter.com/wMfavoHOyj

— Yuri Victor ♥ (@yurivictor) June 4, 2014

It is extremely unusual for an online video company to blame a specific ISP for service problems, but Netflix says the message is an effort to “keep [its] members informed.” On Wednesday, Verizon dismissed the message as a “PR stunt.” But Thursday the telco giant issued a cease-and-desist letter to Netflix demanding it remove the accusatory language from its app. “There is no basis for Netflix to assert that issues with respect to playback of any particular video session are attributable solely to the Verizon network,” the letter reads. “As Netflix knows, there are many different factors that can affect traffic on the Internet.”

Different factors, huh? Like what?

As my colleague Sam Gustin has explained, the journey for a video from Netflix’s servers to your living room is pretty complicated. Broadband companies like Verizon and Comcast are responsible for delivering online content across the so-called “last mile” into customers’ homes. But before that happens, Internet data is typically exchanged between consumer-facing ISPs and bandwidth providers that serve as intermediaries between content companies and consumer ISPs. These deals, called peering agreements, have historically been free, but ISPs like Verizon are now demanding money to connect to their network because they are being forced to transfer lots of high-definition video from companies such as Netflix. Stalled negotiations between Verizon and bandwidth provider Cogent earlier this year caused Netflix speeds to fall significantly for Verizon customers.

But I thought Verizon and Netflix already made a deal to fix that?

They did. In April Netflix signed a paid peering agreement with Verizon to directly connect to its broadband network and bypass intermediaries such as Cogent. Netflix, it seems, is not happy with the improvements (if any) so far, so the company has decided to call Verizon out directly to consumers.

Doesn’t Netflix already have beef with some other Internet Service Provider?

Yes, Netflix is quickly becoming the Tupac of online video companies, racking up enemies right and left. In February the company signed a paid peering agreement with Comcast, which first thrust the negotiations between ISPs and content companies into the public conversation. Netflix is very unhappy that it has to pay either Verizon or Comcast to connect to their networks. As Netflix sees it, the ISPs are getting paid twice, once from customers who are promised a certain quality of Internet service per month and then again from content providers who must pay to deliver their video to consumers.

Hey, yeah! That’s not fair! Down with Verizon and Comcast!

Calm down. From the ISPs’ point of view, Netflix is doing a lot of public grandstanding to try to rewrite the rules of interconnection deals that have been around for decades. Netflix was already paying intermediaries like Cogent to deliver its content before streaming speeds slowed earlier this year. Now, the ISPs say, Netflix is trying to get its content delivered for free and force all broadband subscribers pay for the cost of delivering massive amounts of high-definition video instead of just Netflix subscribers. But some ISPs, such as Google Fiber, agree with Netflix and don’t charge companies to establish a connection to their network.

But isn’t this a violation of net neutrality, or something like that?

Not really. Net neutrality rules concern the “last mile” delivery of content into residential customers’ homes. Netflix’s fight with Verizon and Comcast centers on how content is delivered to consumer-facing ISPs and who pays for it. Netflix believes the core issue—that ISPs have the ability to charge different companies different prices to connect to their networks—means these peering issues are in the spirit of the net neutrality debate. Since the net neutrality rules are currently being rewritten, it’s possible that peering agreements could be incorporated into the new regulations. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he will look into Netflix’s paid peering complaints as the new net neutrality governance is drafted.

So are Netflix and Verizon going to court?

In its cease and desist letter, Verizon said Netflix must tell it the names of every customer who saw the accusatory message, along with proof that Verizon’s network was to blame for slow speeds, within five days. Otherwise Verizon reserves the right to pursue “legal remedies.” Netflix has so far not indicated that it plans to remove the messages blaming Verizon. A Netflix spokesman told TIME that the company is trying to provide transparency to consumers and Verizon is “trying to shut down that discussion.” But neither side actually wants a court battle, since the discovery process might dredge up communications during their negotiation process that they’d rather keep private (just ask Apple and Samsung). They’ll most likely come to a private agreement that satisfies both parties.

Screw these companies. When are my movies going to start streaming faster?

Both Netflix and Verizon have said that the streaming speeds would increase over the course of months, not days or weeks. “We are working quickly to implement the network architecture and expect improvements to be experienced across the FiOS footprint throughout 2014,” Verizon spokesman Bob Elek said in an e-mail to TIME. We’ll have a better idea of whether the paid peering deal has been effective when Netflix releases its monthly ranking of ISP streaming speeds later this month. But even if the service quality increases and the legal threats end, the rhetorical battle between Netflix and the major ISPs is likely to continue for quite a while.

Now go on and marinate on that while you watch the new season of Orange Is the Black. Hopefully, with very little buffering.

Wireless carrier Sprint is being dinged with a $7.5 million fine for calling and texting people who placed their phone numbers on the company’s do-not-call registry, which is supposed to protect Americans from unwanted telemarketing communications. According to the Federal Communications Commission, Sprint failed to log some consumers’ do-not-call preferences due to “human error” and “technical malfunctions.” The $7.5 million sum is the largest fine ever doled out by the FCC for violating do-not-call policies.

“When a consumer tells a company to stop calling or texting with promotional pitches, that request must be honored,” Travis LeBlanc, acting chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau, said in a press release. “Today’s settlement leaves no question that protecting consumer privacy is a top enforcement priority.”

In addition to the fine, Sprint must designate a senior manager to oversee its do-not-call implementation and file annual compliance reports with the FCC for two years. Sprint was hit with a $400,000 fine in 2011 for similar violations.

The Federal Trade Commission manages a national Do Not Call registry that allows people in the United States to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls. Many large companies such as Sprint that engage in telemarketing are also required to manage their own internal do-not-call lists.

Americans shouldn’t expect the same privacy protections as in Europe, where a top court has ruled citizens have a "right to be forgotten"

Privacy has just taken on new meaning in Europe. The European Union’s highest court has ruled that any of the region’s 500 million citizens can compel Google and other search engines to remove information about them from the companies’ search results, even if that information is neither inaccurate nor unlawful. The surprising decision, which Google can’t directly appeal, is either a bold reclamation of privacy rights in the digital era or a mandate to let anyone rewrite history as they please, depending on your perspective. It’s also the clearest sign yet that U.S. and European data protection laws are heading down divergent paths.

The European Union has always placed an emphasis on protecting its citizens’ data. The latest ruling, for a case in which a Spanish lawyer demanded that Google remove links to an old news article about his debts, is based on a 1995 European Parliament directive that provided extensive protections for personal data. The Parliament is in the midst of passing an even more sweeping update to the law that will make “data protection first, not an afterthought,” according to the body. A key tenet of this new policy is the “right to be forgotten,” the idea that individuals have the right to delete information about themselves that is not legally required to remain online. “This is the fundamental right of an individual as opposed to the business right of a company,” says Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “When courts are asked to consider those claims, I think they rightly look more seriously at the individual’s claims first.”

The U.S. has no privacy protections that even approach the broad aims of Europe’s laws. It’s not because Europe is the innovator on this front—former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis first introduced the “right to privacy” in the U.S. in an 1890 article in the Harvard Law Review that was globally influential. It’s also not because Americans don’t value their digital privacy. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that 68 percent of American Internet users believe U.S. laws don’t go far enough to protect individual online privacy. But a variety of factors mean American privacy legislation will likely never reach the scope of Europe’s laws.

First, Europe’s new ruling is difficult to reconcile with the First Amendment, which grants citizens the right to free speech. A U.S. law that compelled a company like Google to limit the type of content it shows in search results likely wouldn’t pass muster in American courts, experts say, because it could be construed as a form of censorship. “The First Amendment really does prevent this kind of widespread unpublishing of data,” says Danny O’Brien, international director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “In the U.S., free speech sort of trumps privacy.”

Americans do have privacy protections, but they’re spread across a variety of state and federal laws that typically apply to specific groups of people. For instance, California has a law somewhat similar to the E.U. ruling that allows people to demand that tech companies delete their data, but it’s only for minors. On other online issues, like hijacking someone’s digital identity, punishments vary from state to state. With Congress’s ability to pass new legislation near an all-time low, it’s doubtful sweeping federal change will suddenly come on this front anytime soon. “The way in which the U.S. protects privacy is through a patchwork series of laws,” says Andy Sellars, a staff attorney for the Digital Media Law Project housed at Harvard University. “The EU has always tended to think of a privacy as more of an overarching thing that touches on all other domains.”

Money, of course, also plays a role in the way laws are formed. Though energy company lobbyists are the ones pulling the strings on shows like House of Cards, Google spent $15.8 million on D.C. lobbying in 2013, more than Exxon Mobil. “That has played a big role in what Washington has or has not done,” Rotenberg says. By comparison, the tech giant spent around $2 million to influence the European Union last year.

Even though the U.S. is unlikely to adopt similar policies, the E.U. ruling will still have global implications. Sellars says it’s likely that Google will only delete content in the countries where it is required to do so. Twitter has this policy, and Google does it on a small scale for issues such as German laws banning content related to Nazism. Such measures could lead to a decidedly different Internet experience on American shores compared to European ones, a concept known as balkanization that Silicon Valley views as anathema to the open Internet.

Many questions remain. It’s not clear whether Google will readily delete data when requested or try to protect its search results by taking individual cases to local judges, a strategy that could rack up huge legal fees. The boundaries of what can be deleted are also extremely vague, with the court only saying that information that is no longer relevant or timely is game to be scrubbed. Prominent figures won’t have a right to delete information in the public interest, but that exception is open to wide interpretation.

Ultimately, the ruling, which could eventually impact other tech companies like Facebook and Twitter, will establish a different set of online standards and expectations based on where users happen to reside. And those varying standards aren’t likely to be reconciled anytime soon. The question judges, legislators and citizens will have to grapple with, Sellars says, is “whether or not the Internet is truly a global platform where all of us have access to the same information or whether it is really just something that is going to be recaptured by nations over time.”