By removing articles from the British press they manipulate the debate. In what looks like an one two with the Guardian, BBC and other influential UK papers they pave the way for an outcry over censorship.
The court order said search engines will have to remove links to inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive information which harms private individuals unnecessarily. A case-by-case assessment is needed considering the type of information in question, its sensitivity for the individual’s private life and the interest of the public in having access to that information.
What Google is doing now is cherry-picking requests which don’t fulfill these criteria at all. A Guardian story about an error by a referee in 2010, a BBC blog critical about an American top manager. These are of course not the kind of links which the EU regulation addresses nor does these fit the Court judgement.
To be clear, the Guardian covering the white lie by a referee is badly written but that’s not a reason to remove it 😉 It certainly doesn’t qualify under any of the set criteria as it is about a very public conflict in football, an individual acting in a public role, quite recent and not excessive at all. It totally doesn’t fit the bill for removal.
The BBC blog is an even worse example as the only person mentioned is the chairman of Merrill Lynch, who is definitely not an European. Even if he was, this was a about a large company, public traded, criticism of his role as chairman etc.
Google removes these ridiculous cases ahead of the normal requests, then informs the British Press they removed their page (not true), which then cries ‘censorship’ all over their front pages.
(technically not true as you can still find the articles from within Europe if you search on the subject matter instead of the individuals name, so what is removed is the ‘celebrity factor’ of a search on name. For the cases intended under this ruling that celebrity factor wouldn’t exist).
The right to be forgotten is very worthy and we Europeans should be proud of it, but Google is making a mockery of its responsibility to implement the ruling.
With these cases in the spotlight no proper public debate about the protection and the limitations of this right to be forgotten is possible. Abuse of power by Google and likely to lead to a conflict with the EU privacy organizations
next post I will address why it’s actually a good ruling, a right worthy to have and not the end of civilization as we know it, but I had to get this off my chest first
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28130581
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/eu-right-to-be-forgotten-guardian-google #Politics #Tech #Europe
I disagree with your premise here but will await your next post before i decide if I will engage.
I see it didn't take you long to find elaborate conspiracy where any sane person would see the inevitable result of a badly designed law.
Be mad at the courts. Google is focussing attention on the core rotten issue. Which is a good thing.
To the point +Max Huijgen.
Why would this be cynical. The decision by the EU Commission was a bad one. They are trying to ensure that there is support against it
Good for Google. It was stupid decision. Once you give people the right to censor the facts, where does it end?
I guess we all expected this issue to be manipulated by small-minded people!
To be fair +Eli Fennell this is not a view only held by +Max Huijgen I disagree with it but it is an extremely popular topic of discussion that Google is trying to sabotage the new law.
+John Davidson They're not doing that, anyways, they're trying to enforce the law as it was written for them. Regardless what +Max Huijgen thinks, with a good team of lawyers, any of these people could make their circumstances fit the vague definition the court gave.
+Max Huijgen I'm getting tired of your very clear anti-Google bias.
Looking forward to your next article +Max Huijgen as I really don't get how this can be a good ruling. From what I can see, the big G is actually in full compliance and what is happening now is not an execution issue, or cherry picking, but rather the unavoidable consequence of a terrible ruling.
+Eli Fennell Yes, they are doing as they are required by law, but also doing it in a manner to create maximum Streisand effect. This 'right' will not last long.
+Marlon Thompson If they even can sabotage the law, as Max suggests, that would only prove how badly written it was.
Seriously, what made anyone think for a second giving a private corporation, any corporation, this kind of power was a good thing? It's like letting a private corporation decide whether criminal records should be wiped.
Noticing this too, seems pretty clever. On the Right to be Forgotten, well that's a big topic isn't it. I can see a lot of good in it, but the precedent for abuse seems huge.
I read the post by the journalist from the BBC who's blog was 'not searchable.' It is only 'not findable' if you look for a name of one of the people who made a comment in the comment section. A search of the actual article, topic, and person (chairman of Merrill Lynch) still returns the article. This, in my opinion, serves very little purpose… instead, the BBC should allow people to delete their own comments!
Totally agree +Eli Fennell and that's my point to those who are saying Google is trying to sabotage, but as I said I'll wait until I see +Max Huijgen next post, but I may not have to engage as you are here.
Thr best defense against an unjust law is to obey it strictly and thus show its absurdity.
+John Davidson is was not a decision by the EU commission, but doesn't matter.
What does matter is that the new directive will be even more clear that there is a limited right to get information deleted. Period.
Let's see where this takes us. Is it manipulation or just the first of many things that the court has not taken into account. For example when I do a search on mobile on my name I see the message that some results have been removed by Google due to this law. Only I have not requested a removal, but someone searching on my name will not know that.
+John Davidson and others of course. They are not implementing this decision, they remove ridiculous cases from their index and claim they do so in the name of the law which they don't as I already argued in the post.
+Max Huijgen They should have done that in the first place (worded the directive more specifically). But I remember you praising this ruling, saying it was a great thing… now you're basically admitting the whole thing was a monumental cock-up that needs to be fixed.
Better to see you arrive at that sooner than later, though you still seem more outraged at Google and not, as you should be, at the EU Courts that gave them such an incredibly vague directive and told them they would have to follow it through some internal processes they would come up with on their own or risk large penalties.
I would say exactly the same as this was Bing doing it +Dorian Stretton
I'm neither a fan nor a hater of corporations. I can be critical of their actions but these are not persona you love or hate.
Sorry, i'm not a really clever persons when it comes to topics like this, but even i can see that this law is complete utter bullshit.
This is the future! And we start unlinking the web? Seriously. It doesn't make any sense at all. Have you ever heard about metadata? Have you ever heard about context?
Would it have been really hard to implement a law that forces content publishers to update their articles with additional timely statements where needed? No it wouldn't.
No matter how you try to make this look good, it's nonsense.
+Max Huijgen With respect to "Google removes these ridiculous cases ahead of the normal requests […]" —
Are you suggesting that these were not legitimate requests that were made via the legally mandated form? Or that you have enough information to know that they were made "ahead of normal requests"?
Blame the courts. Google, or any other company can not / should not hold "trials" for such matters.
A potentially bad law, is being implemented in a terrible way and these are the results.
Sorry, but the outcome is exactly what I expected it to be and I have to disagree with you 100% +Max Huijgen
+Stefan Prokop I want to quote you on that! Can I?
+Joel Webber I'm sure these requests were made through the form Google created. It's not a legally mandated form to be clear.
To clarify: the court decision was not at all limited to Google. It addressed all search engines.
Now Bing f.i. doesn't have a form, so this was just the way Google decided to handle this.
+Eli Fennell Sure!
+Max Huijgen are you saying that Google is not indexing sites without being told to stop indexing them? That Google is operating on its own volition here and then claiming to have received take down requests they haven't actually received?
If that's the case I really hope you have some sort of proof …
+Max Huijgen you are misreporting why the BBC article was removed. At least be factual.
+Max Huijgen Google isn't to blame. They are forced to act on behalf of those that ask for removal. It would be interesting to know who asked for removal instead of shooting the messenger.
+Max Huijgen I'm confused — are you saying there was another way for Google to comply with the Spanish ruling that doesn't give people a mechanism to register their requests to delist pages?
+Max Huijgen The only means of implementing this "right to be forgotten" is for the offended party to take the publisher of the offensive material to court and petition for the material to be removed from published works that they originated.
The Internet Archive will be a problem, but they could be considered a publisher as well. they definitely are not an indexer.
+Brendan Thesingh that notice under every search on individual names is of course part of the campaign against this decision.
Initially they wanted to do this only where the individual had requested creating a huge Streisand effect, but privacy regulators in Europe told them that would be a head on clash leading to severe fines.
I also propose that even if Google is promoting requests likely to get press attention (which is not obviously proven, afaict), it is a legitimate form of mild protest to a law one perceives as ill-considered.
When Google was forced to de-list pages via DMCA request some years back, they responded by replacing said listings with a link to the DMCA request itself (a matter of public record). The result, of course, is that the DMCA request has to list the pages the plaintiff wanted removed. Personally, I thought this was quite clever.
No, you are wrong here +Max Huijgen.
I can't wait for your next post, trying to reason why this is a good ruling.
There's no two ways about it. It allowsthe criminal, the unscrupulous, the underhand, to conveniently hide their past from public scrutiny. It's nothing about privacy, it's all about deceit.
To everyone reacting here: please comment as well on my question in
What should fall under the European right to be forgotten and to reverse it: what should fall under the 'right to know'? as I really want to know what you guys think should be holy on the internet and what personal information could possibly be removed.
https://plus.google.com/u/1/112352920206354603958/posts/Jsw9W8xESK9
I'm neither a fan nor a hater of corporations
+Max Huijgen the graphic below your post tells a different story.
+Max Huijgen As I pointed out earlier, the "right to be forgotten" should only extend to cases of libel where the plaintiff wins.
I would agree to a "right to oppose", which actually exists already. gegendarstellung in German.
+Max Huijgen This is probably one of the most uninformed post that I've seen on the subject. People above have commented on the errors here but to summarize (1) how do you know that Google is cherry picking the results? Do you have the complete list of link removal requests and which ones have been complied with? (2) Where does anyone say that Google is removing "pages"? Do you not know the difference between "pages" and "links"? (3) Why do you think this is happening? Are you not aware of the EU courts forcing this ruling down a search company's throat? (4) You want Google to comply with the requests on a case by case basis… are you not aware that that requires a "person" doing the job and that it takes considerably longer, compared to an algorithm, to comply with the request? You want to do it slowly and then get incensed that only part of the request has been "cherry picked". What crappy reasoning!
+Eli Fennell I'm not admitting the whole thing was a monumental cock-up that needs to be fixed. at all. Your rhetoric is always a bit heavy-handed, but please read what I actually write. Don't fantasize too much.
Oh and I'm not into conspiracies. Neither is f.i. +Mike Elgan and many others who also think Google is doing this to manipulate public opinion.
+Jacques Pienaar I reacted on the original BBC blog where it said: 'Now in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O'Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.'
I believe that +Google should be agnostic to the search results. If something slanderous or disparaging to on the Internet, then the person should seek correction for the site hosting the content. Filtering it out of each search engine individually is ridiculous.
+Jan Wildeboer I respect your opinion, but where does it say Google is forced to take down these links. To the contrary, they do so voluntarily and with some contempt for the original court decision.
+Edouard Tavinor where do I say Google didn't receive these requests? C'mon, I know you're a reader, check my post first.
+Max Huijgen To answer your question: minor juvenile records, but those should also be removed from their online source, not just from Google. Unless the minor was convicted as an adult, they should have the right to have their juvenile crimes forgotten.
Plaintiffs who win cases of libel and defamation should have a right to have the libelous and defamatory works removed, unless they're public figures perhaps, because then it could arguably be in the public interest. Again, this should apply to source material as well, not just links.
Old debts? That was what the Spanish case was based on, and I think most old debts, if there was nothing untowards about them, should be removed. I could even see that guy's argument… though $500 to a reputation management firm would have made it disappear from the top of Google Search much more quickly without making him internationally famous. Still, though, one has to wonder why Google would be required to remove irrelavent old financial information, but the news agency wouldn't. If the argument is "freedom of the press", well, I think we see now this ruling leads to anything but more of that.
I'm not sure much else. I mean, an employer can run a criminal background check anyways, so hiding adult crimes seems pointlesss. Even hiding debts is only valuable to a degree; financial histories aren't exactly inviolable.
Perhaps people charged with crimes and later acquitted? Again, though, if we're being "forgotten", surely news agencies should do that as well? Remove articles which suggest a person may have been guilty of a crime they weren't?
All Google is doing is linking. That's it. They should not have to police that. It should be handled at the source.
Also, the EU should stop being cheapskates and foot the bill of evaluating each of these claims themselves. Google would then only have to be involved if they objected to a removal.
No censorship for my friends in UK. Stupid bill needs to go
+Eli Fennell thanks for your contribution! Appreciate it.
Why should juvenile records be removed from the internet? Should medical records be removed? Social security numbers? Porn?
And the other subject you rightly mention: if the source material can't be deleted for whatever reason, should the search engine link stay?
+Max Huijgen the point is that those that apply for these takedowns do so with the security of being kept secret. That causes abuse. Google plays the canary in the coal mine game by sending a notice to the guardian etc causing a Streisand.
So how can Google know that a takedown is legitimate if there's just a request? That's the problem.
There's no judge.
+Max Huijgen then I really don't see how you can reach the conclusion you have. Google claims to have received 50 000 take down requests and have hired a small army of paralegals to deal with them. They can't contest them: Google hasn't got the resources. Everything Google can do is comply with the courts and hope that others contest the request individually. Being open about what's going on is the best thing Google could do at the moment, the way I see it.
If it was news, was true and accurate and published in the public domain then it should remain so.
Its their bread and butter so they would have to be doing this. Google is advertising in every aspect of their business and this is not what they want to happen in any form as it could progress to further restrictions (or censorship in Googles eyes).
+Edouard Tavinor
Agreed… sunlight is the best disinfectant, they see.
Exactly +Paul Wooding so the cases I mentioned and others used by the Guardian as arguments against censorship should never have been approved by Google.
There is an obvious and significant cultural difference here at play as well. Both sides of this argument mean well. Personally I "side" heavily with +Max Huijgen here and not because I want to take sides, but because I perceive his view as less biased or even unbiased. Respecting the time tested, modern principles of individual privacy is hardly a targeted act against Google. The fact is that Google is lobbying against a norm that has been made clear to them and others as well. It's okay to discuss individual cases again and to question their ruling, but when cherry-picked cases are used as excuses to question the general principle, then it's a different matter. There are bad individual decisions for any law, but we don't argue to make murder legal just because a few innocent people were once convicted as murderers. We may overturn the rulings on those cases, but we do maintain that murder needs to remain illegal.
+Edouard Tavinor There is an ongoing discussion between Google and EU privacy regulators.
Nobody asked them to comply within a certain time frame, without court orders or whatever. That's Google's own twist.
+Max Huijgen the way I understood the ruling, Google had to produce a way to allow people to enter links that Google would then be legally obliged to remove from their index. Is that not the case?
+Max Huijgen we don't know the reason behind the request.
Someone seems to have pointed out to Google that their name is linked to a web page in Google's index and they want it removed from search results. All Google can do is review the information and remove the page.
All anyone had to do is put their name or an event into Google and then send the search results off to Google and demand that those pages be removed from the index.
I suspect it's easier for the likes of Google to meet the request rather than risk costly legal challenges.
Well… As a corp entity, subject to possible law suits, Google could argue they are playing it safe. Yes the las says they have to evaluate each request… But are the guidelines clear and concise? No method if appeal is provided and the onus us on Google. From a U.S, perspective the corp legal departments tend to swing to the safest, most severe interpretation to make sure follow up law suits are preventable.
Curious how Bing, Yahoo, etc are doing as they too are subject to this law.
Not at all +Edouard Tavinor +Paul Wooding +Jan Wildeboer
The Court points out that the data subject may address such a request directly to the operator of the search engine (the controller) which must then duly examine its merits.
Nobody talked about forms (email would have been fine), nobody said: remove or shoot, to the contrary the search engine should check the merits.
And if the complainer is not happy:
Where the controller does not grant the request, the data subject may bring the matter before the supervisory authority or the judicial authority so that it carries out the necessary checks and orders the controller to take specific measures accordingly.
So the burden is on the individual to go to court or to a privacy regulator (every EU country has one) and go from there.
+Paul Comeau yeah, but we all know that this was a law bought and paid for by Microsoft, Facebook et al.
Note that Facebook hasn't needed to change their search at all. In fact, it's interesting that nobody's even mentioned it as a possibility.
+Max Huijgen No. The burden is on Google to decide. As a commercial entity their decision is not neutral. When they say no, they must make a commercial risk decision. That has nothing to do with privacy or justice.
I miss your point +Jan Wildeboer Are you saying Google has a commercial risk if they would have taken their time to coordinate and let their newly established advisory committee do the job?
Should Microsoft be worried about commercial risks as they don't even offer a form?
Where are you heading?
Is Google Trying To Make The Law An Ass?
http://news.sky.com/story/1294363/is-google-trying-to-make-the-law-an-ass
+Max Huijgen Google gets whatever request to remove whatever URL from their index. Now they have to decide if that request is valid and if they deem it isn't how to justify their refusal. That process costs them money. It's a commercial decision. Honor the request (cheap) or refuse (expensive and risky). I would definitely prefer an independent decision. Where the request is handled by a judge and the decision is based on laws. So that Google can point to a public decision by an independent court. The current implementation lacks credibility.
Add to that jurisdictions. A request by a guy from Germany living in the UK (or at least claiming to) to remove a URL from a Brazilian or Portuguese site. Which laws must the paralegal at Google take into consideration?
+Max Huijgen considering how much the media hates Google it's pretty clear what the newspapers will be saying …
Please read the updated BBC article at the same link given above. The article in question is searchable under the original search term. A great deal of overreaction here.
+Max Huijgen your link to sky makes my point. Rubber stamping the request is cheap. But does that serve privacy v justice v publicity?
I found it +Joseph Moosman but the overreaction was by the BBC, not by me.
+Max Huijgen both.
don't understand +Edouard Tavinor who hates who?
What did you expect when you choose to have any company decide the merits or accuracy of any take-down request?
The law is completely flawed and just puts Google in a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation.
If you want something removed go through the courts and have the content holder take it down. There is no easy solution.
+Jan Wildeboer But again: Google doesn't need to do anything at the moment and nobody said that 'if they deem it isn't how to justify their refusal. '
Check my quotes again in the earlier comment. Do you think Bing will now get a fine because they don't even have a form? No, of course not as nobody asked them to do
+Max Huijgen yep. That's why Google is "streisanding" by sending notifications to BBC, the Guardian et al. But they cannot disclose what the exact request was, who filed it and why they accepted it. That is almost a cool implementation of decentralized censorship and quite ironic.
Related?
"Google Is Being Forced To Censor The History Of Merrill Lynch"
businessinsider.com/google-merrill-lynch-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten-2014-7
Yep meaning you expect Bing to be fined now? +Jan Wildeboer
+Alex Schleber I mention Merill Lynch in the post as a wrong example by Google. As an american he wouldn't even have the right to complain.
And no, after a silly outrage, it turned out he never requested it. The BBC cried wolf just because …
+Max Huijgen it is not about fines or not. It is about who decides for which reasons. Commercial entities that care about shareholder value v independent bodies like courts. The current implementation by Google of the "right to be forgotten" is a rant to provoke a real discussion IMHO. The real question being censorship as a commercial service. CaaS so to say. No judge, no independence. Is that what we want?
Then we agree +Jan Wildeboer Its a cynical rant by Google, an attempt to get this ruling away in their commercial interest.
Regarding commercial entities versus courts, sector self regulation popular in Europe, but by now the American way as well?
Self regulation as the holy grail?
+Max Huijgen you must be as discordian as I am 😉 And someone at Google too. At least I hope.
Socratic i would say +Jan Wildeboer
+Brendan O'Brien don't confuse court decisions with law.
You realize it's a bit insulting +Brendan O'Brien?
+Eli Fennell just quote him Stefan regardless of his permission; if he disagrees with it, he can just file a right-to-be-forgotten-request ;p
+Brendan O'Brien I have to agree with +Max Huijgen. Saying "Europeans" etc… is needlessly painting broad brush strokes.
What you should have said was, "European Google Conspiracy Theorists."
Try to find a social security number on Google +Brendan O'Brien Try to find the latest song of xxx, try to find porn, try to find lots of things which are hidden by Google +Brendan O'Brien
+Brendan O'Brien the Google implementation is not mandated by law nor the ECJ. It's Googles interpretation of the ECJ decision. As a global multinational it is at least interesting to think about how to control
Google to implement it in a better way. The current implementation is a provocation IMHO. That claims to be above the law.
+Brendan O'Brien because according to US laws some pigs are more equal. US citizens have some justification to believe they have rights. We non-US people are sure to be treated like shit by the NSA et al. 😉
The US has whatever long history, but Europe has an even longer history. What makes you think you know better?
Don't you think we are capable of defining our own laws and do so with some clarity of mind?
It's insulting to denounce other man's reasoning about privacy as 'sickening'.
And to be clear Google is not being restrictive in this case, but overly broad and basically ridiculing the court verdict as well as the underlying rights we Europeans have.
What 'nature' of information and internet is there? Is that a law of nature preceding or superseding human rights? +Brendan O'Brien
+Jan Wildeboer ehm … as far as i remember the court imposed Google to act like it acts now. Otherwise, if they don't, there's already an arbitration board – but, if this board could not make a final decision, too, there's the usual way to a local court for each individual case.
+Bernd Rubel "
Thus, if, following a search made on the basis of a person’s name, the list of results displays a link to a web page which contains information on the person in question, that data subject may approach the operator directly and, where the operator does not grant his request, bring the matter before the competent authorities in order to obtain, under certain conditions, the removal of that link from the list of results"
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf
it's the press release, granted. but it's about Google Spain. it's about a specific name. not about Google globally and not about how Google implemented it the way it does.
I have no problem with the "right to be forgotten", if it relates to inaccurate information. My objection is to a search engine (Google or otherwise) being the company that has to react to it.
If there is a problem with the information, then the source should be altered or removed. [Perhaps the only search engine interaction should be to remove the item from their cache if it is no longer accessible on the Internet, and that involves no judgement call on their part.] Alternatively, the source could have the robots.txt file modified so that the search engines will ignore it. Both of these approaches would also resolve the inconsistencies involved with access from 'google.eu' and 'google.com'.
The bottom line is that the EU ruling was not (in my opinion) the right way to handle the whole issue.
Now on the question what to do if an American website publishes my blood pressure which they obtained somehow.
See for that discussion the other thread which also runs https://plus.google.com/u/1/112352920206354603958/posts/Jsw9W8xESK9
Copy of an earlier comment by me on Google's obligations in response to similar remarks +Bernd Rubel
The Court points out that the data subject may address such a request directly to the operator of the search engine (the controller) which must then duly examine its merits.
Nobody talked about forms (email would have been fine), nobody said: remove or shoot, to the contrary the search engine should check the merits.
And if the complainer is not happy:
Where the controller does not grant the request, the data subject may bring the matter before the supervisory authority or the judicial authority so that it carries out the necessary checks and orders the controller to take specific measures accordingly.
So the burden is on the individual to go to court or to a privacy regulator (every EU country has one) and go from there.
+Tim Mason if the source is the only remedy people with lots of money would get their way, but everyday people wouldn't have a chance to get their (incorrect, outdated, whatever) information removed. That would make the internet game for the rich (like it already is).
+Max Huijgen You're right, except it's the existence of this law in the first place that advantages the rich far more than the poor. Otherwise, you were right.
And how does that work +Eli Fennell Please explain.
+Max Huijgen But isn't that already the case here?
If someone asks for an article to be removed, and Google says "no" (because the court said that Google has to decide whether or not it is in the public interest, etc.), then they have to fight it, and that will take money. And then they have to go to Bing and do the same thing. And Yahoo. And Duck-Duck-Go. And so on and so on.
If someone goes to the local paper and asks for inaccurate information to be removed, then they prove it to one source and it goes away everywhere.
Also, if someone wants a result removed, then they provide the exact link to it. But what happens if it's in the Guardian and the New York Times and the Telegraph and others. Is the person going to spend time finding everywhere that the article appears, and then going to every search engine to ask that it be removed?
I see having or not having money as being the same in either case.
And some other problems:
What happens if Google removes the result but Bing disagrees? Who decides who is right?
What happens if "John Smith" convinces Google that an article about another "John Smith" is fiction, but it isn't?
The BBC article was apparently removed because someone had made a comment and wanted their comment removed from the Google index. [See the BBC article for details.] So that means that the valid article concerning the individual in question was removed because a commenter requested that it be removed. That isn't right if the original article is in the public interest.
Imagine my blood pressure was published on an American website.
Now if I had sufficient money I could hire a high class lawyer which would sue the American lister of the data who would try to hide behind free speech. I could put private detectives on the owners and force or bribe them into removing them. Or I could hire a SEO company and let them bury the data if all fails.
However if I don't have unlimited funds I would be without resort. Unless that is, the EU had this right to be forgotten which is free for all Europeans.
Don't forget that Information that's not retrievable is for most purposes non-existent.
Now how does being rich helps me under European laws and how would an American with no money handle this? +Eli Fennell +Tim Mason
BTW, we covered the BBC article to some length already and it's the basis of my post +Tim Mason hasn't been removed, shouln't have been taken down by Google. It's a shameless tactic by Mountain view.
Here goes:
If an individual believes they are harmed by a page that shows up in a search result, who is anyone else to say they are incorrect. While some of the issues with the Guardian's pages may seem trivial, that is a judgement call by an uninvolved third party. At some point a news organization was going to have links delisted and it just happened to be the Guardian.
Additionally, web sites earn money from advertising. A site has an interest in knowing why a page gets delisted as it may affect revenue; so, the notification to the site owner makes sense (especially if they are a Google customer).
On the face of it, the link removal and the notification make sense. It is similar to how YT deals with copyright issues.
And +Eli Fennell do me a fav and scroll up to the older question to you as I'm interested in the answer.
+Max Huijgen
First Answer: Rich people Search their online reputation… poor people rarely do unless they know something's wrong. Indeed, Rich people hire companies and lawyers to keep track of and manage their online reputations, and don't even have to file their own form, that is done for them. Anything where More Lawyers = Better is not egalitarian, in fact it further expands the have-have nots gap, and it was always European elites who pushed hardest for this "right".
Second Answer: Juvenile records because juveniles are not full citizens of any nation. They're not old enough to smoke, drink, vote, join the military… and they're not old enough to earn a permanent public criminal record, either.
Medical records and social security numbers are by their nature private. You can no more legally plaster those over the internet than you could invasive video feeds of an unsuspecting couple's bedroom.
If the source material can't be deleted, then apparently the law doesn't consider it important, and why should we care whether Google just links to it? That's called Shooting the Messenger and never works.
+Max Huijgen
WRT the blood pressure topic:
If a US web site published your blood pressure, and it was accurate, and the EU ruling applied in the US, would Google have to take down the search result? I don't think so because (I thought) they only have to remove inaccurate or irrelevant information. [I could be wrong – I don't know.] And if you are in the public eye (however that is defined), then I don't think that your request would be successful. Regardless, however, jsut because Google removes it doesn't mean that it is gone – other search engines can still find it and other people can link to it and quote it.
WRT the BBC article:
We don't know who asked or why it was taken down. If it was someone who published something that they now wish they hadn't, then using the logic in the EU ruling, they should be able to ask for it to be removed. Unfortunately, that means that the whole article has to be taken out of the results. If they had gone to the source and asked for the comment to be removed, then only that comment would be removed and the rest would still be there, on the public record. I think that this is actually supporting Google's position.
+Brendan O'Brien Two of your (negative for me) comments were censored from this thread. I have restored them and yet again ask +Yonatan Zunger to look into this as it's annoying while discussing free speech to see comments removed.
I reject all filtering of comments and false flagging as spam is censoring in my view. I mentioned negative for me so that everyone understands that restoring these comments has absolutely nothing to do with my personal opinion.
+Brendan O'Brien People who say we're not capable of making our own laws don't deserve an answer.
Apparently you think studying law makes you smarter than the European Court or law makers over here. Does it matter that I studied international law, got a cum laude in it, happen to know the American constitution quite well, just as I know our European legal traditions and still defend this right to be forgotten?
Of course not, you disqualify a complete continent.
Cross-post at +Max Huijgen request. 🙂
Let me make a few remarks that most people in these discussions seem to forget, in particular Americans (no offense):
1) The right to free speech protects you from one thing, and one thing only: the government shall not limit your expression. Everybody else and every private entity can censor everybody else to their hearts content within the environment they have control over. I.e., Google gets to decide what is appropriate on G+ and not you. Try post a photo with a nipple. The owner of a public forum gets to decide the rules and what is acceptable to post on that forum, not the users. Or to put it more blunt, if you are in my house you will behave within the boundaries I set or you will get kicked out the door. Censorship, be it self-censoring or other is everywhere, it is part of daily live. Society cannot function without it or it will turn into anarchy.
2) Freedoms are not absolute and unconditional. Nobody has the right to claim freedom if that means limiting the freedom of another human being. That too is anarchy and survival of the fittest. Our constitutions, be it American or European are specifically designed to protect the weak, unpopular and the minority from the terror of the strong, popular and majority.
It would be wise to remember these things in discussions like this.
Reading comments of some people in these discussion makes me think they actually would like to live in a world of anarchy, without tolerance where the few celebrate their freedom by oppressing the many. And to be frank, that's a hell of a lot more scary and worrisome to me than a bit of censorship between private entities.
And found three more comments which were removed by Google. Again by +Brendan O'Brien It were these, but you'll find them restored above in the thread as well
Brendan O'Brien12:18 AM
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+Jan Wildeboer Ya see that is even more rediculous. What that seems to say is that google should be dragged into court for every request.
They're getting thousands of request. They either grant them all. Or risk being dragged to court by an unhappy requester. Yes?
Sort of baffles me that this wasn't simple left in the hands of libel law where at least under the common law there was already the ability to enjoin publication of libelous material.
Brendan O'Brien12:21 AM
+Max Huijgen In the US you could sue for intrusion upon seclusion or hipaa depending on your defendant. They could be enjoined from publishing it and you could get damages resulting from that publication.
Brendan O'Brien12:42 AM
I worked at a legal aid clinic that helps people with that sort of claim for free.
Do you have a bad reputation +Brendan O'Brien on G+?
Two more:
Brendan O'Brien1:14 AM
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+Max Huijgen What's with the ironic censorship?
Brendan O'Brien1:16 AM
+Gijs van Dijk When a court orders censorship or creates a ruling that requires censorship or else face litigation. That's not private voluntary censorship. Let's be clear about that.
In Germany we have a nice term called "Verursacherprinzip" which means that you should go after the cause, not the effect. When the cause is a certain defined URL that supposedly spreads wrong information, we have all the laws in place since years to deal with that problem and take the content down. I am not saying it is being handled good or bad ATM nor that it is a simple thing. The "right to be forgotten"'should however not lead to CaaS, censorship as a service, as we need to balance free speech and truth here.
The fundamental problem here is that the ECJ has IMHO a fatal misunderstanding of reality of the digital age and thus misled itself into the "shoot the messenger" instead of "Verursacherprinzip". If the page with the wrong content is taken down, it will automagically leave Googles index anyway.
But by removing the index entry at Google while at the same time allowing the content itself to keep on being available, you don't solve the problem, you make it actually bigger.
To sort this out I will temporarily get you into my circles in the hope of protecting you against these constant deletions +Brendan O'Brien
It's not based on your contributions, but to fight Google's deletions.
+Gijs van Dijk Since this is being imposed on Google by governments, it is indeed censorship in the classical sense. I fail to see how you miss that key distinction.
2) Not seeing how this applies to the matter under discussion, other than that most Europeans don't actually have any guarantee of free speech like our First Amendment, as ironically The Guardian pointed out during their harassment by the U.K. government over Snowden. Since there's no "Right" to free speech in Europe to begin with, it isn't just "limited", it's an imaginary comfort that exists only until they decide it doesn't.
+Eli Fennell you totally don't know anything about free speech when you claim we don't really have it in Europe. Sorry.
+Jan Wildeboer Oh, sure, and that's why every European news agency keeps their stuff backed up in America precisely because of that.
You have free speech to a point… whatever point they decide you don't. The Guardian incident, and the subsequent statements of all European news agencies regarding using America as a "safe haven" for their journalism, suggests otherwise.
It's a gilded cage, right up until the owner reaches in to snap your neck.
Just sayin', they ain't relying on Europe to shelter them, by their own words.
No +Jan Wildeboer +Eli Fennell the court had a very good understanding of the digital age/ internet and the global character of it.
Its a new not old problem that realistically you can't get the source to remove information unless you have buckets of money and then…
Sites are no longer necessarily under the jurisdiction of the injured party. The global problem (which I use in my example of my blood pressure) can be stretched to any place in the world.
And that's if it's clear who is the actual owner. Often they are hidden so if you have money you sometimes can infer from domain extensions and get court orders, but often you can't.
And we didn't discuss orphan websites, but again there must be zillions where there is no longer a clear legal representative. Or at least one which actually responds on requests.
Again, with sufficient money this is solvable but for people without it, it's basically hopeless and there are the issues and the people which this right to be forgotten wants to address.
+Eli Fennell you do notice how +Max Huijgen has to quote the somehow deleted comments by +Brendan O'Brien right here in this thread? And you do know that the mechanisms that cause his comments to disappear are NOT based on EU laws but on Googles US based mechanisms of reporting comments? you see the irony and the problem?
And you do know that the Snowden documents are in Brazil and in Germany but not in the US for similar reasons?
+Jan Wildeboer Google's a private company. They are allowed to do that and you're allowed to leave if you don't like it.
However, when censorship is imposed by a government, that is a slippery slope to totalitarianism.
Also: rich people bury themselves in positive spin through SEO/reputation firms but most of all by actual news +Eli Fennell
Normal people don't google themselves, they are googled and suffer from that one hit from the past as there is nothing new or positive
+Max Huijgen Which is precisely why this ruling favors the rich. They pay people to Google them and manage their reputation.
You're proving with your own examples why this was a crap, outdated, vague law.
+Eli Fennell the trust in and acceptance of the rule by private companies is exactly the weak spot of the American free speech concept.
Censorship by a government or total control by a corporation. In Europe we reject both.
+Jan Wildeboer The original Snowden documents are in other places because they were, legally speaking, not acquired legally. However, our government is not detaining journalists, or their lovers, for sharing Snowden leaks or going in and pointlessly smashing up their computers.
If you all HAD a 1st Amendment to speak of, you'd know why Americans are pretty much 100% against this law in its current form. Supressing speech and journalism is the fast track to tyranny.
+Max Huijgen No, many of you embrace government censorship apparently, and naively blame a corporation for censorship imposed upon them by your governments.
America rejects both. Neither Government nor Google here are censoring stuff or taking "total control."
Huh, filling in a form favors rich people while having to sue sites all over the world is good for the poor? What are you smoking today +Eli Fennell
+Max Huijgen I'm smoking Sweet Sanity. You might want to put down the Conspiracy Crack Pipe and try it.
Things get deleted +Eli Fennell but it's not censorship? How do you call it then?
+Eli Fennell don't confuse the actions of one single country (the UK) with the whole of Europe and the fundamental rights of the EU that the ECJ protects. The fact that the Guardian could make the smashing public instead of being bound by US style gag orders like lavabit had to comply with proves you so wrong that you should be embarrassed instead of pointing fingers at us.
+Max Huijgen Funny… I've been asking you that question this entire time. You still have no good answer except, "But Google=Evil!"
Clearly the American way in this case is corrupt to the root. Rotten to the core. Their way of thinking is this: "If the cost of responsible behaviour is a billion dollars, then I rather spend a billion to lobby for my right to be irresponsible."
They may call it managing reputation.
Well, I call it bullshit. I call it corruption.
We believe in corporate responsibility. Keep your corruption to yourself, America, and grow up. Behave.
+Jan Wildeboer Oh please. Lavabit isn't the Press. It was still wrong, but in no way was that an issue of press freedom.
+Eli Fennell oops. You simply change from free speech to free press. Srsly?
I'm not interested in Google=evil +Eli Fennell It's a corporation and it behaves like one, just as they should be under US law, but what is the word for deleting comments? Free corporate speech?
+Sakari Maaranen And you just nailed what this is really about… Anti-Americanism. Your own corporations and governments are corrupt on a breathtaking scale ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26014387), and you're willing to support a blatant censorship law… as long as you get to blame Big Evil America for it.
You might want to remove the planks from your own eyes, first.
+Jan Wildeboer It wasn't a free speech issue, either. Snowden's emails were legally subpoena'd.
+Max Huijgen You're interested in NOTHING but Google = Evil anymore, and in spreading your paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy theories and misinformation.
To be honest I'm not surprised Google is acting this way. Almost a knee jerk reaction to how they got burned in Germany over the whole sniffing WiFI issue. iirc they even wen the German authorities to see if everything was all right, told now big deal , and then got sued. So given the potential fickleness (from Google's point of view, and being part of the litigious U.S. system) easier to pull the plug when asked then risk a law suit when least expected.
Also, as pointed out by a prior commentator, it is cheaper just to fulfill the request then to do due diligence. Both in the short term (initial cost) and long term (possible law suits/liability if you get it wrong.)
My own opinion is similar to Mr. Jarvis' point of view. The EU is creating a very slippery slope as this affects other search engines and is rife for abuse. A new low in enabling revisionist history.
+Eli Fennell. Incorrect. It's anti-corruption. America shall join the fight against corruption as well. Or we will beat it to it.
(and another four of your comments +Brendan O'Brien restored)
+Sakari Maaranen Bahahahaha! Sorry, but color me unconcerned by your hollow threats or delusion that your governments and corporations aren't just as corrupt as ours.
America is not the same as corruption. Currently some influential people think it is and are displaying unrestrained, corrupt behavior, and even trying to push it globally. We must put an end to it and also heal America.
I don't like censorship +Eli Fennell but telling people they are paranoid and schizophrenic conspiracy lovers on their own threads? Growing up does have advantages.
I feel genuinely sorry for you +Eli Fennell. You are a broken, cynical soul, based on what you just said. Let's get this thing fixed together. We need to restore your faith in the good people and responsible behaviour.
+Max Huijgen Maybe, but not in your case. I remember you before you turned into an utterly irrational Conspiracy Theorist. The new you is not an improvement. Oh, and deliberately spreading misinformation as you have… not a sign of maturity.
+Sakari Maaranen HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry, you just reminded me of every religious zealot I've ever met.
+Max Huijgen how is Google meant to check the merits of tens of thousands of requests every day?
+Edouard Tavinor Because +Max Huijgen believes Google to be Omnipotent and Omniscient, and while believing them to be totally evil and untrustworthy, he nonetheless praised the idea of forcing them to do this and apparently believed it would all work out like a fairy tale.
+Edouard Tavinor so far the counter is around the 50.000 mark in a month after 15 years of no available form. It will trickle down.
However Google is well equipped to take down stuff, they already have 70 people who's day job this is.
A few thousand extra requests won't be a problem.
+Eli Fennell attacking me is within my limits. Personal attacks on others on threads opened by me, is not. Please remove your ad hominem comment directed at +Sakari Maaranen
+Max Huijgen No. He did remind me of a religious zealot, ready to "save me" from my own
lack of faith"cynicism". I stand by the statement.+Brendan O'Brien your comment 'hiding information does the EXACT opposite of promoting anti-corruption' was removed by Google. I Restored it together with another one. Boy you must have a bad reputation.
I don't mind, guys. 🙂 Feel free to continue with or without moderation. I'm not easily insulted and I understand that this is a topic that will be causing a lot of discussion for times to come. It's very important conversation to have.
+Max Huijgen why do you think it will trickle down? If it's like DMCA requests it will explode.
And as for the comparison, Google receives something like a hundred thousand DMCA take down requests a day. Their method of coping with this seems to be to censor everything and then wait for someone to complain. I can well understand them not wanting to want to hire thousands of lawyers to process these requests, because that is what it will become.
The DMCA requests are mainly from the large media houses. That they hate Google is nothing new. If other old businesses learnt that Google actually reads requests to remove sites from the index, Google would end up getting millions of requests.
+Edouard Tavinor I remember a few American politicians telling us stuff would "trickle down".
What they apparently meant was "You'll be pissed on."
I believe it's actually closer to a million a day +Edouard Tavinor but handling is all automated. The seventy people Google employs are busy with other link deletions.
As opposed to big corporations, private European citizens won't flood Google with requests once the novelty and the newness disappears.
However if it continues to be let's say 10.000 requests a month Google will automate it like DMCA requests.
Currently there is no obligation for Google to remove links based on the right to be forgotten. The remedy if they don't do it is that the complainer goes to his national privacy watchdog. If that fails he can go to court.
+Max Huijgen if companies that dislike Google get to tie up Google's resources like this, they will do so. Heck it, they managed to get this law passed and things like das Leistungsschutzrecht in Germany.
I'd like to think this is about the right to be forgotten, but Europe already has ways to filter web results and block pages. This is about the EU being played in a war against new business models.
Which companies managed to get this law passed? +Edouard Tavinor I lost you there.
Gentlemen and if they can be found on this aggressive thread gentlewomen I call it a day. Be nice to each other; debates improve if people do.
+Max Huijgen a number of companies have been caught using deceptive tactics against Google in the past. In this case I have no idea if any company was directly involved, but it's certainly a possibility. Certainly an indirect involvement is there. The amount of opinion pieces against Google is enormous.
You realize that Google is only 15 years old? +Edouard Tavinor Which company sponsored a law in 1995 while Sergey and Larry were barely in college?
Sigh, the fud ….
Yea, Google is being extreme, but that court ruling is insane. Google is not the holder or maker of the sites it is being asked to forget. It not only fails in it's goal (because there are far too many search engines). The proper way to achieve this goal is to make the sites themselves take it down and not mention that they did it (but that is censorship!! And there are far too many sites with info of this nature.). Essentially, the ruling is misguided.
I am quite happy Google is taking this approach because it is the right thing to do, from my perspective.
Please notify me of the followup post. This seems to be turning out to be very complicated to implement based on the order itself, but it has raised many worthwhile questions on both sides.
+Max Huijgen . The concept of privacy is cultural and there is no one correct version. If you travel by train in India, by the time you reach your destination fellow passengers would know quite a bit about you.
Instead of reigning in Paparazzi who breach privacy and indolent teens who put their life on-line, we are hobbling the internet. Today's intern could be tomorrow's CEO. Today's Lawyer could be tomorrow's president. You want people to be able to manipulate their image? Hide their past? Its important to know that the candidate in German elections was was once a neo-nazi or a holocaust denier. Where will you draw the line?
I believe even without any legal intervention, society will find equilibrium. There is a saying in Kannada that loosely translates to "everyone's pancake has holes" meaning – everyone is imperfect and those who criticize should look inward. When a generation of people find their lives on the net, just a search away, they will learn to forgive petty foibles of others. At the same time people in public positions will be held accountable to their past and present actions.
It is already a problem that corporations and powerful individuals are using non-disclosure agreements, the threat of defamation litigation to muzzle dissent and criticism. The rich will now have staff dedicated to 'cleaning the search'. The regular Joe can no longer do an internet search and make an informed decision, whereas the rich will be able to afford private investigators and researchers to dig up information that is not readily available. This obsession with privacy is removing the power of the internet, that is to make the world less asymmetrical.
Arab springs may no longer be possible. Get ready for the long winter of ignorance.
I guess most of the erstwhile colonies have already forgotten europe and moved on. The world is no longer eurocentric and nobody cares.
+Edouard Tavinor
"a number of companies have been caught using deceptive tactics against Google in the past"
You mean these:
How Microsoft Pays Big Money To Smear Google In Europe
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously
Facebook Admits To Being Behind Smear Campaign Against Google
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/05/12/facebook-admits-being-behind-smear-campaign-against-google/
I'm sure Burson-Masteller has a lot to tell
+Max Huijgen but we're not talking about a law from 1995 but rather what has changed recently. Until 2014 everybody was happy with search engines mapping the internet. We're talking about what changed.
So what changed +Edouard Tavinor? The law is still the same.
+Max Huijgen I thought that is what this article and this discussion was about. The interpretation of a law changed. This change was explicitly targeted at Google. No other search engine has been targeted or even mentioned.
Huh, when did the interpretation change? And you know the court clarified specifically that this decision held for all search engines? +Edouard Tavinor
+Max Huijgen until 2014 this wasn't a problem. Then it became one. Are you really trying to argue that we could have had this discussion in 1995?
No one is taking about other search engines. The media and the politicians are concentrating on Google. The law may pay lip service to other search engines, but no one else does.
You're now running around in circles.
The law didn't change, the court in 2014 was clear that its verdict was valid for all search engines etc.
It was you who stated that competitors were somehow behind this, that Google is singled out etc.
Google is singling itself out by putting up this campaign.
This fact-checking article from +Chris Moran from The Guardian might help with this debate : http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/03/google-remember-right-to-be-forgotten
A Guardian News & Media spokeswoman said the company was concerned that Google was pursuing an "overly broad interpretation" of the ECJ ruling.
+Max Huijgen Any "law" that permits an overly broad interpretation is a bad law, end of story. This law is the privacy equivalent of "Stand Your Ground". And, much like that law, favors those who are already privileged above all others.
P.S. – The overly broad interpretations this law allows is EXACTLY what those of us who opposed this warned people who supported it.
Yet rather than admit your confidence was misplaced, as it clearly and demonstrably was, you've spun into another paranoid conspiracy theory.
+Eli Fennell You are like a broken record repeating insults without adding content. Contribute or mute yourself.
If a 'law' permitting broad interpretations is a bad one, the Founding Fathers should do their homework again…
But in the reality of legislation broad interpretations do make a lot of sense and are considered good laws as they can be adjusted to the time and place. That's so good about the US constitution, that it's still a living document interpreted by Scotus.
+Max Huijgen Yes, well your high court had a chance to clarify it, and they made it even more vague.
Seriously, I have never seen anyone twist their minds and the limits of sanity so much to avoi admitting that you were wrong and everyone who warned about exactly this was right.
+Max Huijgen
You are like a broken record
Says the man who's been repeating the same paranoid gibberish nonsense virtually word-for-word throughout this post, the comments section, and virtually every post about Google he's written for weeks, while spreading FUD and misinformation.
+Max Huijgen I quote myself and you from the other post, as we are on the level of laws now.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MaxHuijgen/posts/Jsw9W8xESK9
The "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany" (the German Constitution) says in §5.1 that every person has the legal right to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. No broad interpretations here, right?
https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf
You said: "If the link is removed by Google the information is practically lost." Would you agree that the deletion of a link is a hindrance then? And that's why just a way to censor the access informations, a backdoor to censorship?
I'm busy +Bernd Rubel will look at your comment later.
This thread has to be accessible for others than +Eli Fennell and the non stop repetition of the same senseless vitriol scares others away.
Eli, you either mute yourself or I do it for you which means we lose one valuable comment in this thread. I prefer you do it as I hate to lose even one sensible comment here.
+Max Huijgen Do what you gotta do, Max. I'm going to keep calling this what it is, and if no one is allowed to repeat themselves over and over but you, then that's your decision.
Let's quote one of Googles official advisors:
"To be honest I do not know why Google has taken the steps it has taken to putting that form online and organising that advisory committee," Florini told us. But everything pointed to a legal change.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/17/for_mon_how_google_plans_to_torpedo_your_privacy_rights
So I concur with Max and change my position. Google deliberately tries to sabotage the ruling and the directive because they don't like it.
Also interesting speculations by +Simon Wardley at http://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/07/manipulation-and-robert-peston-story.html?m=1
"A Google 'right to forget' notice on a high profile reporter on a high profile ex CEO which is bound to cause angst / outrage. An ex CEO who knows 'nothing' about it. A mysterious person, a political reputation web site in beta? It all feels cloak and dagger but that's just my natural cynicism. There's actually nothing to go on."
The discordian approach would be similar. in order to attack the law, offer opportunities to subvert its intentions, wait, Streisand the thing and say "told ya, now fix it".
In a weird way that makes sense to me.
+Jan Wildeboer Why does Google "sabotage the ruling"? They reduce the court ruling to what it is: censorship. A problem of the press, not theirs.
Google always said that they are not resonsible for the data, why should they fight the Press' fight? BBC, The Guardian, The Register – they are all free to file a new suit at the european court where they could explain that this court ruling affects them – not Google at all.
+Bernd Rubel that's one POV. Google could also have denied the requests and let the requester call the courts, the way the ECJ has described.
+Jan Wildeboer But, then, Google would be the opponent again, right? The one who is called to be "responsible" for the data. That's exactly what they deny, since years.
+Bernd Rubel as a profit oriented company I would refuse to make the decisions based on cost. Let the courts decide on taxpayers money, get the decision handed to me and I will gladly obey. THAT would make sense from Googles perspective. The current implementation is expensive for no apparent gain. Hence there could be a different agenda.
+Jan Wildeboer Their way as a profit oriented company is – as usual – to publish a form for that issue ;-). I think it makes sense to be consequent towards their users and their shareholders, by not accepting the responsibility for the data (guess what this could mean on a long sight, otherwise!). Let others fight on the battlefield, the one's who are really affected.
+Max Huijgen according to the bbc google has now received more than 250 000 requests. Looks like someone wants to destroy Google with this.
+Edouard Tavinor my sources say Google said Thursday they had 70000 requests. 12000 from Germany. For a total of 267000 URLs. http://m.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Recht-auf-Vergessen-Europaeer-wollen-mehr-als-267-000-Links-aus-Google-streichen-lassen-2249548.html
+Jan Wildeboer And Google is required by law to carefully consider the merits of earch request. Good luck with that.
It really makes operating any sort of search engine absolutely impossible. You have to consider the merits of thousands of take down requests each day. If someone then thinks you have decided incorrectly they can take you to court about it.
+Edouard Tavinor so how does bing handle this?
+Jan Wildeboer As far as I know Bing doesn't do anything, which is actually contempt of court. Not that that bothers anybody. This is not about the law, this is about trying to destroy free software.
+Edouard Tavinor Google Search is free software? Ahem.
How bing sees this: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-gb/bing/dn768284.aspx
"Submitting privacy-related requests to block results in the EU
We’re currently working on a special process for residents of the European Union to request blocks of specific privacy-related search results on Bing in response to searches on their names. Given the many questions that have been raised about how the recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union should be implemented, developing an appropriate system is taking us some time. We’ll be providing additional information about making requests soon."
+Jan Wildeboer Nope, but Google is built on free software and contributes huge amounts. This is about business interests trying to stop Google disturbing their business models.
We were stupid enough to vote right-wing market-liberal politicians into the European Parliament. This is the sort of ruling we can expect to get.
Google is being told they have to sort through tens of thousands of requests each day and judge each according to the merits of public interest. Any mistake they make can result in a court case.
To the best of my knowledge no other search engine has yet been asked to process a single request. That should make it pretty clear what this is actually about.
For what it is worth I believe that Google is deliberately using the present situation to manipulate the Press, if they had any political nous then they would have handed the cases back to relevant national bodies, highlighting the problems and wait for the backlog to build up. Instead they chose to grandstand.
answered +Bernd Rubel in the parallel thread as it''s about the right to know.
+Max Huijgen answered there, too. https://plus.google.com/+MaxHuijgen/posts/Jsw9W8xESK9
+Ian Jordan So you want Google to break the law? This is the only thing Google can do to abide by the law. The result is clear. Everybody can order Google to remove any page they wish. Google can not hire enough lawyers to deal with the requests and so will have to remove the page from their index.
Hoorah. This decision might have made the net unusable. A new dark age approaches.
Oh. Where's my surprised face?
"After widespread criticism, Google has begun reinstating some links it had earlier removed under the controversial "right to be forgotten" ruling.
Articles posted online by the Guardian newspaper were removed earlier this week, but have now returned fully to the search engine."
http://m.bbc.com/news/technology-28157607
Quick +Max Huijgen, come up with a new conspiracy theory for how Google recognizing they aren't always going to get this ridiculous-censorship-law-they-shouldn't-have-to-do right triple eeeeeebul!
I know you can do it, after all you managed to rationalize that Google pushing for better industry-wide email encryption was really a conspiracy because they don't really want that. (Which, of course, made total sense and wasn't at all self-contradictory.)
+Eli Fennell BTW as +Max Huijgen and I are Dutch and you were so full of freedom of press etc, you might want to look at http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php and notice that the top 20 is full of European countries. Murica is a bit further down, between Romania and Haiti. Happy Independence Day 🙂
+Jan Wildeboer Oh, perfect, The Reportes without Borders named EU-Commissioner Viviane Reding and her demand for a right to be forgotten an Enemy of the Internet:
Threat to Net neutrality and online free speech from right to be forgotten, http://en.rsf.org/beset-by-online-surveillance-and-12-03-2012,42061.html
Quote: "A generalized “right to oblivion,” enshrined in a law, would be hard to reconcile with online freedom of expression and information. Such a law would be hard to implement in practice and could place an impossible obligation on content editors and hosting companies – the complete erasure of online content. A thorough debate is need to determine whether individual rights are not already sufficiently guaranteed by existing legal provisions on the right to privacy, media offences, personal data and recourse to the courts.”
This was already in 2012. The reportes didn't have the vision that the RTBF could be implemented by a backdoor, by suing Google. Let's see how the 2015 World Press Freedom Index looks like, now that the RTBF is a fact.
[Edit:] Then, after named an Enemy of the Internet, Mrs. Reding became more restrained and specific (even more specific than the court). She stated, that the RTBF should just affect personal data like personal information, especially profiles, photos or contacts: http://en.rsf.org/european-union-viviane-reding-responds-to-16-03-2012,42138.html
The court ruling, instead, is based on an old law that formerly affected data processors without publishing activity. The judges just circumvented the concerns of publishers.
+Bernd Rubel doesn't explain the numbers of 2014 with the US having lost 14 positions while the top 5 are European and stable since years. Which was Eli's point. That the US has so much more freedom of the press.
+Jan Wildeboer Whether one has more or one as less freedom is not
themy point. The point is that this court ruling affects the freedom of the press in general. In the EU, not in America. And that this court ruling didn't ever bother that it affects one of he most fundamental rights we know.Edit: btw, we didn't talk about #netneutrality . Giving a private company the right – here: the obligation – to decide what is accessible and what is not accessible for the public is another question we have to discuss.
And forwarding this right or obligation to a local court, that then has to decide if a legal information may not be accessed without hindrance is also a question of #netneutrailty .
+Max Huijgen I disagree strongly with your OP. If people have a right to have misinformation about themselves removed, then that right should apply to the source, not to a search engine. The current ruling opens the door for censorship of a particularly dangerous kind.
+Max Huijgen Wait, holy crap, Elgan has actually seen through his sycophantic blinders and recognized Google's transparent manipulation and misrepresentation here?!! Please, please don't make me give that guy a 2nd (or is to 2,222nd) chance.
But, yeah.
it's interesting how openly informing people about the effects of a law is called "cynical manipulation". I wonder what the recommended way to practice democracy is.
More on this:
Earlier I was asked: How do you define non-notable, and what criteria do you propose to do this without encumbering undue cost on search and media?
My answer: By inverting the question: what is the public interest or benefit in providing information on an individual? What is the harm in the public not having that information?
As +Steven Flaeck just noted: "If I'm innocent, not only do I have nothing to hide, I have nothing you should see."
While that covers a slightly different case than the matter of information which may be public, or publicly accessible, the standard is similar: where does your right to know trump my right to privacy and freedom from public harm.
The problem is that the media spotlight is tremendously bright. It brings to light all manner of things, many of them quite unnerving for those not used to it. It's also capricious, and often fails to correct for its own errors: inaccurate reporting, "facts" which aren't, or insinuations or associations which are exaggerated or even wholly fabricated. Even smaller instances of information abuse can be quite harmful. The scars of mistaken exposure can last decades and be deeply traumatizing.
What Google have been doing is applying the "right to privacy" principle _to people who are in no-way non-notable. They're famous for roles in government, business, sports, or entertainment, or have been convicted of crimes. And that is why Google's manipulation of the principle for its own interests is deeply cynical.
What of:
• Charges brought but dropped against someone.
• Incidents before the age of majority.
• Claims arising on account of errors by financial or legal authorities (misidentification, poor recordkeeping, etc.).
• Claims arising out of direct fraud or malfeasance by financial or legal authorities.
• Claims of sexual misbehavior or physical violence made but for which charges were never filed, dismissed by court, or by jury.
• Minor incidents from long before for which the individual likely has no means of disproving them, true or otherwise. This, incidentally, is the basis of statutes of limitations.
• Booking photos made for arrests, regardless of conviction status (already a significant issue).
What's changing now is that information is losing its friction. Once it exists and comes to the attention of someone who chooses to use it there's little to stop it from being used.
I'd argue that information which is part of the public record through news or other official records (that itself becoming a bit of a fuzzy concept driven the democratization of news), should be immune to such requests. There might be other remedies for civil redress if the information is inaccurate (it's feasible to have stories amended now in a way that wasn't possible in years past), or for actions taken which are considered not sporting, and those would generally not apply to search engines.
In the case of financial records and reporting, I see a strong reason for controls, and certain types of information would likely be validly suppressed. In the US, for example, "derogatory" financial information is removed from credit reports after a period of time (7 years as I recall, I may be mistaken). Information identifiable as such should likely be removed from search engines. Its form would likely be standardized in many cases, though as natural-language parsing improves, that may not be a sufficient consideration. That said: search engines are getting better at such parsing.
The biggest harm and biggest social benefit would come from denying smear sites (such as "mugshot" websites) any Web indexing. From an information sense that might "just push the further underground", but from a financial sense it would almost certainly break the business model of such sites. Taking a similar "figure out what's bad and shotgun it" approach for other socially harmful data practices would go a long way to addressing the issue.
Another approach would be to apply strong disclosure and discovery obligations on any entity suspected of using privileged information to discriminate. Particularly employers, financial institutions, landlords, or healthcare organizations. Damages, costs, and some high multiple punitive assessment. The hazard with that approach would be for someone to accuse an organization of such practices without merit (the accused would then be in the position of having to prove a negative, rather difficult to accomplish). Search engine company's own records (where they exist) could facilitate such discovery either way.
I'm not saying this is easy. But given the harms, I see some mechanism having to be tried, and again: search engines are the way data connects over the Net.
A counterargument is that it's the data sources themselves which should be hunted down and individually squelched. The problem, as has been exceptionally apparent in various smear and embarassment sites, is that this is simply a game of whackamole: shut down one operation and it appears elsewhere. Search engines are the intermediation between information and users on the Internet. They are the gateway. And by focusing on the gateway, you effect far greater control than my dispersing your efforts over countless sites which can simply re-emerge like mushrooms after a rain storm.
No, this isn't easy. Yes, there are many interests to be balance. Yes, it makes Google's work more painful. But no, Google's not blameless in this, and should be engaged in the solution, and (along with other search engines) part of a solution.
And the highly cynical gaming, and very disappointing sycophantism I've seen over much of G+ on this issue, is transparently disingenuous.
+Edward Morbius the point being that google is receiving more than 10 000 requests a day. How do you think Google should process them? What sort of automated algorithm should they use?
Google might have enough money to train and hire the thousands of lawyers required to examine each request individually. Other search engine operators don't, so that really isn't a viable solution.
If you can't handle the consequences then you refrain from the activity. You don't just do something you can't do responsibly.
+Edouard Tavinor Answered significantly here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CH2pgZyu3dt
If the summaries I've read of the EU ruling are accurate:
1. People have a right to petition their information being indexed.
2. Google has the obligation to consider the petition.
3. If rejected, the petitioner may appeal to their local court.
I don't see mention of penalties or sanctions against Google for denial.
And it seems to me that a party petitioning who meets minimal noteriety or publicity threshholds, or information which is published in a generally credible outlet (e.g., the BBC, The Guardian) should not be considered congruent with the guidelines of the decision. Note the or there.
Information which is shown to be baseless and which is harmful for a notorious individual might fall under the protection.
For non-notorious persons or those for whom the public has little credible interest in personal details, and those details themselves do not affect the public interest at large, I see the requests being meritorious.
Where to draw the boundaries becomes interesting.
And how to exclude information could also prove interesting. For example, financial data (e.g., bankruptcy or similar filings) might be identifiable by specific indicators and, if falling outside some scope of date, be restricted in general search. One thing I suspect Google's going to get out of this is a really good understanding of the types of information people find personally sensitive and embarrassing.
+Edward Morbius You have not explained how some small search engine company or start up is meant to employ the thousands of lawyers necessary to filter search results.
+Sakari Maaranen so what you're basically saying is that no search engine should exist.
because that's what this ruling means. it means that any company with enough resources can take any search engine out of business.
+Edouard Tavinor You've failed to explain why an army of lawyers is necessary. +Max Huijgen has more than adequately explained why they're not, I'll let his statements stand. Argumentum ad nauseam is not reasoned discussion.
Okay, I've been thinking about this for a couple days now. And the thread has gotten so long that I can't re read it all again, tho I skimmed.
1) I can't help but compare Google's reductio ad absurdum response here to Microsoft's non-bootable initial response to being ordered to pull out IE. I don't know if I'd call using that tactic with moral or ethical terms as such, tho. One encounters that tactic a lot in moderating communities too, and sometimes it functions well to point out things in laws or rules that require adjusting or defining or whatever.
2) I'm still thinking about the whole "right to be forgotten" thing.
3) I am VERY uncomfortable with designating the search engines as the front line of determining legal compliance on new grounds, for a text wall full of reasons. It seems more appropriate for the EU courts to hear right to be forgotten cases, make a ruling, and then issue takedown criteria to the source pages AND the search engines, and allow those endpoints to challenge back if it is a big deal to them.
4) I am also uncomfortable about the lack of transparency. If courts did the determining and the requests, they can keep the background and decision sealed unless challenged if they deem so, because they will have first hand verification of the source of the request and the harmful material. But having search engines perform decisions and takedowns with no transparency to the endpoint seems rife for abuse of all sorts.
+Edward Morbius It's necessary because the onus is on the search engine to consider each request.
As Max said in his original post: "A case-by-case assessment is needed considering the type of information in question, its sensitivity for the individual’s private life and the interest of the public in having access to that information."
That sounds to me a lot like a case-by-case assessment is needed.
+Angyl Bender Yes, requiring take-down requests to go through the courts would solve this problem. It would very much limit the amount of work search engine companies would need to do.
It shouldn't be forgotten that the EU already has the infrastructure to block websites from access inside the EU. This infrastructure could also be used, so removing any work for search engine companies or the pages hosting the material.
As a loyal European I am not proud of this ruling nor do I think it is worthy.
I don’t see any evidence that Google is ‘cherry picking’ requests. In fact quite the opposite. With over 70,000 requests last month alone (and +Eli Fennell tells me there were half a million requests) I’d say it is way more likely they are saying ‘yes; to all in the matters of expediency.
I think the ruling was farcical where each and every request has to be examined by a human on an individual case by case subjective basis. I expect the flood gates will open soon and who knows we might have the Brazil soccer team requesting Google erase their abysmal score against the Germans as their team performance has improved again and they have a right to be forgotten!
+Edouard Tavinor There's nothing in "case-by-case" which necessitates human intervention. I've detailed a broad set of circumstances in which the requests are almost certainly not meritorious as well as a broad set in which they are. Both are amenable to automated processing, and at best cursory review of the result.
Google have proven themselves good, far too often creepily good, at parsing natural language documents and extracting meaningful information from context.
The scale of requests I've seen +Max Huijgen mention is ~50,000 in a month. That's roughly 1700/day. My understanding is that Google are presently many times this number of spoken requests per minute through its search and application interfaces. Its overall search traffic was ~34,000 requests per second. In 2010.
It's around 68,500/second today.
http://searchengineland.com/by-the-numbers-twitter-vs-facebook-vs-google-buzz-36709
http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
+Edward Morbius Google has now received half a million requests to take down information.
Assuming Google wants to bet its future on 100% accurate natural language processing, and everybody else's interpretation of the document being the same and everybody acting in good faith, how should any other search engine do that?
You still haven't addressed this point, and it is telling that you haven't.
This law is not just about Google, as much as everybody wants it to be about Google.
Rather like the Leistungsschutzrecht in Germany. It was portrayed in the media as being a good thing because it was against Google. What it actually did was make it illegal for bloggers to comment on the news.
It's interesting +Eileen O'Duffy that 70,000 requests last month would take around 10,000 hours to process. I suppose that Google's cost increase of $500,000 per month can be easily absorbed into their overhead expenses and provides jobs for several thousand new European Google employees.
The root cause of the inscalability of the current approach to search is that it's too technical. An approach based on people explicitly stating their intent on what records they are sharing with whom (or publish how) would scale better and integrate better with various local jurisdictions. The wild west style of largely anonymous and unrestrained sharing model will have a limited lifespan and will be obsoleted by more people-oriented and social-contract-aware approaches. Those will scale also in human social terms.
+Sakari Maaranen Maybe authors and newspapers could also explicitly state which libraries have the right to index their books and publications.
Collecting personally identifiable data like Stasi and making it publicly available in an easily searchable form for everyone is a fundamentally flawed approach.
+Edouard Tavinor I'm sorry but I refuse to comment on strawmen examples. In a nontrivial matter we can easily mass produce examples like that on both sides of the argument and it's useless.
+Sakari Maaranen How is that a strawman argument? If you publish something to the web why shouldn't somebody else be allowed to tell other people where it is available?
+Russell Davison So you're saying that only hugely rich companies should be able to operate a search engine?
+Edouard Tavinor Google has now received half a million requests to take down information.
Source? Best I can find is +Jan Wildeboer's link above which states 70,000.
Rate also matters. Half a million in 60 days is ~8000/day. If it takes 5 minutes to manually process each of those, you're looking at a team of roughly 90 processors. I recall an item on the news today of around 70 paralegals apparently hired by Google for this. That's a $10 million annual expense if they're working at a net $120k/year cost (inclusive of salary, benefits, and overhead).
If the rate is in fact 1/10 that, then you're looking at roughly 800/day. That's trivial.
And with machine-assisted processing as +Max Huijgen suggests, and no sanctions on Google for declining requests, this strikes me as utterly a non-issue.
+Edouard Tavinor, "so you're saying" always puts me on guard to expect some bad news coming my way. NO +Edouard Tavinor , I ain't saying anything, just $500,000 per month is peanuts for a company that can buy lots of balloons, and gimmicky kiddy androids.
And +Edouard Tavinor there are plenty of search engine companies that aren't the 220th biggest company in the world, like Google is!
Honest question, Morb. How would your suggestion avoid the nymwars problems? I'm specifically thinking of both the bots and the horrible quality and speed of request processing post-bot human.
+Edward Morbius in complicated cases it means more work of course, but those are for the courts to solve. Just escalate the difficult cases / pending for official decision
Build an arbitration system to bring forth the views of those who want to publish and those who want to forget and let them negotiate. Arbitrate as necessary or escalate to the courts.
Removing the concept of justice from human communication would be barbaric regression. Intellectual and human regression would be a price too dear to pay for mere technical advancement.
+Angyl Bender Give me an example of that. Or examples. That could be interesting.
One argument is that a pseudonym itself might not warrant protections. Another is that exposing a pseudonym might be considered specially protected. Then there's the question of how you assert that you are in fact the entity behind the pseudonym in question, and privacy implications of that itself.
Well, say one day I get a notice that some of my Plus posts have been de-listed. They apparently tell me which ones but not why. Maybe I see that they all mention Elgan. But I look at the pages and don't see a problem (like when someone got flagged for their actual legal name). I appeal, don't get an answer for months. How do I resolve this? Is the onus then on me to go to court to get the error fixed and re-surface my pages?
What if things I approved of about me were de indexed, or my own CV which listed a person I worked with who had put in a request targeting something else but my resume got sorted as part of a bad algo?
+Angyl Bender First thing that occurs to me is that you're arguing the publisher's perspective, and I'm not entirely sure what the publisher's PoV in this is.
You do raise the question of censorship (or at least a Denial of Visibility Attack) against anonymous or pseudonymous authors.
Most likely the delisting would be for specific terms used to index the materials, not of the materials themselves. And how you'd even become aware of the index-shuffling would be an interesting question.
+Edward Morbius here an article quoting 250 000 from a week ago.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/9748/20140704/right-to-be-forgotten-requests-hit-250k.htm
Since then I remember reading yesterday that it had gone up to 500 000. If I find the source I'll let you know.
I think we're talking of about 50 000 a day. To process each request would take some time, as a number of languages need to be considered and the lawyers processing the request need to get up to speed in the case. I'd estimate anything from an hour to a day to do a decent job.
If Google declines the request they could be taken to court. Of course that is what Microsoft/Facebook/large media companies want, so you can expect that to happen.
By just allowing every request Google is following the letter of the law without allowing the anti-Google coalition to attack it. It's the only possible solution.
But as I repeat, this law doesn't only effect Google. Now every search engine has to employ teams of lawyers from every European country. People really seem to want to ignore that fact.
+Edouard Tavinor You're misrepresenting articles as requests. Here's what Bloomberg's reporting:
Google said it’s received as many as 70,000 requests involving the removal of some 250,000 Web links in the five weeks since it posted its online tool to handle applications from people who want to be forgotten.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-09/-google-it-becomes-hide-it-after-right-to-be-forgotten.html
Which is in line with my back-of-the-envelope sketch above. Only 2,000 requests/day.
And an obvious expedient for multiple search engine providers would be to have a pooled requests submission and processing facility. You know, cooperation, that great capability of the Web. I actually suspect Google (and its fanbois) will be highly averse to that as it will put its competition on far more even footing.
You've also had, IMO, far more than your allotted airtime here, and haven't had much either interesting or factually-based to say for a while. I'm giving someone else a chance.
Search is about guiding our attention. If we let it be directed by a single model, then that model has become our Idol. Let's maintain human to human conversation.
+Edward Morbius so the only way for a small search engine to survive would be to get into partnership with Google, bing, et al.
Then in the next sentence you say that this won't happen. You must really hate Google to want to see so many others suffer.
So we're still at 10 000 links a day in a huge number of languages. And now your saying that Google should do all the work for every company that wants to make a search engine.
Don't get me wrong, Google likes to cooperate. They've given us huge amounts of free software and free technologies with no strings attached.
The basic question still needs to be answered as to why every search engine operator should spend these billions of dollars manually delisting articles. Europe is quite capable of blocking web pages. Why doesn't it just do that?
The reason is that this is not about blocking web pages.
+Edouard Tavinor Did I mention I'm done with your distortions? Well, I'm done.
You'll get more fruitful interaction +Edouard Tavinor if you cease twisting other people's words. Just sayin'.
+Edward Morbius I could be wrong, it might have been +Jeff Jarvis instead of +Mike Elgan who called Google out for manipulation. It was in some Twit show.
+Max Huijgen Frankly, either of 'em would surprise me, though Jeff only slightly less so.
To add to +Edward Morbius checklist of the consequences of the court verdict: Google doesn't have to do anything, but if they judge a request, they have to "duly examine its merits."
Clearly they didn't with these first public cases. They now backtracked as no doubt privacy regulators noticed this cynical abuse and sent them warnings.
About the figures: on July 3 the BBC reported detailed numbers. Summary: Around 70,000 requests for links to be removed have been made in the past month. If all demands were met, more than a quarter of a million [267,550] web pages would be deleted.
Obviously not all demands should be met, in effect I'm wondering how many 'real' requests were made. Privacy zealots and reputation firms will have been the first with requests; the faceless people whose needs were addressed by this right to be forgotten will be severely underrepresented in the first month or so of requests. +Eileen O'Duffy
After a week of quiet we start up with this post again .. sigh. Anyway Danny O' Brian from the Eff was on This week in Google yesterday, to talk about this with +Mike Elgan on the Twit network yesterday, check that out (it was the first topic so you don't have to watch the entire episode) , or check out this article and video where he gives a much more nuanced reaction than many people on this too long post http://www.techinsider.net/how-google-inc-googl-complies-with-right-to-be-forgotten-in-europe-danny-obrien/117999.html
+Max Huijgen I would like search engines to reflect content on the Internet.
If the EU wants to censor, they should order web sites and news organizations to redact people's names from the actual articles, then I believe they should try to do that. Simply making European versions of search engines inaccurate is a lousy "solution."
We had a great conversation on TWiG yesterday on this topic with Danny O'Brien with the EFF:
http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/257
Ah, now there is the +Mike Elgan I know and … well. Let's just leave it at that.
The EU ruling with Google is workable. Ordering every website to do something is unworkable.
Thanks +Mike Elgan but I was referring to http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/256 which you hosted. Unfortunately no transcript available.
+Max Huijgen +Eli Fennell According to the official interpretation of the EC the court ruling creates an obligation for a controller who has made the personal data public – in this case: Google, as they were raised to be the responsible data controller – to take reasonable steps to inform third parties – in this case: the British Newspapers – of the fact the individual wants the data to be deleted.
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf
Edit: Vice versa the Newspaper or any other data processor would have the obligation to "inform" Google that the data should be deleted.
Found it: +Jeff Jarvis says: "Now one might argue that Google is very cleverly, if not cynically starting with de-indexing news stories for just this purpose, but fine!
see http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/256 hosted by +Mike Elgan at 23:05
cc +Edward Morbius +Eli Fennell
The position: go after individual web sites, let Google index what's out there, is a sign people didn't keep with the internet revolution +Mike Elgan +Eileen O'Duffy
There really is no way to stop sites from publishing and re-publishing UNLESS a supranational body would exist and act as a regulator with omnipotent powers but who would want that?
The EU court – very much aligned with modern day internet realities- accepts that sites are hosted in jurisdictions different from the complainer, are owned by every legal entity imaginable (ranging from anonymous private persons to major corporations) and getting as well as enforcing legal orders against 'the world wide web' is plainly impossible except maybe for large corporations with unlimited funds and tentacles.
cc +Russell Davison
+Bernd Rubel Read again. You confuse the current verdict with the proposed regulations in the EU (future). There was no obligation at all to inform the BBC/Guardian/whoever.
It's anyway a sideline as Google had no obligation at all to remove these links.
+Max Huijgen So instead they create a vaguely worded and unworkable law in desperate need of clarification, then like cheapskates put the onus on the Search companies instead of creating their own courts to deal with the overwhelming number of requests. And God forbid the company doesn't get right this Herculean task they never asked for and shouldn't have to do, some EU regulator is right there to threaten them. Not to mention how this law clearly favors those with the most lawyers.
Talk about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
+Eli Fennell Bullshit. Sorry. The law and the decision of the ECJ are very clear and simple in that regard. The company is ABSOLUTELY FREE to simply deny the request and thus letting the requestor get a court decision from whatever court is responsible under his jurisdiction. You conveniently ignore that part all the time. Google decided to play the troll by NOT using that option but instead take a very pedantic approach and complain very loud about this burden.
Evidence #1: Eric Schmidt at Googles annual shareholder meeting "Google believes, having looked at the decision which is binding, that the balance that was struck was wrong.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10833257/Eric-Schmidt-ECJ-struck-wrong-balance-over-right-to-be-forgotten.html
+Jan Wildeboer No, the law is not clear at all. It is vague, in fact it is the very definition of vague, and if a company makes the wrong choice about which things to censor (let's call a spade a spade, shall we?), they can be fined. Hugely.
You can keep defending a bad law all you want, it won't make it better.
+Eli Fennell Are you saying that Google doesn't have the right to refuse a request? That refusing a request automagically causes fines? That waiting for a court decision isn't relief? I have never (please check all my comments) said that the directive is a clear and concise piece of legal craftmanship. But I will say that the provisions of the directive wrt refusal of requests is clear.
Evidence #2 [Google's] chief legal officer David Drummond added, "We think it went too far, and didn't consider adequately the impact on free expression, which is absolutely a human right."
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2345055/googles-schmidt-lashes-out-at-ecjs-right-to-be-forgotten-ruling
Again: This is a decision by the highest court in Europe. That Google doesn't like the outcome is one thing. That the decision is binding is also clear. That Google had a form and a process ready in days shows this all didn't came as a surprise (I am quite sure they are reusing code here they already use in other countries to
censorer filter content when instructed by governments or copyrightextremistserr owners/managers).+Jan Wildeboer What I'm saying is the ruling is binding… binding vagueness, with severe consequences should they feel Google isn't complying with it. They're cheapskates unwilling to do it themselves so they tell Google, "Censor or face fines", and then act surprised when this vague law proves tricky to implement and Google decides the best bet is to censor anything requested and fix the problems later.
I'm saying it's a bad law and all the Google Blaming won't change that. Rewriting it to be precise would.
Mind you, anybody can burn an EU flag in a public place without fear of having the crap beaten out of them by the authorities.
The EU already has an infrastructure in place to block urls. This could have been used. No one has yet come up with a reason as to why it wasn't used.
The re-writing is as good as done. The original directive is from 1995. There is a new one in the making which is more clear on the right to be forgotten versus the freedom of speech. It will also put a maximum fine of 2% of turnover on serious breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation.
More people who understood Google's game here (collected for personal archiving)
Alexander Hanff, chief executive of the Think Privacy group, accused Google of removing links unnecessarily “in order to apply political pressure into having the ruling challenged”.
Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group said: “The ruling was clear that results that relate to articles that are in the public interest shouldn’t be removed.”
He added: “Google may dislike the ruling and want to discredit it, but that doesn’t mean that they should apply it incorrectly in order to provoke a reaction.”
+Max Huijgen Irrelevant, since there's no way a team of 70-people can handle half a million requests and counting and not make mistakes.
Half the American people believe 9/11 was an inside job. Popularity doesn't make paranoid conspiracy theories any less paranoid.
I estimate +Eli Fennell that 70,000 requests last month would take around 10,000 hours to process. I suppose that Google's cost increase of $500,000 per month can be easily absorbed into their overhead expenses and provides jobs for several thousand new European Google employees.
+Max Huijgen No, the court confused the current data protection directive from 1995 with the proposed regulations by declaring that Google is already co-responsible for the existence of the public data.
Anyway, so, you're telling me that Google is already gone one step further to concur with the future european data protection regulation, right? That's only consequent, isn't it? In addition, it makes it easier for other "data processors" like newspapers to realize the scope of such a law, to eliminate the vagueness. Obviously they didn't realize before.
+Russell Davison I repeat… 500,000 requests. That's the latest number. Not 70K, 500K. Handled by a team of 70-people.
And no, Google is not going to hire thousands of people to deal with that, they're going to do it on the cheap. No company hires thousands of people to handle something they don't want to do in the first place. You want thousands of European jobs created? Tell the EU to hire those people themselves.
+Eli Fennell your a stronger person than me, I gave up on trying to voice my opinion on this issue on this thread. Its clear that some people are not going to change their minds on this issue and we have reached a point where people keep repeating the same things or focusing on the wrong issue. +Max Huijgen I think the time has come to say thanks for the discussion but this thread is now closed as I am sure this is your most commented post ever. Achievement unlocked.
oh, and btw: "That’s exactly how China handles its own censorship requirements. Like the EU, China doesn’t impose censorship by issuing clear guidelines about what is and isn’t acceptable. Instead, it just expects companies to somehow know what to censor." http://marketingland.com/eu-censors-google-like-china-90608
h/t +Danny Sullivan
Thanks for the update +Eli Fennell .
Thread closed? No, still open +Marlon Thompson
(and by far not my most commented post)
Way to go +Max Huijgen
We almost agree +Marlon Thompson only all people on this thread are not going to change their mind, not some
There is a huge amount of repetition, but I was pleased to see some novel arguments even today. All is not lost for humanity 😉
I wrote this article about the new data regulations in the EU way back in 2012
https://plus.google.com/u/1/118292867302583509179
Link to source with data +Eli Fennell ?
Ok +Max Huijgen at least there are no "major" personal attacks.
Google employs nearly 50,000 people worldwide and they are the 220th largest company in the world. Surely, the hiring of another thousand, or so, employees to handle these 'right to be forgotten' requests won't hurt their bank balance.
+Russell Davison Doesn't matter if it would. Ain't happening. You wanted Google to do this, fine, you've got them doing it, but they sure ain't turning into their next Moonshot.
Yep +Eli Fennell , it would rein in Google's oddball purchases of balloons and toy robots, etc. for a while till everyone's been forgotten.
+Bernd Rubel you wrote the below where you stated that Google had to inform British Newspapers with a link to the document and I remark(ed) that you misread that completely.
I would prefer if you don't start confusing it with other issues as you did in your last reply. This is a debate, let's not try to derail it even more than it already did. Later edits are not helpful.
——
+Max Huijgen +Eli Fennell According to the official interpretation of the EC the court ruling creates an obligation for a controller who has made the personal data public – in this case: Google, as they were raised to be the responsible data controller – to take reasonable steps to inform third parties – in this case: the British Newspapers – of the fact the individual wants the data to be deleted.
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf
I bet there are dozens of Eurocrats in Brussels reading this post +Max Huijgen and salivating at the endless opportunities to create commissions, working parties, white papers, discussion documents, conferences, committees, and sub-committees on this very topic.
+Max Huijgen You don't have to copy and paste my comment, i don't plan to edit or delete it. Yes, you're right, i confused the data protection directive from 1995 and the proposed data protection law.
Because the court confused them, too (edit: by declaring that Google is not a third party, that only has to be informed, but the responsible data processor, that has to delete)
You say, informing the newspapers is Google's Cynical Manipulation of the RTBF – while i say that informing them is only consequent, because this would be their obligation anyway if the RTBF will be not only a verdict, but a law in the near future
How can something that will be an obligation in the near future be a "Cynical Manipulation"?
Where's the difference between a newspaper that (then) has to inform Google about the deletion of data and Google, who inform a newspaper of the deletion of a link, when both – the newspaper and Google – are obliged to do so because of the same law/verdict?
Actually +Russell Davison +Marlon Thompson I tried to inventarize all possible argument pro and contra in two threads. In this one I argue and use counterarguments to get to the bottom. This in the hope people read them, think about it and move on to a better argument.
Doesn't always happen as we can see with Eli's repeat loop of lawyers and paranoia, but sometimes it happens and we actually move forward one small step at a time.Sort of the Socratic method in order to get some decent arguments going instead of mantras or misconceptions about the reality.
In the other thread I try to be more inviting and much more friendly as I'm basically asking people to share what they feel is part of the right to be forgotten and vice versa what is that 'right to know' people talk about.
What should fall under the European right to be forgotten and to reverse it: what should fall under the 'right to know'?
https://plus.google.com/u/1/112352920206354603958/posts/Jsw9W8xESK9
I'm mostly disappointed in the quality of the arguments in this thread as most contributions which oppose the right, could easily be handled by an intern at the EU commission citing simple facts from the actual verdict.
The other thread didn't get the traction I hoped for. Luckily I learned a lot from the much better original thread from which it was a reshare. Lots of useful comments there and I debated myself with +Yonatan Zunger again Socratic but this time highly effective, brought the best from both of us and we actually learned something from debating. And it was an interesting intellectual challenge which you can't say from the above.
https://plus.google.com/u/1/103389452828130864950/posts/YkCCgK4odo6
I think that you are actually doing a great job +Max Huijgen and make a good facilitator. Well done!
+Max Huijgen I would like to see how the "intern at the EU commission citing simple facts from the actual verdict" convinces all these european parliamentarians who are concerned about the RTBF. Oh, and the intern should then convince the Advocate-General of the European court of Justice, too:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2013-06/cp130077en.pdf
A few answers and insights from Google’s chief legal officer +David Drummond, today in +The Guardian, summarized by +Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/google-speaks-right-forgotten-196368
+Max Huijgen The difference between our positions, is you trust the EU and think Google is evil. I think Google is exactly what they appear to be, and distrust the EU (and every government).
That your concern happens to correspond precisely with the EU's growing anti-American-corporation propaganda (or as I like to call it, the "If we can't beat them, make people afraid of them" strategy) shows just how deeply you trust them. Most of your fellow Europeans, however, are just like us Americans… we don't trust bureaucratic regulation of technology as far as we can throw it, because bureaucrats don't understand tech, or the fact that the future will eventually exist.
What i don't understand is that wile even the Advocate-General of the European court of Justice Niilo Jääskinen, the Reporters without Borders, Viviane Reding (European Commission Vice-President, responsible for justice) and several dozend newspapers are concerned about the court ruling, its strange justification and its impact on the freedom of information without hindrance, people like +Eli Fennell and me are labeled as "Google Fanboys" – end of discussion.
That's what i always said: this court ruling and its way to hide data is contraproductive, because it prevents a badly needed discussion about controlling personal data. It's not a step in the right direction, it's a dead-end-road. And, in addition, it forwards the right – or here: obligation – to decide what has to be deleted to a private Company (like Google, who doesn't even want to decide this). This is just an evidence of incapacity of a state, isn't it?
http://en.rsf.org/eu-court-ruling-on-right-to-be-04-07-2014,46588.html
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2013-06/cp130077en.pdf
Hey Max, honest question, what would be problematic if that EU intern processed and made determination on all the incoming requests then issued a consistent order to all search engines? That is, if someone in the best position to consult with the people making the ruling actually interpreted the ruling and its requirements as apply to incoming requests in a uniform way rather than asking independent foreign companies to figure it out in a way that could be inconsistent? What is the value in kicking the implementation details to the search engines to figure out? Is it reasonable to expect algorithm experts will do a better job than an EU legal intern?
+Angyl Bender The "value in kicking the implementation details to the search engines" is, that nobody in the EU wants to be responsible for these decisions and, in addition, nobody wants to take the risk that the press, then, could eventually scream censorship. Google is the Buffer for their own failures in the last
fewtwenty (!) years, their inability to lay down binding rules and a legal compliance that would help everyone.+Russell Davison I'm looking forward to an EU Commission Interim Status report quoting a 1950s mad scientist on matters of legal jurisprudence.
+Bernd Rubel Notable in +David Drummond's comments:
Only two months in our process is still very much a work in progress. It’s why we incorrectly removed links to some articles last week (they’ve since been reinstated). But the good news is that the ongoing, active debate that’s happening will inform the development of our principles, policies and practices – in particular about how to balance one person’s right to privacy with another’s right to know.
Emphasis added.
That ducks the "it was deliberate" issue. But it's clear that he's not considering those deletions defensible by Google.
He also mentions the "journalistic excpetion" principle:
The court also decided that search engines don’t qualify for a “journalistic exception”. This means that the Guardian could have an article on its website about an individual that’s perfectly legal, but we might not legally be able to show links to it in our results when you search for that person’s name. It’s a bit like saying the book can stay in the library but cannot be included in the library’s card catalogue.
I'm inclined to side with Drummond on this one — if information is fairly presented in a credible news organ (with all the fur-flying both those terms will inevitably generate), there's an argument to be made for both public concern and noteriety. But not all news organs are fair nor credible, and some which generally are get caught up in misattributions — see the case of the Central Park Five, for example, widely reported in The New York Times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case
I can think of similar cases in the Memphis, TN, area (though the details escape me at the moment). Should a case of prosecutorial misconduct follow an individual for the rest of their lives (even after imprisonment and other punishments for crimes they did not commit)?
His "vague and subjective" really doesn't wash with me. Real life is complicated. Google's mission is to organize the world's information. Part of that mission, should you choose to accept it (and by default you have), means organizing information into classes for which disclosure introduces more harm than benefit.
+Danny Sullivan's bullet-point summary is damned close to my own rating criteria:
• Does information involve public figures?
• Does information come from a reputable news source?
• Is the information recent?
• Does the information involve political speech?
• Does the information involve professional conduct?
• Does the information involve criminal convictions where time is still being served?
• Is the information published by a government?
I'd add a few. Is the subject of the information dead? No right to privacy (though if, say, living family members are also directly affected there might be).
My primary concern is small but harmful bits of information on people of little or no general public interest, especially published narrowly, with bias or prejudice, or with little initial interest on fairness.
For the record, I'm not trying to be difficult here. I worked on HIPAA compliance last decade, and that had much clearer terms handed down for compliance and even then it was still tricky. Leaving each hospital admin to determine what was technically PII and what degree of encryption was required would have been a clustercuss, and impossible to regulate.
Morb, regarding your last paragraph, in the US do those examples fall under "limited public figure"? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
I've heard that defamation laws are different in the UK and EU, as well, can anyone inform me better about that?
+Edward Morbius Thank your for this comment and your summary. Well, my primary concern is that Google as a private company shouldn't be responsible (or obliged) to decide any of these cases at all. The European Union is a more or less accepted state of law, the RTBF is – if any – a legal right and the decision what should be deleted and what is worth to maintain should be made by a court or a similar institution, as the case arises.
+Angyl Bender The term I, Drummond, and Wikipedia uses is public figure, not limited public figure. I'm not clear what if any distinction you're making with the difference in terms.
Generally, the classifications used in the Wikipedia article conform to my view. I'd draw a wider exception around the falsely accused, however.
+Bernd Rubel You're raising an additional question. The first is: do search engines have an obligation to limit information access to non-notable private individuals. On that point, from both a practical and technical basis, I'd argue that the answer is "yes".
Should search engines be the first point of control? In that case, I still think there's a reasonable argument that either the companies or a consortium organized and accessed via them very likely is. Again, as +Max Huijgen has pointed out, you're looking at individuals generally with little by way of free time and access to resources, and the barrier for petitioning the removal should be reasonably low. Making an EU legal case of it from the top is likely not the best course of action.
Also relevant: the search engines have a wealth of information on the specific merits of the request. Is the individual notorious, public, a celebrity, or in the public interest to know of? Quite simply, who better than the search engines to use their own data systems in answering those questions. In an automated system, with metrics and statistics assigned.
We've seen scoring and classification systems applied elsewhere. It's what SERP ranking is all about, it's what spam filtering is all about (both areas in which I'm given to understand Google may have some level of expertise). Identifying cases of clear merit where possible, and kicking the nondeterminable (and rejection) instances to the court does seem a good first-order pass, and frankly, based on technical requirements, well placed with the search engines themselves.
+Edward Morbius From my POV this is the first question, not an additional one. Based on technical requirements i understand what you say. But jurisdiction should not be in the hand of a "(private) scoring and classification system", even not partly. Yes, the barrier for petitioning the removal should be reasonably low, no costs for the "data subject", the individual, no expensive lawyers. That's why, even more, the request should be handled by an arbitration board, case by case, from qualified, neutral, publicly appointed and sworn human beings.
That's what the EU is for, right? Same right for all europeans, not Google/Bing/Yahoo/Spain/France/Germany-rights for an individual, depending on where you live or what search engine you use.
+David Drummond mentioned the mother who requested that Google removes news articles for her daughter's name as she had been the victim of abuse – don't you think that we, as a society, should do everything to keep things firmly in hand instead of delegating these requests? Perhaps to create, in the long term, an accepted moral guideline?
+Max Huijgen you should read the text at http://www.google.com/advisorycouncil/
I am pasting it below for your convenience
"The Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten
How should one person’s right to be forgotten be balanced with the public’s right to know?
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that European law gives people the right to ask search engines like Google to remove results for queries that include their name.
Since then, we’ve received removal requests on all sorts of content: serious criminal records, embarrassing photos, instances of online bullying and name-calling, decades-old allegations, negative press stories, and more.
For each of these requests, we’re required to weigh, on a case-by-case basis, an individual’s right to be forgotten with the public’s right to know.
We want to strike this balance right. This obligation is a new and difficult challenge for us, and we’re seeking advice on the principles Google ought to apply when making decisions on individual cases. That’s why we’re convening a council of experts.
We’re just getting started, but during this process we also want to hear your input, too — this is all about your rights online, and the Internet provides an incredible forum for discussion and debate."
+Bernd Rubel Jurisdiction doesn't rest with the search engines, only first assessment. The filing party can then continue to the court. Which is what you'd argue is their first alternative otherwise.
And they're expressly not "in the hand" of a private system. That's just the first basis of appeal.
I see the S.E. assessment as far more streamlined: the court's assessment would likely require the same level of infrastructure, with more overhead.
I'm going to fundamentally disagree with your assertions and position here.
Morb, a system that can't tell a legal name from a non legal name without resorting to requesting legally issued ID, which was successfully spoofed, honestly doesn't get my vote of confidence for this task. :/
The consortium idea seems great if this were like the US video games thing where they voluntarily self-regulated to avoid stricter regulations from being imposed legally, with the view that the consortium could do a reasonable enough job – and in the video game industry case that does seem to have worked. Certainly better than if each individual maker had tried to set their own standards, resulting in inconsistent labeling that would confuse the consumer. I would feel less uncomfortable if this called for a formation of a search engine consortium neutral body to work with the courts on standards here.
+Angyl Bender That is a bit of a stumper.
I've taken my own stab at addressing it by associating a cryptographically strong identifier with my G+ identity — GPG key 4096R/420AB7BD.
It's not one I associate with other identities. Though the question of whether or not there's a right to pseudonymous or anonymous legal appeal might be an interesting one to test. I seem to recall discussion of an EU right to at least anonymous/pseudonymous online interactions.
Note that my call for a consortium isn't to avoid external legal jurisdiction, but to provide for a means for smaller search engines to address the requirements meaningfully, as well as the ability for petitioners to appeal to multiple search engines in as convenient a manner as possible.
Agreement there. Google and msft may have the resources to handle it but what is DDG to do? If this kills DDG who wins?
+Angyl Bender For all practical intents, DDG search is Bing.
Yes, it pains me. Slightly.
I actually see proxied Microsoft as preferable to unproxied Google.
I use all three and I find ddg functionally different, more like old long tail G where if I tune my search carefully I can find what I want. The search pollution (pulling from things others in my household searched for and randomly throwing it in my results when I am logged out) from Goog is unprecedented in the other engines, for me.
+Angyl Bender It's kind of sad to see Google screwing up its core competency like that.
Straight from the horse mouth: "70,000 take-down requests covering 250,000 web pages since May" Drummond (Google's senior VP and management team member in charge of legal on July 11 in the Guardian
So definitely not half a million +Eileen O'Duffy +Eli Fennell
In my view 70,000 take down requests is 69,999 too many Max!
+Antoine Carriere I''m aware of the advisory committee and its members since it was erected very shortly after the verdict. I don't have high hopes on their report; there is only one (Belgian) member which represents what I would call the European view on privacy.
Their latest plan is to organize 'consultancy rounds' in some EU countries with selected individuals. I noticed some mistrust when this got public assuming it was part of a lobby campaing, but I'll wait and see.
+Bernd Rubel nothing new, except you mentioning Viviane Reding as someone concerned about this ruling. Link please.
I am still waiting for your next post on the topic +Max Huijgen
+Edward Morbius I would make a longer list than Sullivan did as I follow the European privacy concept which goes much deeper. I have explained it in more detail on Yonathan's thread, but let me give an example to illustrate the difference in viewpoint between the US and the EU view.
The most sensational political murder in the Netherlands, a case comparable to JFK in impact and brutality on a aspiring new government leader who was scoring extremely well in the polls. The man is killed days before the election, his murderer arrested.
Privacy in the Netherlands means that his full name is not published in respectable news papers. Not while he is a suspect, not after his conviction etc. He is known as Volkert van der G. like all criminals only the first letter of his surname.
Now move fast forward: after 12 years he is entitled to parole so he is a free man again. He settles in a new city and gets every chance to start a new life.
Compare this to the US where forgiving and a second chance are not exactly regular ingredients.
P.S. Of course thanks to Wiki and international coverage of the story I do know Volkert's full name, but it's not about him but about the principles behind it.
+Angyl Bender I will address your question: why not let the EU make up a list of links which should be removed. as its a good one. Stay tuned 😉
+Max Huijgen I mentioned Viviane Reding as someone who told the Reporters without Borders "that the implementation of the right to be forgotten within European data protection law will not affect the job of journalists to report and store stories of public interest." In addition, "She [Viviane Reding] has repeatedly said that blocking the Internet has never been and never will be an option."
See my link above, but here it is again: http://en.rsf.org/european-union-viviane-reding-responds-to-16-03-2012,42138.html
Now, as it's clear "that search engines don't qualify for a journalistic exception" i came – in a kind of logic implication – to the conclusion that Mrs. Reding might be concerned about this court ruling.
My read is that you see that quite differently.
I added several more new links, quotes and questions to this thread, but meanwhile i realised that you circumvent any question or hint that could raise to question the court ruling itself, its impact on the freedom of information or on the state of law.
Perhaps this is your very own definition of the Socratic Method.
Edit: i don't know why you constantly claim that the Netherland's rules for privacy are the "European Privacy Concept" in general. The full name of Pim Fortuyn's murderer is published in all major newspapers across Europe, down to the present day, online and offline.
Viviane Reding is the commissioner responsible for the new Data Protection Regulation and its most prominent advocate, so no +Bernd Rubel she is not opposing it.
+Max Huijgen I know who Viviane Reding
iswas (as she resigned from her Brussels' post a few days ago, after taking up her recently won seat in the European Parliament).So, you're telling me that when she said that any european ruling shouldn't include things like newspaper archives she was
lyingcheating? The archives are not erased, just the public access to these archives is blocked (while blocking was and will be never an option).http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/01/23/reding-details-sweeping-changes-to-e-u-data-laws/
Edit: oh, i see, you're right, obviously she can't even remember what she told the press and journalists two years ago: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=304206613078842&id=291423897690447
Edit #2: oh, and btw, in her Facebook post about this court ruling she also mentions the obligation of an "organisation to take 'all reasonable steps' to inform other organisations processing data, that an individual has requested them to erase any links to the personal data, and any copies of it that they may have."
#justsaying , because you told me that i confuse things when i told you that your assumption it's Google's cynical manipulation of the press might be wrong. Obviously more important people than me confuse things.
Full circle +Bernd Rubel as the deletion of these newspaper articles is the very subject of my post.
+Max Huijgen Thank you for not responding to my hint that the RTBF is obviously completely based on the deception of the european press since at least 2012, when Viviane Reding gave her interviews.
+Angyl Bender why not honor this right to be forgotten in a centralized way, is your question as I interpret it.
Most fundamentally: because it's our human right on privacy and we should be able to address every violation ourselves without being hindered by other institutions or organizations.
It's a direct right in legal terms and court found it important to uphold that.
That in no way prevents the creation of another mechanism. The court is explicit that you can always resort to your national authority and seek discourse through them.
Should search providers fail to honor the request this is anyway the scenario.
However it's fundamental that your privacy and your data belong to you, the private citizen and you don't need a court order or a national privacy regulator to side with you to exercise that right.
Apart from the fundamental principle, it has also a democratic advantage as it lowers the cost for the complainer as there is initially no need for lawyers etc.
Makes the difference between having a right and getting your right much smaller than in the US court based culture.
+Bernd Rubel I didn't give the example of the Netherlands way of handling privacy of convict as an illustration of the European regulations, but as a prime example of the European school of forgiveness.
Leaving out the full name and photo is just one way to protect the privacy with the intent of forgiving and rehabilitation.
Germany had related cases where former convicts tried to get their name out of the press after they had done their time.
France has prime examples where the prime-minister after being caught with a mistress, was so mad at the magazine that outed him that he went after them for violating his privacy.
Europe is full of these kind of events which are unthinkable in the US.
+Max Huijgen Here in the U.S., when our leaders get caught with mistresses, they don't get to have it forgotten.
God bless America.
+Max Huijgen Forgiveness is an intentional and voluntary process of (here) a society. Forgiveness is different from forgetting (removing awareness of [something] from consciousness). The RTBF has nothing, again: nothing, to do with Forgiveness.
I never thought that i have to quote Wikipedia here.
Forgiveness is a central element of Christianity and deeply rooted in West-European philosophy culminating in 'a second chance' which is one of the pillars under the right to be forgotten.
I don't need Wiki for that.
I'm not religious +Eli Fennell but I doubt God is actively blessing America for the right to know Clinton's intern adventures while the country has secret courts deciding over prisoners without a trial and the privacy of its citizens.
+Max Huijgen So, we should grant somebody a "second chance" by hiding and deleting all evidences of his "first chance/s"? That's ridiculous.
Oh, and God bless The Netherlands: http://news.techworld.com/applications/3506333/dutch-intelligence-illegally-shared-data-with-foreign-services-says-report/
+Max Huijgen I was being slightly ironic. I don't believe in a personal creator God anyways.
But while God may not be on the side of us knowing when our politicians get caught sleeping around, I know that wiping your record of wrongdoings is of The Devil (real or metaphorical, as you please).
As +Bernd Rubel says, forgiveness is based on knowing what you're forgiving. The American people in our own way 'forgave' Clinton… he left office with over a 70% approval rating which remains high to this day, higher than Bush or Obama or basically anyone but Reagan. A lot of people even related to him as a person more, because frankly most of us can understand the difficulties of fidelity when in a position of great authority.
I already assumed some hyperbole +Eli Fennell but forgiveness is more complex as it's the victim who forgives in full awareness of the deed, but society needs to go along for it to materialize.
For this to happen, forgetting is the common instrument. In pre search-engine times society forgot the mishaps. The name in that news paper story of 10 years ago wasn't collectively remembered. That mechanism no longer works.
The reverse mechanism is 'remembering the good days'. In a small society you can rehabilitate yourself by earning respect for new activities/deeds.
In a larger society only the rich and famous can do so. Take the Clinton example. That's why the RTBF is targeted at the no-no's.
–
+Max Huijgen You've got it utterly backwards.
It's "Forgive and Forget", not "Forget and Forgive". You can't forgive something without knowing what you're forgiving.
Also, I don't know why you keep pretending this doesn't favor the rich and powerful overwhelmingly. He/she with the best lawyers, and the most public image needing scrubbed, gets the most from this.
This is not democratizing, it is empowering to your elites who've spent decades lobbying for the right to make the mistakes of their pasts forgotten and have now got what they wanted, and managed to convince you that's "Evil Google"'s fault.
+Eli Fennell … and, in addition, it is empowering the "elites" who do not depend on the help of a public search engine, but can afford to run their own crawlers, information agencies, etc. to get all the data about the "no-no's" they need.
+Eli Fennell It is a well established principle in most european countries that you will get a clean slate after a defined period of time. This means that for example my criminal record at the german authorities sees entries being removed automatically and irrevocably (should I actually have such entries). This means that after a defined period of time there is no trace of any crime I committed in the past. This "implemenation" of forgiveness has a long history. The "right to be forgotten" actually flows out of that tradition. If private data collections (and Googles search index is such a private collection) subvert this fundamental principle by indefintely storing and publishing information, it is deemed to be wrong.
+Eli Fennell +Bernd Rubel The both of you went full circle in arguments. I won't repeat myself.
The thread is open and I might react on new arguments by whoever comes up with them. If there are none, the thread will die of itself.
+Jan Wildeboer Google doesn't store the information, they merely surface it, so the basic principle of your argument is flawed since this does nothing to address the permanent storage issue.
+Eli Fennell of course they store the information. It's called Google cache. The information (my name combined with search terms) comes straight from their index. Their crawlers copy and store information from source pages. Do you actually know how this stuff works?
+Jan Wildeboer i'd have thought that google's search index is a private collection only because they don't have the resources to search the web in real time. when a webpage gets deleted, it dissappears from google's index fairly soon.
Google search should be totally transparent. it should just tell you what webpages talk about the search term you entered. It so happens that the technical implementation of this demands at the moment a short-lived index.
+Jan Wildeboer I suggest you read what +Edouard Tavinor just said. Since he does know how it works better than you.
+Eli Fennell Edouard just confirmed my point that Google actually creates its own database of information. Oh, and BTW that database is coyrighted because we have a very stupid law on database protection in Europe, but that's a totally different topic.
So again, your point that Google doesn't store information has now been called wrong by two people anbd you even support one of them. Le Sigh. You really don't know what you are talking about in this specific regard.
The 'storage' through Google cache argument has been brought up in the court case.
It was not considered relevant as Google was considered the data 'controller' anyway through collecting, indexing and disclosure hence their independent responsibility for the data.
Full text:
Therefore, it must be found that, in exploring the internet automatically, constantly and systematically in search of the information which is published there, the operator of a search engine ‘collects’ such data which it subsequently ‘retrieves’, ‘records’ and ‘organises’ within the framework of its indexing programmes, ‘stores’ on its servers and, as the case may be, ‘discloses’ and ‘makes available’ to its users in the form of lists of search results.
+Jan Wildeboer I think this is a fairly sliding scale. On the one hand, no one would legally argue that the air stores information while I'm speaking, although a physicist would have no difficulty calling that statement true. On the other hand, a card system in a library certainly does store information for a long time.
Does google have the functionality allowing you to see the search results which would have been delivered at some time in the past? I can see this functionality falling foul of the european data retention laws.
That Google search is subject to this law I find pushing it a bit. Google search only stores information for a short time (a week maybe? how long does it take for a page to dissappear? and Google is working to make this even quicker). At what point does this delay become so short that we would be talking more about vibrations in the air than about a card catalogue?
+Jan Wildeboer It seems you don't actually read what someone is saying before deciding they agree with you. So I'll see your Le Sigh and raise you a Double Facepalm, because in this case, one facepalm just isn't enough to capture the fail in your statement.
+Edouard Tavinor the Advocate-General of the European court of Justice Niilo Jääskinen agrees with your point of view: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2013-06/cp130077en.pdf
The judges didn't.
+Eli Fennell I get it that you don't really want to understand the cultural differences between US and continental europe wrt legal philosophy. That's fine. I also get that you don't let facts cloud your prejudices. That's your problem. You are not interested in listening, you want us to go your way or the highway. EOT for me.
+Jan Wildeboer I understand the difference a small percentage of Europeans feel exists.
Luckily, you're in the minority.
+Jan Wildeboer You and +Max Huijgen postulate definitions about data, data processors, responsibility and co-responsibilty, based on a directive from 1995, which are simply not true in a legal point of view. See the link to the statement of Niilo Jääskinen, that i posted here several times.
Neither you nor Max did respond to any of these concerns, because that could automatically lead to the conclusion that the court ruling itself was wrong.
Well, at least this emphasizes Max's statement that europeans are united in a strong, unreflecting trust towards their authorities. Whether they are right or wrong.
+Bernd Rubel and all the while US agencies and companies are happily spying on us and ignorant of laws and regulations whenever they are deemed to be a burden. Everybody is happy, I guess?
+Jan Wildeboer Did this change, in any manner, because of this court ruling? Or, vice versa, does this court ruling only cement the Status Quo, where the public is mollified with an absurd illusion of "control"?
You just don't understand how the legal system works +Bernd Rubel and there is no way to educate you through some ad-hoc comments on G+.
Directives are very true in a legal sense, although even writing that short sentence makes no real sense. The opinion of Jaaskinen was sloppy reasoning, but is anyway irrelevant as he is just the advocate-general, the servant so to speak of the very court that corrected him on all grounds.
And neither +Jan Wildeboer nor I postulate I quoted from the ruling which is the law.
+Bernd Rubel the court decision is binding, even if wrong. (Which it isn't, IMHO). But ignoring our EU laws (opt-in v opt-out, anyone?) is quite common for US based companies like Google, Facebook and a lot more. I for one do not accept that obeying laws becomes optional based on whatever corporate opinion. This ignorance has brought us here.
+Eli Fennell it's certainly not a small minority in Europe. Don't believe US fora and luckily this is our human right which you try to fight.
+Max Huijgen Human right? Bahahahahahahaha!
Free speech is a human right. Not being compelled to self-incriminate is a human right.
Having your actions forgotten never has been a right, ever. You can call a dog a cow but it still doesn't go "moo".
+Max Huijgen Yes, thank you again for your unreflecting trust towards authorities.
A judge knows better that an advocate general, because, hey, it's a judge, right? It's a twenty year old directive from 1995 – hey, it exists, let's abuse it. The press is affected – nooo, let's talk about pure data and wait what happens. A two-tier informed society? Aaah, c'mon, this worked since the dark age, let's reinvent it.
#disneyland
+Bernd Rubel when you prefer anarchy and ignorance of binding decisions, I will simply not discuss with you. No common ground possible.
+Jan Wildeboer I also get that you don't let facts cloud your prejudices.
Classic.
+Jan Wildeboer I don't. And most of all i prefer responsibility, a legal system that carefully weighs the scope of its decisions and, in addition, weighs right vs. right. (Edit, oh, and btw, i prefer a legal system that evolves during a period of 20 years. You know, stupid little things like gay marriage.)
+Eli Fennell _You_ don't have that right, but we Europeans luckily do. And we do since effectively 1953.
The US might catch up in another fifty years.
You confuse the US constitution with my human rights. Fail.
+Max Huijgen
The US might catch up in another fifty years.
God I hope not.
This may be a "European Right", but let's not water down the term "Human Right" by equating it to this. Sorry, but when I compare this to any Human Right that exists or should, this version at least doesn't rank.
From the plusses I see that some Europeans don't know their own human rights.
Drafted in 1950 and into force since 1953 there is the European Convention on Human Rights binding for all members of the European Council.
Article 8 is the underlying article for the court decision. The Right To Privacy.
It has been a very effective convention as it created the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) where every private person living in Europe can file his complaint and ask for remedy.
+Max Huijgen Never, ever dare to tell me i confuse things.
+Max Huijgen
Text of Article 8 of the ECHR:
"1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence."
"2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
Nope, don't see anything in there that says "Right to Be Forgotten".
In fact, the U.S. had protections that, in terms of the way that is worded, are IDENTICAL, and have since the passage of the Constitution and the initial amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Sure, in the U.S. you have the right to respect for your private life. As long as it stays private, or becomes public only by someone interfering with your privacy, for example by sneaking onto your property and surreptitiously filming you through a window.
I did constitutional law for two years +Eli Fennell I know both the US constitution as well as some European ones reasonably well.
I'm telling you that the European convention, it's preambules etc have been crucial to get to this specific verdict. It's an extension of our basic right. +Eileen O'Duffy +Brendan Thesingh 😉
Why are people spending thousands of words to fight stuff they never read?
The full text of the verdict is readily available on the internet since day one and yet it seems I'm the only one who took the trouble to read it.
Ah well, maybe Google doesn't work as well for others as it does for me: link http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=152065&doclang=EN
+Max Huijgen a) Implying that others didn't even read something only because they don't agree with your opinion is trolling.
b) I've read the verdict, over and over again. I'm to lazy to search for this part in the court ruling again, so would you please tell me where *article 10* of the European Convention on Human Rights is mentioned in this court ruling? You know, as you "did constitutional law for two years", article 10 is the unimportant part where i'm assigned with my right to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority.
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf
Just mentioned. Just to show me that the court thought about a possible collision, for a minute or two. I mean, a lot of others did and do, honoroble persons and institutions, and the press. You know, it's an ongoing discussion in the Parlament, right? Please, would you show me this part?
I don't think the right to privacy should lead to it that somehow a commercial company should decide what should be 'forgotten' or not. Even if this 'human right' is laid down in the law in exact and clear terms. De facto forcing censorship is what this can and will lead to. Furthermore purely from a practical viewpoint it is a ridiculous rule. Since other searchengines in the same country and in other countries will still show the results of the claiming party. So it's quite useless also because those people that research people will know that their native google will not show these results.
So even if there should be such a thing as a right to be forgotten, which in my opinion should not be the case, because it is moot.
For instance amongst many other things maybe we should forget Stalin, because it's so unfortunate for his grandchildren.
Furthermore how does this 'right to be forgotten' stand in relation to 'the right to know'?
Even if this has all been considered in this law, from my own philosophical and practical point of view I do not agree with it.
Paragraph 97 and 98 is the answer to your question +Bernd Rubel 'a preponderant interest of the general public' would be the exception to the RTBF.
There is no right to know +Brendan Thesingh There is a right to receive information on matters of public interest. No absolute right to know. Access to information is not part of article 10 of the European Rights Chapter. (for my own reference Leander v. Sweden)
Stalin etc are all covered by the balance between the journalist freedom and the private right to be forgotten.
Practicalities are solvable.
+Max Huijgen There are rights to speech, however, which might be constructed as predicated on access to information, and/or freedom to express known information.
+Max Huijgen Human Rights are meant to be things with analogs in nature. In nature, no one has the power to compel a human being to forget anything, though they may occasionally intimidate them into pretending they've forgotten.
I'd say you're defending the wrong Right.
The rights of speech are treated differently in the EU than in the US, because the right to receive information is explicit in the EU Charter.
In the US it's a derived right from speech hence all the Supreme Court interpretations widening it.
Also in the EU it's explicit that the free information only concerns matters of public interest. +Edward Morbius
RTBF is not about compelling anyone to forget anything. It's about restricting further dissemination of specific private information.
+Eli Fennell But +Max Huijgen -says- insists that "in pre search-engine times society forgot", so the RTBF should
imitatecompel the good old times. I don't remember these times. I grew up with people who never forgot anything, but simply learned how to deal with it – or not.The problem is: in these good old times it was hardly probable that you – as an American or German – had to do business with a spanish businessman who declared bankruptcy years ago. The people who had a need for this knowledge and memory lived in his setting and had the freedom to decide if they still want to do business with him. They had the freedom to forget it, if it would be no longer relevant for them.
Today, this spanish businessman can use a cheap flight or just put up a website and do business worldwide. The "old communication channels", the local newspaper, the gossip, the contacts face-to-face and the memory of the people in his setting are no longer relevant. That's why his bankruptcy is still interesting for the public – as "the public" is a completely different public than before.
+Sakari Maaranen No. It's about restricting further dissemination of specific public information.
+Bernd Rubel I'm sorry but you do not have the authority to decide what is public and what not. Courts do, within the powers bestowed upon them by the law.
+Brendan Thesingh Let me correct +Max Huijgen here, he "forgot" something. There's a right to receive and impart information without interference by public authority.
So, while "the access" itself is not part of the charter, indeed, the prohibition of a constraint is part of the ECHR. If there IS an access, it may not be affected.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf
(Edit: and that's why, Max, the Paragraphs 97 and 98 in the court ruling you mentioned above mean nothing.)
+Sakari Maaranen But the Spanish businessman's financial issues were a public matter, in fact the paper that published it was legally compelled to do so "in the public interest". Which is why it's strange they couldn't simply order them to remove it when it was no longer relevant, "in the public interest". No, they legally compel a paper to publish it, then say they don't have the authority to make them remove it due to "journalistic exception" and make Google do it instead.
Not to mention the whole thing where Europe can block URL's, so there was already a mechanism in place to prevent these things from showing.
Never have the gods of parsimony weeped so.
+Sakari Maaranen Oh, of course i have. I'm a citizen of the European Union and if an information is printed in a public newspaper it is a public information. Easy, isn't it?
If a binding lawful decision has it that a piece of information is to be published from a specified point in time to a specified point in time then that is so. No citizen is above the law. No newspaper is above the law.
+Sakari Maaranen Except they told them to run it, then ruled they couldn't tell them to remove it due to journalistic exception. *facepalm*
+Sakari Maaranen … and no court is above the law. You realized that the information is still published, it remains public, forever?
The journalism exemption is a part of the law and intended to allow balancing between the public interest in freedom of speech and
the public interest in safeguarding the handling of personally identifiable information.
+Sakari Maaranen But they're COMPELLED to publish these things. So you can compel them to publish, but not to unpublish, or banish to an uncrawlable archive?
And this all makes perfect sense to you?
+Bernd Rubel says who? Information can be removed from the public domain. Sure people can maintain illegal copies and share them illegally, but that's another matter. Publication does not have to be permanent. Some may think so, but that is a subjective opinion and others may think otherwise.
+Eli Fennell sure they can be compelled to unpublish, unless protected by the journalism exemption. Courts may only exercise their powers within the law, and legislative authorities may adjust the laws, if deemed necessary. Feel free to file an initiative with your preferred approach, if you have better ideas. Meanwhile, we shall abide by the current law.
+Sakari Maaranen Said the courts in Spain, because – in this case – the newspaper was compelled to publish the information (see +Eli Fennell's comments). And, in other cases: if an information itself is deleted for any reason, it will be deleted from Google within a few hours, automatically.
If you want privacy, challenge the sources, within your legal rights. Don't shoot the messenger.
+Sakari Maaranen They are compelled to publish the information, not compelled to de-publish it. And even if they were not compelled to publsih the information, it was, is and will forever be their right to publish this information, because of the freedom of the press.
Got it?
Personally, I'm not interested in debating individual rulings, because it's easy to flood conversation with endless examples of both good and bad rulings. I have already made the point that this is by nature an endless discussion and that's how it should be. I'm only interested in acknowledging that people must be allowed to keep having these discussions and bring them to courts when they feel it's necessary.
Feel free to take individual cases of your liking and keep talking, +Bernd Rubel. Got it?
+Sakari Maaranen This is no "individual ruling".
My point is that public authorities make the law, courts decide, citizens negotiate and/or obey and of course elect the authorities. Corporations shut up. Tools don't have freedom of speech. People do.
+Sakari Maaranen Then every person who works at Google has the right to speak up about it, since last time I checked, they're people.
Correct on that +Eli Fennell.
For example, every stockholder and employee of Google each have 1 voice. What I stated above is to be interpreted such that personally I give my 1 voice to disapprove the influence of money on issues of political nature such that some people's voices are decisively louder than others. I want to emphasize the principle of equality especially when discussing matters of public interest.
…we can of course question the possibility of conflicts of interest when the employees of a private corporation discuss issues where their employer may have high stakes. Usually in situations like these those with large stakes in the matter would voluntarily recuse themselves on the grounds of obvious partiality. Especially if they were in a position of power over the matter.
+Bernd Rubel I appreciated your comment on the society mechanisms. That was a contribution to the debate, your observations about constitutional law are not. Let's have more of the good stuff and create a real and substantial debate here!
And of course kudos to you as well +Sakari Maaranen for following up.
+Max Huijgen one thing leads to another. I'm still convinced that the interpretation of a(ny) constitution should be always oriented on the society's mechanisms. It's just a few sheets of paper which picture our conception of the world, moral attitude and relationships. While the words might be written in stone, the interpretation isn't. 😉
+Max Huijgen But here's the thing – Google is drawing people's attention to items that they are REQUIRED to take down according to this EU judgment. If the law is so good for average people, then why do these instances come up at all?
It's unreasonable to expect a search engine to respond to massive requests for editing the public record – or any requests outside of existing laws to protect citizens from libel and established laws for government requests. The public record should not be subject to subjective and random editing.
+John Blossom Google aren't required to pass final judgement on the removal request. They're only required to consider the request on its merits.
This is more 1) disinformation or 2) misunderstanding on your part.
Please. If you're going to discuss this topic, educate yourself.
As for "massive requests", there were ~70,000 received in several weeks. Let's call this a month. That's 2500 per day. A largish number for human mediation, but tractable.
If each request takes 10 minutes to adjudicate, and your staff can dedicate 75% of their total time to this task, you'd need a staff of roughly 70 to process the requests. Coincidentally, this seems to be the number of paralegals Google have hired. Assuming a fully-accounted cost of $150k/year for each, that's a $10.5 million/year cost.
That's 0.017% of Google's $62 billion in revenues over the past 12 months:
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG&fstype=ii&ei=RaPKU9DfD8KoiQL7q4HQAg
My suspicion is that Google would be able to further reduce the costs by applying natural language processing and ranking semantics to this process. Two areas in which I'm given to understand the company may have some level of experience and expertise.
+Edward Morbius OK, a few points. Number one, from the standpoint of law-making this decision is utter tosh.
From the EU Factsheet on the “Right to be Forgotten” Ruling (C-131/12) http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf (emphasis mine – and noting that the PDF format makes it very hard to share this information via the Web):
How will the Right to be Forgotten work in practice? Who can ask for a deletion of personal data and how?
In practice, a search engine will have to delete information when it receives a specific request from a person affected. This would mean that a citizen, whose personal data appears in search results linking to other webpages when a search is done with that person’s name, requests the removal of those links. For example, John Smith will be allowed to request Google to delete all search links to webpages containing his data, when one enters the search query ‘John Smith’ in the Google search box Google will then have to assess the deletion request on a case-by-case basis and to apply the criteria mentioned in the EU law and the European Court's judgment…
This is utterly contradictory. On the one hand the EU says that a search engine must remove information. On the other hand, they say that a search engine must apply on a case-by-case basis language so vague that it makes definitions of pornography look clear by comparison. If they don't do this to the person's satisfaction, then the person may raise their complaint as a court suit or through regulatory channels.
So the validity of a search engine taking action on your "only" 70,000 requests for 250,000 pages of materials are completely up to the subjective views of the person asking for the takedown and liable to court lawsuits – suits which, typically, are conducted and won only by the rich and powerful. So this "for the people" law is really just something to tie up search engine providers with lawsuits, one way or another, as a back-handed way to suppress public data. And at the end of the day, the judgment is focused on LINKS and not the content itself. It's asking that search engines pretend that things don't exist. This is censoring the public realm, pure and simple, and asking the search engines to enforce censorship much as it's done in China, albeit at the hands of individuals, but with the same net result.
The typical European has won little or nothing through this lawsuit, and those with the most to hide have won everything. In a community of nations that has suffered so much at the hands of people who would rather have their heinous crimes forgotten, you'd think that you'd be a little more thoughtful about how you go about not repeating past mistakes – or enabling petty criminality, sexual offenders, and political and business corruption.
Just as an important aside: the primary mechanism in case a request at Google / Bing fails is not a court case but addressing your national supervisory authority +John Blossom
+Max Huijgen That's the primary, but the fact that the courts are there means that the rich and powerful will just bulldoze on through. What you wind up with is little compliance likely or feasible for the average person and lots of take-downs for those rich and powerful enough to muscle into the court system.
+John Blossom Thank you for this comment. Really.
+John Blossom … and, in addition, the same "rich and powerful" people or companies are still able to run their own non-public crawlers or engage professional data brokers to gather and analyze and sell all the data they "need" for their own benefit – while only the average user who depends on the help of a public search engine to find informations is hindered.
http://qz.com/213900/the-nine-companies-that-know-more-about-you-than-google-or-facebook/
Yeah, we should really abandon all laws, because criminals can still break them. Certainly.
Frankly, arguing with these anti-regulation, anti-democracy types always comes to these same style of arguments: First, they misrepresent the regulations (straw men) and then argue that we should remove regulations, because they can be misused or broken.
"People don't need justice, because justice is sometimes complicated and we don't have time for that. We just want to make money."
+Bernd Rubel Excellent point. It's easy for politicians to tag this on the most politically expedient target – public search engines. The fact that they are U.S.-owned makes the target that much more expedient. The corporations of all stripes – European ones most certainly amongst them, including data collectors – have the most to gain. And in the meantime, for those who are persistent enough to attempt to use that "primary" bureaucratic route, I think that people will find exactly what it's like to deal with government censorship – because that's exactly what it will become. The politicians want to fend it off to the search engines so that the government can look like the "good guys," but in fact it's the regulators who are putting the noose around Internet freedom in the process. Very clever.
+Sakari Maaranen I am afraid that you have it quite wrong. I believe in well-regulated markets and government of, by and for the people. But I know a scam when I see it. This law is a smoke screen.
Since the beginning of search engines, I, and most whom I've talked with, have been worried about what they're doing to individual privacy. Calling the European concept of privacy a smoke screen shows how little you understand, +John Blossom.
People who think that the public domain defined by traditional media, like newspapers, books, radio, and TV, was directly analogous to modern search engines that bring all information old or new at everyone's fingertips, are conflating publication with intelligence gathering services. Search engines are more like intelligence services and are currently bringing those indiscriminately to anyone.
Google and other search engines are a bit like public STASI, happy to serve any agent. Unrestricted searches targeting private individuals, unless each and everyone of us individually manages to protect our personally identifiable data, by anyone at any time for any reason, without any means of control nor channels for the people to seek justice, is a dystopian nightmare.
The idea of democracy is that the people have a say and we make the rules. Our ability to set the rules and to seek justice is not a smoke screen, but one of the cornerstones of a democratic society. Corporations seeking unrestricted power to do whatever they like without listening to the people are growing more and more arrogant day by day. Tools don't come to tell people what we can and can't do. We use tools to build the kind of society that we want.
+Sakari Maaranen With due respect, one more time. The Internet. Is. Public.
And to compare Google to STASI is perhaps to ignore agents of fear, uncertainty and doubt closer to home who may take advantage of this law through people being herded into it like fearful sheep.
I thought i'd just drop that link here. The same European Union that pretends to care for the privacy of their citizins with a ridiculous "right to be forgotten" signed several agreements to deliver all these data that is mentioned in this text, too, not long ago.
Like +John Blossom says, this law is a smoke screen.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/ars-editor-learns-feds-have-his-old-ip-addresses-full-credit-card-numbers/
I'm so happy to live in a country where people respect democracy and the law before corporations and their muppets.
+Bernd Rubel Thanks, for the link, very useful information!
+Sakari Maaranen OK, let's refrain from the "D" word, shall we. Number of kings, queens, tsars, dictators, emperors, directorates and juntas in the U.S. since 1776: 0. Number in Europe since 1776: care to take a stab? More than your fingers and toes, that's for sure.
Federal democracy EU style is in its infancy. That doesn't make it bad or the current U.S. system magically healthy, but there's a certain hubris/jingoism that's evolving under it that is worrisome for those concerned with the long-term success of democracy in Europe.
Given the rise of hate groups in many European nations and related hate crimes that benefit from people having both history and current events in the pubic domain censored broadly at the will of individuals, I would tread lightly on claims of moral superiority when it comes to this law.
Boy, it never gets old hearing Europeans lecture about how democracy should work, +John Blossom. 😉
+John Blossom you are the one who is defending arbitrary decision power above the law. I say people elect the leaders who make the law and judges decide by the law. No-one is above the law. Courts decide what is public according to the law. Not you or your friends, or any of their employers.
This is not a history lesson, but yes, modern European civilization has a longer history. I know Pharaohs ruled Egypt, but these days we have the legal system and people have the right to seek justice. Every case must be heard and we can't just categorically deny people justice, because you and your friends have your own version of 'True Public' that is absolute, eternal and omniscient. I tend to think publicity is a more relative concept and subject to law.
Justice is a good idea. It was invented long before America, so maybe you didn't get the memo.
+Sakari Maaranen Sorry, that memo must have come a little late. Probably arrived after we'd kicked all the kings of Europe out of our Colonies, and given all the monarchs, fascists, and national socialists a good smacking around twice.
But sure… we're the ones late to the law. Tell yourself that if helps you forget the real history. 😛
+Eli Fennell I tried to explain to you that this is not a history lesson, but clearly I failed. We are not trying to implement laws retroactively in medieval times, but actually in today's world. If you would like to have a calendar, I'm glad to provide you with one. We have an excellent selection. Let me recommend you Luigi Lilio's design that has grown most fashionable in our time.
+Sakari Maaranen You just said the magic phrase:
Courts decide what is public according to the law.
So governments determine what the public should see.
Please let us know when you're ready for freedom of the press.
+John Blossom correct. I have already addressed both the freedom of speech and the journalism exemption above. Here are some tips that you may find helpful:
http://m.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Memory
+John Blossom Courts have pretty much always held that power given libel and slander laws. The question is: where does the balance of the commonwealth's interest lie between free expression, on the one hand, and a right to privacy, on the other.
All of which are explicitly specified within the EU's ruling.
You (and most others expressing your viewpoint) have been rapidly deflating my assessment of your overall capacity to both read with comprehension and grasp nuance.
Is it possible for the ruling to be abused? Yes. Pretty much as any tool can be abuse (and as unlimited information access and disclosure presently is). Is it a necessary consequence that it be? No. Has the court expressed a keen awareness of this inherent conflict? Yes. Because courts, in general, are in the business of drawing a balance between competing and conflicting interests, including between competing and conflicting public interests.
+Sakari Maaranen Irony… sharing a Wiki about how to improve your memory while advocating for a right to be forgotten.
That's neat, isn't it, +Eli Fennell. 🙂 The colour of magic is neither black nor white.
+Edward Morbius You are exactly right that libel and slander laws help citizens address abuses of freedom of the press, and clearly these laws are the primary means to address that. But those are case-by-case laws with tailored findings, as they should be. The RTBF laws try to impose censorship standards akin in accuracy to those applied in years past to pornography, the net result being censorship, not protection of rights. In RTBF, the government decides whether your information should or should not be public. In libel and slander, the government determines whether you have been harmed personally, substantially and intentionally by public information. There's a huge difference.
+Sakari Maaranen You have not to my understanding addressed freedom of speech at all. The public record in a public venue should remain public until there has been due process to show that it has caused libel, slander or endangerment to public safety. The rest is censorship.
+Sakari Maaranen Sitting here in the USA I can see that there is a difference between the US perspective and the EU perspective on what privacy and democracy means. It seems misguided, however, that Google (and search engines in general) is being singled out as the entity in the wrong. It is like saying that the entity that built a road and puts up road signs (that takes you to a bank) should be held responsible for a criminal that takes the same road to go to the bank to rob it. The courts should by going after the owners of the web pages to clean up the information, not Google (or you or me) who just tell people where the information is.
Had you followed this conversation, you'd taken notice that these talking points have already been addressed above.
Yeah, I was afraid that might be so. But just looking at that list of almost 450 comments exhausted me. In any case, Max (the OP) achieved his aim of having people comment ad nauseum on this inane post. (My mistake here was commenting on it sometime in its early days and now every time someone comments this post pops up in my notification. And yeah I know I have the option to mute the post… I guess I'm just masochistic that way! 🙂
+bish s Well, in fairness I don't think that it could have turned out any different with such an inflammatory post title. If you set a fire, don't complain about the charring…
+Sakari Maaranen What +bish s said. Not seeing it in the logic of what you're emphasizing now, so I wouldn't expect to find it any more clearly "above."
Click baiters are even in the woodwork now!
Blocked John Blossom and bish s.
+Sakari Maaranen
You're welcome! Head in sand is a perfect example of your privacy control methods. 😉
Exercising your Right to Forget, I see. Because #ignoringmakesitallgoaway
+Eli Fennell correct on that.
They say they don't have time for reading comprehension. I say I don't have time for muppets.
I'd like to forget this foolish name-calling. May I contact the EU?
Final thoughts.
Guys, the name-calling really did detract from an otherwise interesting exploration here. The closer anybody got to the ad hom line the weaker their point looked from over here.
I'd like to thank everyone that brought in citations. As someone not familiar with EU legal history and not willing to take it on just for this topic, I really appreciated those parts. It seems that even when using the same words our legal systems mean sometimes subtly but significantly different.
I remain uncomfortable for my original reasons, but I have become increasingly swayed towards the "address it at the source" stance. Rather than ponder edge cases I have been considering the "person was convicted of a crime, served their time, and now has an EU right to have that fully redacted from the public record" case.
There is already a de-indexed "things people have wanted you to forget" website, and torrent bundles one can download and search locally. It seems clear that for those with sufficient connections and resources this stuff suddenly has enough value to be brokered. Even if we formally make that illegal, it would persist, so instead it would need to be illegal to use that info, to devalue resale to anyone with real stakes to lose, or something else to disrupt the incentives severely. That's a whole different discussion.
However, if I'm following, as it stands all that gets scrubbed is a google search result for (name) (crime). If I "heard" that (name) had committed (published crime) I could probably figure out a roundabout way to search for "who (committed crime) in (year)", verify my side-channel information, and hey, now its not forgotten AND verified. However if the original sources were scrubbed (ideally, to me, with notices specifying specifically what was to be scrubbed and a large penalty for second violation) – that is, article about the crime might just be pulled, or can be edited to remove whatever specifics are legally required (for example the name of the person), then our earlier searcher will only be able to verify that the crime happened and the person who did it has been scrubbed because the court has decreed it so. To me, that seems more effective at hitting what the intent seems to be. Perhaps some additional mandate to search engines or any caching services that they have to dump their cache every (time period) so scrubbed items are functionally scrubbed.
I realize this isn't entirely on either "side", but I'm less into judging the ruling and more into thinking about all the holes I see in the implementation versus what it seems like the intent was.
Erasing at the sources does not work, because they reside in different jurisdictions. Courts have authority within their jurisdiction. That's why the intervention must happen with the data controllers who bring it to the public within a jurisdiction.
If there was a global international court for these matters with universal authority over all jurisdictions, then it could be handled at the sources.
This is not an opinion, but a logical necessity.
The authority of courts of sovereign countries is also a fact, not an opinion.
Arguing for an opinion of what 'public' means while failing to recognize relevant facts is little more than a demonstration of stubborn ignorance.
+Angyl . Nicely summarized. This whole thing is a debacle, not because there is no merit in the idea of the "right to forget", especially if the published statement has been proven to be wrong, but because someone (the EU courts) thought that they are the mandarins of the whole world and just because they decree something it shall be done. Internet is meant (or, at least, it should be) a public space, with the right of free speech granted to each and everyone of us. There are laws already that deal with wrong, misleading speeches made with malignant intent, and that is the way, imho, they should have gone.
+bish s Well summarized, that's the situation in a nutshell. Politicians grasping for something that is popular but not necessarily productive.
+Sakari Maaranen Erasing at the sources does not work, because they reside in different jurisdictions.
There are also a huge number of sources. You can knock off 75-85% of Internet search from a single source (Google), and most of the rest with a small handful of additional providers (Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc.).
+Edward Morbius But that's not "knocking off" the source – it prejudicially editing specific online information sources to eliminate referrals. And, more to the point, it's expecting only certain information sources such as Google to ramp up to handle these requests – requests best handled first by bureaucrats who can inform information sources of the EU's decisions on the validity of "right to be forgotten" requests. This would then make commercial implementation of RTBF requests similar to other government and court-mandated "takedown" requests – a black-and-white technical function required of ALL online sources referencing this data rather than a very fuzzy ethical and editorial function.
Why is it not reasonable to ask the EU to make these decisions centrally for all online information? It then makes it clear that the EU is the one responsible for enforcing its sense of values.
+John Blossom There's nothing in your comment that hasn't been addressed, in tedious depth, previously.
As I noted on the recent post of yours, you're not introducing any new information, you're re-hashing points which have been demolished. I'd really prefer you not pester me on this topic. If you're not willing to do that, I'll employ Google's technical means of achieving those ends.
Thank you.
+Edward Morbius, above, by "the sources" I was referring to those who first put something accessible online.
I agree that it makes more sense to target the most popular search indices. Destroying every trace of some piece of information is rarely if ever the goal, but controlling its associative distance from certain search targets.
+Sakari Maaranen I think I first got this concept from a Danny Dunn story many years ago. Losing something isn't the same as destroying it. The thing still exists, you're simply lacking the pointer to it.
Search engine indices are the pointers.
+Edward Morbius In other words, you don't want to address the obvious answer – have the EU decide what ought to be censored, and have the EU send the takedown orders. If you don't want to address the obvious out of condescension, that's your privilege, but it doesn't improve the quality of the debate.
Do we know anything for sure about the source range?
While public figures are reported on pretty much everywhere, local scandal is generally covered locally to the extent that I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the vast majority of the discussion of Joe Bob's Bankruptcy or Tina's Affair would be under jurisdiction. Perhaps in certain cases the international public figure versus privacy would collide, like max's earlier example of a prominent criminal (I was able to find out their name pretty easily tho – looks like plenty of sources across the pond don't follow the leaving out the name convention :/), or if Tina's affair was with a married big time movie star (the internet leads me to believe they might be better off pursuing it as defamation in Britain if that's an option), and in those cases I suppose the search engine angle might be called for.
But even then it feels like a band aid that only works on the less internet savvy. Am I missing the intent and just keeping unsavvy people from casual discovery i.e. obscurity is all it is after?
+Angyl . That seems like a reasonable point. And the key point from my perspective is that it's not just about the already famous – it can also be about people entering politics and trying to hide unsavory details of their background that voters may want to consider. Simple example, though perhaps a bit too prominent: Sarah Palin became a candidate for U.S. Vice President, and someone found a photo of her from years earlier in her mayor's office in Wasilla, AK – and you could see on top of the desk a newsletter from the John Birch Society, an organization with extreme political views. Now, if Palin had been able to address that under something like RTBF in those earlier days, the public may have had a misleading perception of her political views.
Another example closer to my personal experience. I had a situation with a new neighbor which required me to address a letter to him. When I looked up his name on web after sending the letter, the first Web site that came up was organizedcrime.com – and there was an article noting that my neighbor was an attorney who had represented family members of a very prominent alleged leader of a Mafia crime family. Misleading? Perhaps from my neighbor's perspective, and I can see where in a situation like this a professional might use RTBF to eliminate information that could be critical to the safety of both the public and specific private citizens.
Apparently there are some cultural/political issues in play regarding RTBF that are clouding the key issue – the EU government is asking for private corporations to use their own judgment in implementing government-mandated censorship under very vague standards, That seems like accountability for the EU government's decisions is being handed off to a limited range of information suppliers whose removal of links will not address the actual availability of this information on the Web and abrogates the EU's responsibility to provide clear and specific take-down orders for removal to information suppliers on a case-by-case basis. Private companies should not be in the business of interpreting vague laws for individual citizens.
Private information brokers can find this information easily enough even if the links are removed, so those willing to pay for private information gathering services are not even touched by this ruling – your ability to be employed or such because of past information in the public domain will not be affected significantly. Once it's public, it's discoverable, and may be residing in a wide variety of private information services scouring the Web. So the illusion of action provided by this court ruling is really just window dressing – it's really only going to hurt people with the least access to information gathering services and not affect the advantages that the rich and powerful have to gather such information about you.
I think +John Blossom's last sentence says it all. By the way +Max Huijgen did you get a chance to write your post about why it is a good law?
Today I stumble across some fuel for those concerned about censorship. At the least it gets down to the awkward side of the problem.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2014/07/first-rule-of-censorship-club-is-you-dont-talk-about-censorship-club/
To take law into your own hands, people disregarding the law… Some people seem to think they can just ignore the rule of law when they feel like it. And also act in an arrogant, bullying fashion while on it.
If you don't like democracy and the law, then what other exceptions would you take? You seem to think that you get to decide which laws you respect and which you don't and which court rulings you just ignore, because you don't like them. Or maybe you think democracy, rule of law and the sovereignty of countries applies only when you feel like it. Nice attitude there.
If you don't get your way, you start acting difficult. This is why I keep saying that people from certain cultures appear immature. In those cultures it's apparently okay to act selfish, not think far, and do whatever you like, disregarding others, and to have a chronic problem with (even legal) authority. That's toddler level maturity right there.
Not to mention that their legislators act like toddlers as well, shutting down the government, etc. It's like a bunch of badly bred kids destroying the house while the parents are away. And now they're on a mission to bring their kindergarten here. Sigh.
+Angyl . Great link, thanks. This happened in various U.S. administrations when perfectly tame government information was labeled "classified" – when at most it might lead to a sense of the public truth independent of what an administration's spin doctors wanted to portray.