Google Restores Some Links To Articles Removed In 'Right To Be Forgotten' Mess
from the so-how's-this-work-now? dept
Last week, of course, there was a lot of attention around Google alerting publications that some of their stories had been removed from its index over "right to be forgotten" requests, following a dangerous European Court of Justice ruling. Various publications in the UK complained about some of the removals, and requested if there was any sort of appeals process. The BBC was initially told that there was no such process, though the Guardian claimed it was looking for ways to appeal.It appears that the current "appeals" process is based on how much attention and ridiculousness happen in response to the revelations. Because late last week, Google restored some of the links for the Guardian (mainly the ones where the removals made no sense at all).
Either way, this has now created quite a mess, which was easily predictable as soon as the court's ruling came down. How anyone can think a somewhat arbitrary censorship mechanism would function smoothly is beyond me.
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Filed Under: appeals, bbc, europe, free speech, guardian, links, right to be forgotten
Companies: google
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The problem of course is in the order itself, which attempts to make Google responsible for what others may think is relevant or not. The number of cases where this course of action could be reasonable is vanishingly small (and the originating one, where some idiot wants to hide his former bankruptcy, is NOT one - it is highly relevant to other lenders). Of those vanishingly small number of cases, the Streisand effect is likely to make the problem worse, not better.
Google has also been accused of "gaming" this ruling as a form of protest (accepting ridiculous requests), but again, where should the draw that line? The ECJ ruling is particularly useless in that regard. What is actually being gamed is the ruling itself, which is a barn door for abuse.
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Another case, like DMCA notices, where a third party is expected to make correct decision on incomplete information, and hire the necessary expertise, at their own cost, to do so.
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The mess is the lack of paperwork to support the specific elements in the ruling and therefore the lack of a more reasonable test for eligibility of the claims. The way it has been carried out both by the court and Google has been unprofessional. I would call Googles implementation childish and a practical joke, but then again, the lack of specific eligibility testing makes it quite the problem either way.
IIRC right to be forgotten is based on the juridical safeguards of rights upheld by the legal system and law enforcement: Cases have different obsolence dates, based on percieved severity, but a minor crime committed in your youth shall not haunt you the rest of your life since it will disappear from the public registers an employer can get from the police and it cannot be legally pursued.
Trying to expand that legal protection beyond the public system is very questionable since it can be percieved as censorship of free speech.
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So thanks to the UK courts pro-censorship ruling, websites will now be encouraged to prevent people from commenting on their articles.
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Secondly, it wasn't a UK court ruling, but an EU one; and depending on how you define censorship, it was pro-censorship, but pro-privacy. Although all the court really did was say that search engines weren't immune from the existing laws.
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And yet the sites that actually contain this "privacy-invading" data (which search engines do not) are apparently immune from the very same existing laws.
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Nope. The sites have to follow the law as well. The difference is that in some cases the sites' processing of the data (it is about processing, not containing - search engines do process personal data) may fall within an exception to the rules, which may not apply to the search engine.
But going after Google - in a case where they've provided a handy form - is far easier.
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Which is what makes no sense whatsoever to me.
If the disparaging information is a problem, then remove the disparaging information. Censoring search engine results is not removing disparaging information, it's only removing pointers to that information and doing harm to entities that are not responsible for the presence of that information.
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In the original Spanish case the information was on an official government (or government-required?) website. But it was one data entry in thousands (if not millions), and no one would be able to find it unless they happened to go to that page. But because the page was indexed by Google, anyone putting the applicant's name into Google would find the page straight away.
Search engines make finding obscure bits of information (and connecting them up with other data - such as a person's name) really easy; that's their point. But it also means they are particularly important when it comes to data protection.
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Not for long, apparently.
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Kind of like how many brick and mortar business' run on yellow pages.
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The ruling referred to search engines, not to Google.
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Why? There are no guidelines yet on what falls under that 'right to be forgotten'-ruling. And it is not the responsibility of Google but the court(s) to setup those.
What they did now, randomly removing links to big newspaper stories/link pages, did get publicity but does nothing to pressure the correct target into altering their stance.
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just Google?
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Re: just Google?
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Re: just Google?
All search engines are covered by the ruling. But we're only hearing about Google because... well, a cynic would say because what's happened is all PR, with no substance.
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Re: Re: just Google?
We're hearing about it because it was Google that brought the case to the Spanish High Court, and therefore Google was listed as a party when that court stayed proceedings and referred it to the EU Court.
Summary
A Spaniard, Mr Mario González, was concerned that when his name was 'Googled' it showed him involved in a property sale that had gone bad in 1998. He did not dispute the accuracy of the result, but believed that it painted him in a bad light and it was reasonable to have the search results nullified so that such old details would not come to light. Google declined to act in accordance with his wishes, and González approached Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, the Data Protection Agency. The Agency ruled in his favour, And Google appealed to the Audiencia Nacional (High Court). This led to a request for a preliminary ruling in the CJEU as to whether Google was included in the Data Protection Directive, and whether there was in fact a 'right to be forgotten'. In the judgment, Google was included in the scope of the Directive, but of more importance, the Court held that search engines must provide a mechanism to remove search results that are 'inadequate, irrelevant or excessive'. This is of greater significance in that the Regulation will soon be replaced with a new General Data Protection Regulation, which is based on a proposal in 2012. That Regulation includes a 'right to be forgotten', called a 'right to erasure' in which an individual has a limited set of rights to demand that search engines cease providing links to certain results related to that individual.
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Re: just Google?
Google Spain SL, Google Inc.
v
Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), Mario Costeja González
Google was not mentioned in the four paragraphs of the ruling. They referred to 'search engine operators'.
So yes, Bing is also in the same boat.
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I believe Google has already shown the impossibilities associated with actually attempting to do this. I don't think you'd need to dig very deep to uncover just how little the judge comprehends a.) the Internet, and b.) Google.
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Article 12(b) of the Directive contains a sort of "right to be forgotten"; that a person can ask anyone covered by the Directive to stop processing their personal data if that processing falls outside the rules in the Directive.
This recent CJEU ruling (which is a reference interpreting the law) said - among other things - that the data processing search engines do is covered by the Directive.
The judges in this case knew exactly what they were doing, what the consequences would be, and how the Internet works. But they can't make up or change the law. Which is why the Commission and Parliament are in the process of coming up with a new Data Protection law - to fix this problem, and many other issues that have arisen with the law since it was drafted in the 90s.
tl;dr: the court case just says that search engines have to follow the law. So Bing, Yahoo, to the extent that they are search engines, will be covered by it.
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Thats because, to technologically illiterate judges (which is virtually all of them, everywhere), Google *IS* "the internet" therefore they can just "magic wand" it away and comply with any court order no matter how ridiculous.
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The CJEU ruling says that search engines process data, so have to comply with EU data protection rules.
The specific ruling was in reference to a case against Google, which is why the press have focused on them, but it covers any search engine.
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Wouldn't be a search engine, but a handselected collection of links.
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Hey, will ya look at that!
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intentional?
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Re: intentional?
The opportunity was there to make the whole thing seem ridiculous and they are taking advantage of that.
Of course I struggle to see what else they could do really. The ruling is ridiculous.
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Re: intentional?
Bend over backwards to honor a horrible ruling, then when things inevitably go to hell, you and your chums start whining about "filthy pirate Google"?
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Right to be Forgotten
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Not the court's responsibility
But that's not the court's responsibility: they make the rules and let the companies figure how how to follow them. And if the company can't do it (or can't figure out what the rules even mean), then it's back to court!
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Re: Not the court's responsibility
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fugitives
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There are public data term limits to apply, but the court bodged it royally
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Re: There are public data term limits to apply, but the court bodged it royally
Ridiculous. How does a court make a 'quiet' order? The judgment of the court is public record.
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Smoke Screen?
The insane legal ruling was actually intended to allow a massive number of such removals to occur over a short period of time as a smoke screen, so that the few truly important ones could be disappeared quietly in the background while everyone was giggling about the long line-up of obvious assholes trying to hide their obvious assholiness.
Now that the job is done and no-one the wiser, "common sense" will soon appear to have raised its ugly head and these idiotic pro-censorship legal rulings will be removed from the law.
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You do understand the term "smoke screen" right?
I'll try a slightly different wording:
Its all a trick.
The bad boys want to make something on the web disappear without anyone noticing, so they had a law passed that would allow a huge number of "requests" by assholes, to remove the evidence of their assholiness from the web, knowing full well that the assholes would jump at the chance in droves.
Whether or not anything came of these requests - such as "web pages being removed" - is immaterial, because the purpose is to create a chaotic situation during which the very important something that certain parties want removed, can be quietly disappeared, while everyone is busy looking "over there" and giggling at all the assholes.
Once the real purpose of this farce is accomplished, the silly laws will be repealed and nobody will be the wiser.
The third word in my original comment above is "probably".
This was just a suggested rationale behind the making of this absurd law, not a comment on the number of websites that would go missing because of it.
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gmail.com
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