Another Right To Be Forgotten Request Backfires Completely
from the the-only-way-it-was-ever-going-to-play-out dept
When the EU Court of Justice issued its "right to be forgotten" ruling, it seemed to forget that there are many more parties involved than simply the aggrieved person standing in front of them. There are those whose articles are being delisted, many of which are journalistic institutions that aren't going to simply lay there and allow some third party to selectively edit their publications.
The Bolton News (UK) just received notification from Google that one of its stories was due to be vanished from Google's search engine. Needless to say, this request has produced another story highlighting the original story the filer(s) wanted delisted.
A STORY in The Bolton News has come under the spotlight of the controversial new "right to be forgotten" ruling…Someone thought this story should just go away. The Bolton News thought otherwise. Now, whoever wanted the original story delisted has another article to add to a future request. But judging from editor-in-chief's comments, adding Bolton News links to a right to be forgotten request is going to be a waste of time.
The 2010 story details a court case in which Ben Barlow, Christopher Mahoney and Christopher Brennan were jailed after they pleaded guilty to violent disorder. They had attacked a group of soldiers who had all served in Afghanistan. The victims told the court they were more frightened in the pub than they had been on the front line.
[...]
In the attack, the thugs glassed paratrooper Adam Evans in the neck and stabbed him in the leg. Another of the soldiers, Jamie Morton, who was kicked and punched on the ground, said he feared he was going to die.
At the trial of the three men, Judge William Morris said: “These victims were all injured. Mr Evans was very gravely injured indeed.”
“As the editor of a newspaper, I believe passionately in the freedom of the press and I will fight any attempts to remove legitimate content…It sounds like the Bolton News will simply highlight each request as it comes in, defeating the requester's attempt to bury bad news. Many other journalism outlets have taken the same stance in the last several days, turning the EU court's ruling into one of the most self-defeating decisions ever rendered.
“Clearly, people who aren’t happy that stories which we have legitimately published should not have the right to have them removed from a Google search, in my view."
The only way to prevent this is for the EU court to start taking action against journalistic entities who subvert the spirit of the ruling or ordering Google to stop notifying those affected, neither of which should even be considered by the legal body. The original ruling was terrible enough, especially in its blissful ignorance of how this "right to be forgotten" would work in practice.
Things can be forgotten, even on the internet. But it's organic. Whatever the steady flow of content doesn't push aside will likely succumb to link rot at some point. Newspaper websites (a favorite target of right to be forgotten requests) experiment with paywalled archives or otherwise make their older articles unavailable (often just sloppy maintenance or coding), solving many of these complainants' problems for them. Issuing a request is pretty much guaranteed to bring it all right back to the surface. Forcing this organic process will almost always backfire, something requesters should keep in mind before filling out Google's webform.
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Filed Under: ben barlow, christopher brennan, christopher mahoney, europe, journalism, right to be forgotten, search engines
Companies: bolton news
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Right to be remembered
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Re: Right to be remembered
We can be blamed for many things but not this one.
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Re: Re: Right to be remembered
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Otherwise known as the 'B...Bu...But I didn't mean it like that' effect
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There's the Streisand Effect of each individual takedown request, but there are also the unintended consequences of the judgment itself.
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I hope you are well. I hate to be a bother, but I see my name listed in TONS of searches on your site. Think you could be a doll and remove them for me? My name is Adolf Hitler. Thanks! Kisses!
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Good on Google
For those who want their comment for an article deleted, how about asking the site to delete your comment instead of deindexing the whole page?
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No right to hide convictions
Under the First Amendment, we have an absolut right to repeat that John Smith was convicted of theft and shame him forever.
It can't be libel if it's true.
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Re: No right to hide convictions
There is no first amendment in the EU.
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Why does Google even comply outside the court's jurisdiction?
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Perhaps manipulations of this law could eventually be stymied with some sort of dynamic url system, where urls systematically change over time, ensuring perpetually "freshened" entries in web-crawler caches (although this would pose some challenges to long term hot-linking, etc.).
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Depends on whether or not Google is diligent enough that they de-index the target of a 301 or 302 redirect from a page subjected to the right to be forgotten as well.
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First Kentucky next the World.
~I'm Gil Fulbright and I approve this message created by someone else
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love it ! ! !
enough media outlets did this, it would not only render that decision moot, but make the 'offended' parties think twice about stirring up more bad pub...
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Enough egg to make a couple dozen omelets
Given that, and despite the 'neither of which should even be considered by the legal body' line in the article, I would not be surprised in the least if they try and go back and order Google to stop informing those affected, since to do otherwise would be to admit to having ruled wrong the first time.
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News stories disappear all the time
These things are theoretically here forever, however, if they don't get any attention, they disappear quite quickly.
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- First there is no censorship here. Google search engine is about algorithms, not free speech (this is Google+). I don't have a source but I remember Google saying that the search results are computed by algorithms and Google is "not guilty" for whatever the rsult is.
- Critics usually point out that the "stupid European judges" "censor" the search engine but not the newspaper. This would be censorship. News in newspapers are done by real people, right?
- But ... no sorry, if oue equate "Google" and "the Internet" it's just your fault. Everybody could visit the relevant newspaper and look what they have and the newspapers could even set up a search engine for their archives. Ok, they don't.
- The "right to be forgotten": I think everybody should have the right that things he or she did are forgotten after some time. Just as the guys at Joe's Diner stop talking (and laughing) about this stupid thing you did in high school. Before Google this happened automatically. Now "not forgetting" is part of a business model (yes, no free speech - just money)
- What the European judges really said that personal information can be removed from Google if it's "out of interest". Example: Did anybody here knew about the Spanish guy starting this? So why should anyone care? This is "out of interest".
- Of course also people more public try to remove information they don't like to see but as long as these persons are in the public the information are still "of interest". Such people are just streisanding.
- Summary: the judges said something like "Google shall not replace real human's memory".
If you are interested in any information Google is removing from their search results ("convicted John Smith") feel free to post it on Google+ ("John Smith convicted criminal" and no one - even not the European Court - is keeping you from this. This is (I think) free speech and can be added to Google's search results.
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The government demanding that a private entity stop disseminating particular information isn't censorship? What is your definition of censorship?
Everybody could visit the relevant newspaper and look what they have and the newspapers could even set up a search engine for their archives.
That doesn't mean telling Google they can't list those links isn't censorship.
I think everybody should have the right that things he or she did are forgotten after some time.
Of course you have the right to think that, you should just understand that means everyone would have the right to restrict what everyone else is allowed to talk about. The right to be forgotten is fundamentally incompatible with the right to free expression, and personally I find the latter FAR more important than the former.
What the European judges really said that personal information can be removed from Google if it's "out of interest". Example: Did anybody here knew about the Spanish guy starting this? So why should anyone care?
So the ruling only applies to those cases where it isn't necessary in the first place?
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