EU Regulators Want Google To Expand Right To Be Forgotten Worldwide And To Stop Telling What Links Have Been Forgotten
from the worldwide-censorship dept
We've been covering the ridiculous ruling in the EU on the "right to be forgotten," which was interpreted to mean that search engines could be forced to delete links to perfectly truthful stories (and even if those stories are allowed to be kept online). Google has been trying to comply with the over 90,000 requests it has received -- nearly half of which it has approved -- and removed from its European searches. The company has been struggling to figure out how to comply with the ruling, and those struggles continue. Originally, it was going to place a notice on search results pages where links had been removed (like it does with copyright takedowns) alerting people that stories were missing. However, regulators told Google that would defeat the purpose. So now, Google's European search results show a message on nearly every search on a "name" that results might have been removed.Either way, once Google started removing the requested stories, it did the right thing, alerting the websites that links were being removed. Of course, that just resulted in many of those publications writing about it, and bringing the original news back into the public eye.
In response to all of this, European regulators are apparently quite angry again, summoning representatives from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (but mainly Google) to argue that the removals should be global, not just for Europe and that the companies should stop informing websites if their stories were removed. One hopes that these three companies would fight strongly against either such proposal. The idea that Europe can dictate how search engines in other parts of the world work is dangerous. We've already noted that a Canadian court seems to think it has similar powers, and that's going to create a huge mess. Any time courts and regulators in one country think they can dictate how websites work in other countries, that is creating a massive jurisdictional mess (where contradictory rulings may run into each other), as well as allowing oppressive states to claim they, too, have the right to dictate how the web works in more open countries.
As for blocking sites from being informed, that would clearly go against basic transparency principles, and lead to yet another huge mess for websites which will (quite reasonably) wonder why their stories have gone totally missing from Google searches (especially if forced to extend it around the globe).
Of course, the real problem here is with the original ruling. The idea that public information that is widely disseminated already can magically be made private because someone thinks it's embarrassing and that it's no longer important is simply a ridiculous assertion in the first place. All of the problems that have come in implementing this are because the initial premise -- trying to disappear public information -- is so messed up.
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Filed Under: eu, jurisdiction, regulators, right to be forgotten, transparency
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo
Reader Comments
The First Word
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One question
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Re:
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If you don't want your stupid shit all over the internet, then don't do the stupid shit in the first place.
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What the hell are these brain dead politicians and justices thinking! They need knocked off their high horses before their totalitarian power-trip inflicts serious damage on what's left of free society.
Right to be forgetting is a law attempting to undermine any accountability public officials face, by censoring the media.
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This is why
For all of those people who commented here wondering why we in the US were getting upset about the RTBF stuff -- this is why. We already have more than enough censorship here. We don't need to import yours.
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Re: One question
If the EU thinks it can control the entire world of Google search results, give the EU a taste of the Great Firewall of China for a few months.
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What I think the real issue here is...
By being corrupt, they get paid more by the people who pay them to get what they want out of the law. That's the main reason the fight against corruption has been so long and hard thus far: the politicians wanting to get paid more than they are getting, thinking it's not enough.
On another note, if RTBF was expanded all over the world, what's to say it wouldn't be used to keep us from being able to fight back against secret legislation deals like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/CISPA that were leaked by people hopefully because it was the right thing to do. Someone could pre-empt this possibly by asking Google (more like threatening them, I'll bet) to remove anything about said agreements as it comes up, reducing the number of people such leaks get to and thus weakening opposition.
So unless the leak spreads like wildfire and everyone has it very quickly, we might be looking at the beginning of the government censoring information to disempower people from opposing their decisions.
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Next Up...
The people in power have the most to gain from this ruling, so you can bet your ass they're going to support it.
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If anyone in any country can delist a link
After everyone has all their stuff "forgotten", what will be left on the search engines will be advertising and puffery.
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Re: Re: One question
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The solution, as with online reputation smearing, is to change name. Putting the wine back in the bottle is just not easy as soon as it is in your stomach to defile an analogy.
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Re: This is why
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Re: This is why
Whose laws hold precedent? Does Europe get to violate American's rights to free speech because that have a law that censors that American's speech on the internet?
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Re: Re: This is why
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Re: If anyone in any country can delist a link
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jul 25th, 2014 @ 12:22pm
This sort of blocking in the US would run into a mess of first amendment issues for example
The entire thing is rediculous
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Re: Next Up...
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Re: Re: This is why
Which laws apply? All of them, of course. It might be impossible soon for some companies to operate in both the US and the EU due to conflicting data retention/data privacy laws.
They have the option of pulling out of Europe, I guess.
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How is this any different than what the US does?
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Fuck the EU
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Re: Re:
'Thanks to recent legal obligations imposed upon us by the EU Regulatory courts, it has become too legally problematic to allow anyone from EU countries to use our services. If you would like to object to these new legal impositions that we face, and the effects they are having on you, we have put together a simple form which will allow you to contact your government representatives, and tell them what you think.
Unfortunately, until the law is changed, we can no longer offer you access to our services, as the legal liabilities we could face are too problematic. We apologize for this inconvenience, and hope the issue will be cleared up soon.'
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I think it's obvious how this will go...
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Re: One question
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Re: Re: One question
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Re: What I think the real issue here is...
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petition
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They're just following the US's lead. After all, the US thinks it can police the entire internet, (MegaUpload anyone?) so why shouldn't every other country have a hand in screwing things up?
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Re: Actions have consequences
I most of western Europe, people convicted of crimes are not named publicly. The idea is that crime is a symptom of a failure in society, rather than something that they should take all the blame for. By not forever shaming the individual, you encourage rehabilitation.
Even criminal record checks are handled to protect the individual. If your criminal record check returns as unsatisfactory, the individual is told first so they can withdraw their application to a job.
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The EU weighs the right to an individuals privacy far higher than the United States does, this ruling was a reflection of that.
As for the 'well don't serve countries in the EU' argument, Google makes half it's profits in the EU it would be commercial suicide.
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If it's nothing even close to state censorship, then please explain the difference. I'm not seeing it at all.
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When mentally stable people screw up, and everyone does, they usually admit it, apologize and move on. The sociopaths attempt to deny, rationalize and blame others for what they have done. They scream about violations of their privacy which is complete bullshit and everyone knows it. They are pathetic and yet receive coddling, it is humanistic but counterproductive in that it reinforces their behavior.
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This law and its interpretation will spiral into the same kind of stinking pile of s... that the cookie directive has become.
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Hardly commercial suicide. If their revenue were cut in half, they'd still be pretty damned profitable. If they were to actually start censoring search results for the whole world, though, it would be another blow to their usefulness and reputation. That will also harm their business.
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That means that enforcement of the RTBF will fall on wholly internal mechanisms: visiting non-EU search engines will become a prosecutable offence, which means that everyone accessing the internet will have to be identified and monitored. TOR, VPNs, and proxies will have to be criminalized. Basically, enforcing the RTBF will require 24X7 surveillance of every single citizen's internet activity.
Way to go with that whole "privacy" thing, EU.
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There would not be such a ruling, because Google has no obligation to list anything. In fact it would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to force them to list something. All the NYT could do is complain publicly. However, I find it extremely unlikely that Google would comply with an EU ruling in the US. The EU court would have no enforcement power.
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IF Google is found to be a monopoly, and Google has it's own news service, it could be considered a Sherman Act violation if Google removes links to competitors services even if ordered to do so by foreign governments. Especially if the service Google removes the link from is based and/or targeted outside that foreign governments interests/jurisdiction (e.g. Europe ordering Google US, google.com, to remove a link).
Rock, hard place.
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Jurisdiction
The EU *can't* force Google to extend its censorship around the globe. Maybe it thinks it can, but it can't tell an American company how it has to operate in America (or Japan or China, etc.).
Or, more accurately, it can tell Google that, but Google does not have to comply, nor is there any way for the EU to force them to.
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Re: Re: Re: This is why
> to the US government.
No, it applies to *any* government action if taken against US citizens in the US. In this case, the EU is a government acting against a US company and attempting to censor speech inside the US. That brings them under the umbrella of the 1st Amendment.
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> has operations in Europe, and possesses assets there.
Which Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al, should sell off and abandon. Leave their search engines and services available for EU citizens to access on the internet, but get out of those countries physically.
And then they can ignore all this bullshit from the EU courts. Let the judges impotently pound their gavels and demand whatever they want. They won't get it. Leave those governments with one option: either completely block these immensely popular services nationwide and suffer the repercussions from their citizens, or leave it all the fuck alone and let people be free.
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