Court Says Search Engines Not Making Things Disappear The Moment They're Deleted From Third-Party Sites Not 'Defamation'

from the the-definition-of-'tort'-is-NOT-'something-I-don't-personally-li dept

Eric Goldman brings the news of another misguided defamation lawsuit brought against search engines (plaintiff sued Google and Yahoo separately). The problem isn't that Google or Yahoo failed to comply with takedown requests. (There weren't any involved.) It was that the plaintiff -- Keyonna Ferrell -- deleted stuff she had posted to Pinterest and it kept showing up in search results for a few months after she vanished away the… well, I will now quote the complaint directly because anything otherwise wouldn't do it justice.

The facts of this case are:

I have a pininterest page. I changed it around Feb 5th of 2015. Before I put all the celebrity stuff up. I changed my screen name from Keyonna Ferrell to K Ferrell and the picture I had up for a week was also removed from pininterest. I have an email of the exact I did this But its vague. I have another emil from pininterest with proof it was removed but its in March. I will copy the emails below. The pictures were removed about 6 weeks after I complained but it was way too long. I have three threads all sent to legal legal@google.com they are not one message sent in one day they are messages sometimes once a day sometimes two and three times to legal a day over the course of three months google. Changed it settings, this is my email these are the threads. I usally send a copy to myself of each emails sent to google but all these emails were sent to LEGAL you cant tell unless you click inside. That's google for you. They changed their settings when I started taking pictures. I have pasted emails below. I am STILL having problems with them due to the page people are retaliating I ve been to four different hotels ive dealt wit stolen property, defemation of character, privacy being taken (picture wa deleted before celebrity went up pininterest and google resurfaced the images A month after I deleted it off my page) Defamation of character.

So, the crux of the case is that Google and Yahoo took "too long" to "forget" photos Keyonna Ferrell posted publicly on a third party's website. But nothing she alleges adds up to the injury she's claiming.

Ferrell alleges that she put information on the internet that remained accessible through the Yahoo search engine and thus available for viewing by the public after she had removed the images from Pinterest. She also alleges that a video not associated with her appears among search results based on her name. Nothing about this allegation suggests that the information made available was false. Ferrell therefore fails to state a claim for defamation.

Goldman notes that this is an interesting claim (albeit "interesting" in a way that pro se filings often are).

The court doesn’t say how many days elapsed between the alleged Pinterest removals and Google/Yahoo’s alleged failure to update their search database, nor do we know if Google and Yahoo had good reasons for delaying their deletions. I do know we’d see many dubious lawsuits if plaintiffs can sue search engines for taking too long to delete removed items from their databases.

This would be a ridiculous outcome, but all it takes is one significant case. This isn't it. As Goldman notes, US law differs significantly from the European legal interpretations of search engines' obligations in light of the "right to be forgotten" decision. Were that applicable here, Ferrell may have been successful in claiming damages for "delays" by third parties unrelated to the service where the content was originally posted.

If you're interested in reading some more of Keyonna Ferrell's legal excursions, she has also sued Quality Inn for... something. All I know is it revolves around a misplaced phone charger, some guy named TBOY, a missing roll of toilet paper, an unrecovered stash of personal documents and many, many incidents in which people failed to take Ferrell seriously.

Filed Under: defamation, keyonna ferrell, pro se, right to be forgotten, search engines
Companies: google, pinterest, yahoo

Judge Suggests Attorney General Jim Hood Is Unconstitutionally Threatening Google 'In Bad Faith'

from the ya-think? dept

About a month ago, we noted that a federal court had granted a temporary injunction blocking a subpoena issued by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, demanding all sorts of information from Google. At the time, the judge only said that Google's argument was "stronger" than Hood's, but said a full ruling would come out in time. That full ruling [pdf] is now out, and boy, does it make Jim Hood's anti-Google vendetta look questionable -- specifically saying that there is "significant evidence of bad faith" on the part of Hood to try to use his government position to unconstitutionally coerce Google into making changes to its service that it has no legal obligation to make.

If you don't recall, Hood has a long-standing obsession with Google, despite having an astounding level of ignorance about how the search engine actually operates. In his anti-Google rants, Hood makes statements that are blatantly false and repeatedly argues that Google is to blame merely because its search engine finds websites that Hood's office doesn't like and doesn't think should exist at all. And that doesn't even touch on the now known fact that the MPAA secretly funded Hood's investigation and wrote nearly every word of the threatening letters sent to Google.

While Hood and various MPAA supporters have insisted that he's clearly in the right, at least federal judge Henry Wingate doesn't see much to support that. Hood tried desperately to keep this issue out of federal court, using a variety of claims, including the so-called "Younger Abstention" which argues that federal courts should stay out of certain issues. However, as Wingate notes, that only applies in three specific cases, none of which apply to Hood's campaign against Google -- and, even if any of them did apply, there's a further exception for "bad faith" -- and Wingate is pretty convinced that Hood is acting in bad faith:

Moreover, even if the Younger elements were satisfied here, the court would not be required to abstain here because an exception to the application of the doctrine applies. Indeed, federal courts may disregard the Younger doctrine when a state court proceeding was brought in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing the federal plaintiff... Google has presented significant evidence of bad faith, allegedly showing that Attorney General Hood’s investigation and issuance of the subpoena represented an effort to coerce Google to comply with his requests regarding content removal. As previously discussed, the Attorney General made statements, on multiple occasions, which purport to show his intent to take legal action against Google for Google’s perceived violations. When Google declined to fulfill certain requests, the Attorney General issued a 79-page subpoena shortly thereafter. The court is persuaded that this conduct may evidence bad faith on the part of the Attorney General.

The court also notes that Hood clearly recognizes that many of his attacks on Google are blocked by Section 230 of the CDA (which, again, say you can't blame a service provider for actions of its users), because Hood himself signed a letter to Congress asking for Section 230 to be amended to exempt investigations by state attorneys general (we wrote about that dangerous effort at the time as well).

From there, Judge Wingate notes that it seems clear that Hood is likely violating Google's First Amendment rights too, even noting that the subpoena itself appears to be retaliation for protected free expression:

Furthermore, the court also is persuaded that Google has demonstrated a substantial likelihood that it will prevail on its claim that Attorney General Hood has violated Google’s First Amendment rights by: regulating Google’s speech based on its content; by retaliating against Google for its protected speech (i.e., issuing the subpoena); and by seeking to place unconstitutional limits on the public’s access to information. First, the relevant, developing jurisprudence teaches that Google’s publishing of lawful content and editorial judgment as to its search results is constitutionally protected.... The Attorney General’s interference with Google’s judgment, particularly in the form of threats of legal action and an unduly burdensome subpoena, then, would likely produce a chilling effect on Google’s protected speech, thereby violating Google’s First Amendment rights.

Additionally, it is well-settled that the Attorney General may not retaliate against Google for exercising its right to freedom of speech by prosecuting, threatening prosecution, and conducting bad-faith investigations against Google.... As explained supra, Google has submitted competent evidence showing that the Attorney General issued the subpoena in retaliation for Google’s likely protected speech, namely its publication of content created by third-parties. Given the gravity of the rights asserted herein, the court finds it appropriate to enjoin further action on behalf of the Attorney General until a determination on the merits of Google’s claims is made.

Judge Wingate also sides with Google on the 4th Amendment, noting that the broad subpoena appears to be a "burdensome fishing expedition" that goes well beyond what the Attorney General is allowed to request.

Google also wins on the key issue that the MPAA was using Hood to press: how it handles searches for copyright-covered material. As Google points out, copyright is a federal law issue, not a state law issue, so the requests regarding copyright are preempted by federal law. Hood (and, apparently, his MPAA-paid lawyers who helped draw up the subpoena) tried, weakly, to get around this preemption by arguing that by finding unauthorized material, Google was "misleading customers." That doesn't fly:

The Attorney General admits that certain requests contained in the subpoena “could arguably be used to show copyright infringement” (AG Response, p. 30), but argues that the same information could also be used to expose Google’s various practices of misleading customers. The court is not persuaded that the Attorney General’s posited theoretical basis for making these requests is sufficient for the purpose of rebutting Google’s preemption allegation.

Basically, the judge clearly recognizes Hood's effort for what it was: a broad fishing expedition that was partly "retaliation" against Google for daring to stand up for its right to run an online search engine. The case is far from over, but Hood (and his MPAA-assisted team) are going to have to move on to some other plan of attack. Maybe (just maybe), they can focus on (1) going after actual criminals, rather than made up ones and (2) telling the MPAA to learn how to innovate, rather than blame Google for its own failures.

Filed Under: attorneys general, bad faith, blame, copyright, dmca, first amendment, henry wingate, jim hood, mississippi, safe harbors, search engines, section 230
Companies: google

Spanish Court Limits Scope Of EU's Right To Be Forgotten

from the more-clarity-needed dept

EU's 'right to be forgotten' is still relatively new -- the original ruling was made less than a year ago. Since then, the EU courts and companies have been trying to work out what it means in practice, which has led to some broadening of its reach. But an interesting court ruling in Spain seems to limit its scope. It concerns the following case, reported here by Stanford's Center for Internet and Society:

The claimant was a Spanish citizen who found that when typing his name on Google Search, the results included a link to a blog with information about a crime he had committed many years ago. While the official criminal records had already been cancelled, the information was thus still findable on the internet.

The Spanish Data Protection Authority (DPA) made two rulings. One was that Google should remove the information from its search engine, and the other was that Google should remove personally identifiable information from a blog hosted on its Blogger platform. When these decisions were reviewed by Spain's National High Court, it confirmed the first ruling, and clarified that Google needed to remove the link to the criminal records information from its search results. However, it did not confirm the second ruling:

The National High Court reversed that and held that the responsible for the processing is not Google but the blog owner. It further held that the DPA cannot order Google to remove the content within a procedure for the protection of the data subject's right to erasure and to object.

This is significant, because it says the "controller of the processing" -- a key concept in EU data protection law -- is the blog owner, not Google, and so the latter cannot be forced to take down a blog post. The Center for Internet and Society post notes:

Arguably, under the rationale that the platform is not the controller of the processing, other user generated content sites such as YouTube or social networking sites might also fall outside the scope of the right to be forgotten.

Well, not entirely outside the scope: presumably, search engines could still be required to remove links to user-generated content, but it would be the creator of that content that would be asked to remove it entirely, not the hosting company. Clearly, further cases will be needed to clarify how exactly this will work in Spain, and whether it applies anywhere else.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: blogs, eu, right to be forgotten, search engines, social media, spain
Companies: google

EU Thinks It Has Jurisdiction Over The Global Internet: Says Right To Be Forgotten Should Be Global

from the because-of-course dept

Back in May, of course, a troubling ruling by the EU Court of Justice said that search engines had to disappear links on searches for certain people's names if that information was somehow no longer relevant. This, of course, kicked off a "right to be forgotten" craze in Europe, where thousands of people sought to have embarrassing stories about them removed from Google's results on their names. In July, we noted that EU regulators were suggesting that this "right to be forgotten" should apply globally, rather than just in Europe, as Google had currently implemented it. Google pushed back on this idea, but apparently without success. Last week, the EU's data protection officials released new "guidelines" [pdf] that argue the right to be forgotten should apply globally.

Specifically, it argues that if a person's privacy rights are violated by having results show up in search engines in Europe, then those same rights are violated if they show up in any non-EU search results as well (all emphasis in the original):

The [data protection working group] considers that in order to give full effect to the data subject’s rights as defined in the Court’s ruling, de-listing decisions must be implemented in such a way that they guarantee the effective and complete protection of data subjects’ rights and that EU law cannot be circumvented. In that sense, limiting de-listing to EU domains on the grounds that users tend to access search engines via their national domains cannot be considered a sufficient means to satisfactorily guarantee the rights of data subjects according to the ruling. In practice, this means that in any case de-listing should also be effective on all relevant .com domains.

Under EU law, everyone has a right to data protection.

The key line here is not actually bolded in the original. It's the "this means that in any case de-listing should also be effective on all relevant .com domains." Basically, if it can be reached from Europe, it has to be blocked. Or, in even shorter form, "EU regulations apply around the globe online." That's a really, really, bad idea. Because now how will the EU respond to other countries pushing their own silly censorship efforts globally? Russia can claim that anything about homosexuality must be blocked globally. China can argue that anything about Tibet or government corruption can be blocked globally. And how will the EU respond?

This is so troubling that even folks who actually support the original ruling are speaking out about how troubling these new guidelines are. Even GigaOm's David Meyer, who regularly has supported the right to be forgotten (which he argues is an unfair description of "the right to be de-linked"), says that this is bad:

I can understand Falque-Pierrotin’s logic, but even I — someone who finds value in the concept of the right to be de-linked — think this is an awful decision.

It’s part of a worrying trend, taking place around the world, for local or regional internet-related rules to apply everywhere. Again, it is understandable why regulators want to do this – the internet is a global medium, and it’s near-impossible to geographically limit effective regulation – but the result is layers of overlapping jurisdictions.

Even if Europeans believe strongly in this right-to-be-forgotten idea, they should be, as Meyers is, troubled by the idea that an EU ruling can impact the global internet. And yes, as Meyers points out, the US is often guilty of pretending that its laws apply to the global internet as well, and that should be equally troubling.

Filed Under: eu, free speech, jurisdiction, privacy, right to be forgotten, search engines

EU Parliament Wants To Break Up Google... Because It's Big & American Or Something

from the gotta-any-better-reason? dept

On Friday, the Financial Times broke the story that the European Parliament is going to call for breaking up Google. Of course, the European Parliament can't actually do that, but it appears designed to put pressure on the EU Commission, which has been talking about antitrust actions against Google for quite some time. While it had looked like there was a settlement earlier this year, those plans more or less appeared to fall apart. Just recently, we wrote about efforts to force Google to change some of its search results in Europe -- and noted how problematic it gets when governments start telling search engines how to program their algorithms.

But, actually breaking up Google would go a hell of a lot further. The idea had been floated earlier this year by a top German official, but who would have thought anyone would take it seriously.

And here's the thing: as far as I can tell, there isn't any real reason for trying to break up Google, other than the fact that it's very big and very not European.

There's no discussion about any actual harm... just the fact that some people don't like the fact that the company is so big (and not European):

Since his nomination to be the EU’s digital commissioner, Germany’s Günther Oettinger has suggested hitting Google with a levy for displaying copyright-protected material; has raised the idea of forcing its search results to be neutral; and voiced concerns about its provision of software for cars.

Google has become a lightning rod for European concerns over Silicon Valley, with consumers, regulators and politicians assailing the company over issues ranging from its commercial dominance to its privacy policy. It has reluctantly accepted the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten, which requires it to consider requests not to index certain links about people’s past.

If they were alleging real consumer harm, that would be one thing, but no one seems to be discussing that.

The NY Times has more details on the expected resolution, which talks about "unbundling" Google's various other services from the search engine:

The language in the draft resolution calling for the break up of powerful search engines does not attack Google directly. Instead, according to a version seen by The New York Times, the resolution calls on the European Commission “to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services” to introduce more competition into online search in Europe.

The resolution was written by Andreas Schwab, a member of the center-right European People’s Party from Germany, where powerful publishing groups have strongly campaigned for measures to rein in Google’s market power.

If true, then it seems that Microsoft -- one of the leading drivers behind antitrust actions in Europe -- may have shot itself in the foot here, since it, too, is a "search engine" that has plenty of other "commercial services."

While I do think antitrust is an important tool in stopping abusive monopolistic powers that block out any and all competition, it seems only reasonable that you should at least have to show some sort of actual consumer harm. Furthermore, it's difficult to see how this plan would actually do what its backers seem to want to accomplish. Breaking up Google, if it can even be done realistically, doesn't magically lead to more search engines in the market. There are lots of upstart search engines out there trying -- we hear about new ones all the time. And they're not, in any way, "blocked" by Google. So what would this move do other than punish Google for being successful?

Filed Under: antitrust, breakups, competition, consumer harm, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, search engines
Companies: google, microsoft

Google Continues To Try To Appease Hollywood, Though It Is Unlikely To Ever Be Enough

from the because-of-course-not dept

Google has come out with the latest version of its "How Google Fights Piracy" report (pdf link), going to great lengths to show how the company goes above and beyond what is required by law to try to drive people to authorized copies of content while also increasing opportunities for content creators to monetize their own content. There really aren't too many surprises in the report -- it just looks like an extension of what they've said in the past. The company is apparently about to roll out an update to its program that "downranks" certain sites based on how many DMCA notices it gets -- something that's been a huge point of contention from the RIAA and MPAA. In effect Google is basically saying to the major music and movie companies: you guys still haven't figured out how to optimize your content for search engines (like nearly everyone else online) so, fuck it, we'll do it for you if you'll just stop these ridiculous accusations. Of course, it's unlikely to work.

Just this week James Murdoch insisted, incorrectly, that search engines love piracy because it brings them revenue. This has never made any sense at all, but it's a myth that flows through the legacy entertainment industry. How Google actually makes any money from those links is never explained, because there isn't an answer. And the question of why the industry doesn't do a better job getting its own content more highly ranked is ignored as well.

And, of course, there's a real risk that by strengthening the "signalling" power of DMCA notices, what Google is really doing is giving the legacy players a tool for search engine "de-optimization", so that rather than improving their own offerings, they now have every incentive in the world to just file a bunch of DMCA notices against sites they don't like. This is why there's reasonable fear from many that this new move by Google will actually lead to an increase in bogus DMCA notices that result in legitimate content being censored.

But, here's the thing: as we said when Google first came out with this report, it will never be enough for the legacy guys in Hollywood. That's because they incorrectly blame Google for their own inability to adapt to the changing market. They blame their diminishing revenue on Google, and even as Google makes it harder and harder to find unauthorized content, that revenue isn't going to come back... so they'll still blame Google. But Google was never the problem. The legacy entertainment industry and its political supporters will continue to point to search results that don't exist and search terms that are never used as some sort of "proof" because that's what they do. Rather than adapt, they really just want Google to do things for them. And for whatever reason, Google is doing more and more... and it's unlikely to ever please the likes of James Murdoch, because Google "not doing things" was never the real problem.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, hollywood, piracy, search engines, takedowns
Companies: google

UK Culture Secretary: Search Engines Must Magically Stop Piracy Or Else!

from the good-luck-with-that dept

You'd think that after years and years of pointless banter along these lines that people in power would understand just how ridiculous they sound when they try to blame search engines for infringement. TorrentFreak points out that the UK's Culture Secretary Sajid Javid gave a barn raising speech to folks from the British recording industry. It starts out with the usual political fluff about just how important the recording industry is and how much money the government is forking over to the industry in questionable subsidies. And, apparently Javid has no qualms directly admitting to accepting favors (bribes?) from the industry. Specifically he tells a "joke" about now his kids thing he's cool, because he can get hot concert tickets ("my new-found ability to get tickets for the Capital FM Summertime Ball, or Sam Smith at Somerset House!"), whereas in his previous job no one was rushing to give him such favors. It's a joke, but it's pretty telling.

Then, about halfway through, he gets to the meat of the speech, in which Javid talks about the need to (of course) ratchet up copyright laws even more. Because that's the red meat of any speech to the recording industry.

People in your industry have a true vocation. You identify talented artists and record, release and publicise their work not just to make money, but because you love music. You have a passion for it. And intellectual property protection underpins that passion. It allows you to do what you do best. Without enforceable copyright there would be no A&R, no recording studios, no producers, no session musicians, no publicity, no artwork.

Now, copyright law absolutely does enable one particular business model, but to argue that there would be no industry, no producers, no session musicians, no publicity and no artwork without enforceable copyright is just silly. And easily disproved since (1) there was plenty of artwork and music before that (2) there are still plenty of people who produce music without relying on copyright as a business model and (3) "session musicians" tend not have a copyright in the music they play anyway. They get paid session wages. That's not about copyright.

Note how he insists that the recording industry is not in it for the money, but for the "passion." He's pretty sure of this, even though copyright has nothing to do with passion, and everything to do with money. But when it comes to the internet sites he doesn't like, he's absolutely positive the opposite is true:

As I said earlier, you work in music because you love it. Copyright crooks don’t love music. They love money, and they’ve been attracted to the industry solely by its potential to make them rich. Take away their profits and you take away their reason for being.

Interesting. Because most of those sites make almost no money. And, of course, the vast majority of file sharing happens between individuals for no profit at all. Are there some sites making some money from ads? Yes, but it's a tiny amount. And, um, as we've pointed out in the past, if it was such a lucrative business, wouldn't that suggest that the industry players themselves should get into the business and provide a better product?

But, the main point he's making is the favorite trope of the industry: that piracy is really all the big internet companies' fault, and he's demanding that they wave their magic wand, or he'll get legislation passed that forces them to wave their magic wand.

Let me be absolutely clear that I completely agree with Mike Weatherley when he says that the search engines also have to play their part. They must step up and show willing. That’s why Vince Cable and I have written to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, asking them to work with you to stop search results sending people to illegal sites. And let me be perfectly clear: if we don’t see real progress, we will be looking at a legislative approach. In the words of Martin Mills, “technology companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters.”

We wrote about Weatherley's ridiculous comments earlier this year, but apparently Javid would like to double down on them. Here's the stuff he leaves out: what's an "illegal" site? Who defines what is or is not an illegal site? The legacy entertainment industry once claimed that YouTube is an illegal site. Should Google, Microsoft and Yahoo block all traffic to YouTube? Or what about Veoh, which they also declared to be an illegal site, until it was shut down. Only later did a court rule it to be perfectly legal. Oops. Too late.

What about Soundcloud? Or the Internet Archive? Or Vimeo? All of those were on a list that Universal Music helped create a few years ago of "illegal sites" on which no advertising could be placed.

So, again, how exactly are they determining what is and what is not an "illegal" site? That seems kind of important, because history shows this industry isn't very good at figuring it out. Remember, this is the same industry that tried to ban the VCR and the MP3 player entirely. I have a real problem with thinking that they're the final judges on what is a "legal" or "illegal" site.

And, of course all of this leaves out that very, very, very little piracy happens because of someone going to a search engine and typing in the name of an artist. We looked at the data, and there's almost no evidence that search is a major driver of piracy -- especially when it comes to someone looking up an artist's name or songs. In some cases, where people do searches directly related with copyright infringement, it may help them find an unauthorized track, but it's difficult to believe that the person doing such a search is looking for a way to pay in the first place.

In other words, it's pretty ridiculous to blame search engines for helping people find what they're looking for. The real problem is that the industry hasn't been giving people what they're looking for. Trying to ban search engines from actually helping people isn't exactly a reasonable solution. It's a bad idea that won't work.

The rest of his speech is the usual misleading stats and ridiculous assumptions. He talks about how many unauthorized downloads there are, never bothering to consider how many of those would actually involve payment -- or how many of those might be happening because there aren't useful, cheap and convenient alternatives. It's just all "piracy." He talks about how they're throwing millions at an "education" campaign. This is the old trope that comes up over and over again. "If only," people think, "everyone learned about copyrights, they'd stop infringing." Yeah, right. It's never worked. People don't download unauthorized tracks because they don't know about copyright law. They know. Education is a waste of money -- and nearly all educational campaigns are so laughable that the people they're directed at just laugh at them (often because they actually understand the issues better).

If, as Javid claims, music really "matters" to the UK then creating a bogus "war" with the tech industry (the industry that is actually delivering real solutions) seems like the exact wrong way about helping out. It's just extending the bogus narrative that the recording industry should sit back and let the government and other industries "solve" their failure to adapt to a changing marketplace in which music lovers want a better product.

Filed Under: copyright, culture secretary, education, enforcement, myths, sajid javid, search engines, uk
Companies: bpi

Max Mosley Continues His Quixotic And Misguided Quest: Sues Google For Still Finding Photos He Doesn't Like

from the not-him-again dept

Oh Max Mosley. The guy who's basically guaranteed that the press keeps writing about the "sex party" pictures involving him and five sex workers that were leaked to the press years ago. Mosley has basically dedicated his life to reminding the public about those pictures by fighting a ridiculous war to blame everyone for those pictures existing on the internet. He's actually won a few lawsuits against Google, in which the company has been told to do the impossible: make the photos of him disappear. Now he's decided to sue the company yet again, this time in the UK (he's already sued in France and Germany). Mosley's really big win over the original newspaper, News of the World, was mostly over the fact that they called it a "Nazi sex party" and he insists that the party wasn't Nazi-themed (an area of some sensitivity, as Max's father was friends with Hitler).

This case is not directly related to the recent "right to be forgotten" situation in the EU, but might be considered a close cousin of it. It's still based on the ridiculous assertion that the fact that some of these pictures are still online can be blamed on Google. Mosley, apparently, is not big on understanding how the internet works. And he's not above stretching the rulings in the courts:

His lawyers said the case concerned "the ability of individuals within the UK to enforce their rights against the large corporations that control access to the internet". The statement added: "It seeks to compel Google to stop gathering and publishing images that the English high court decided in 2008 were unlawful in the landmark privacy case Mosley v News Group Newspapers."

Except that Google is not the one "gathering and publishing" the images. And the images were not determined to be "unlawful" as a whole, just in the context of the situation in which they were published. But, still, Mosley has decided that Google is the clear enemy:

"Adherence to the rule of law is essential to any society. This must include compliance with the decisions of the courts. As the gateway to the internet, Google makes enormous profits and has great influence, so I have not taken this action lightly. But Google should operate within the law rather than according to rules it makes itself. It cannot be allowed to ignore judgments in our courts."

Except, of course, Google is not "ignoring" the law. It is doing what it does: searching the internet and helping people find what they're looking for that is on the internet. Still, Mosley has tons of money and appears to want to spend it all making sure that the sex party keeps popping up in the news over and over again. If he'd just let this story die, it basically would have disappeared years ago. But through his own actions he keeps making it news again and again and again. Even the BBC appears to be trying to explain to Mosley pretty directly how the Streisand Effect works...

Filed Under: max mosley, search engines, secondary liability, streisand effect, uk
Companies: google

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…

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.”

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.

“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…

“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."

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.

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.

Filed Under: ben barlow, christopher brennan, christopher mahoney, europe, journalism, right to be forgotten, search engines
Companies: bolton news

Distributed Search Engines, And Why We Need Them In The Post-Snowden World

from the easier-said-than-done dept

One of the many important lessons from Edward Snowden's leaks is that centralized services are particularly vulnerable to surveillance, because they offer a single point of weakness. The solution is obvious, in theory at least: move to decentralized systems where subversion of one node poses little or no threat to the others. Of course, putting this into practice is not so straightforward. That's especially true for search engines: creating distributed systems that are nonetheless capable of scaling so that they can index most of the Web is hard. Despite that challenge, distributed search engines do already exist, albeit in a fairly rudimentary state. Perhaps the best-known is YaCy:

YaCy is a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. We want to achieve freedom of information through a free, distributed web search which is powered by the world's users.

...

The resulting decentralized web search currently has about 1.4 billion documents in its index (and growing -- download and install YaCy to help out!) and more than 600 peer operators contribute each month. About 130,000 search queries are performed with this network each day.

Another is Faroo, which has an interesting FAQ that includes this section explaining why even privacy-conscious non-distributed search engines are problematic:

Some search engines promise privacy, and while they look like real search engines, they are just proxies. Their results don't come from their own index, but from the big incumbents (Google, Bing, Yahoo) instead (the query is forwarded to the incumbent, and the results from incumbent are relayed back to the user).

Not collecting logfiles (of your ip address and query) and using HTTPS encryption at the proxy search engine doesn't help if the search is forwarded to the incumbent. As revealed by Edward Snowden the NSA has access to the US based incumbents via PRISM. If the search is routed over a proxy (aka "search engine") the IP address logged at the incumbent is that from the proxy and not from the user. So the incumbent doesn't have the users IP address, and the search engine proxy promises not to log/reveal the user IP, while HTTPS prevents eavesdropping on the way from the user to the search engine proxy.

Sounds good? By observing the traffic between user and search engine proxy (IP and time and size are not protected by HTTPS) via PRISM, Tempora (GCHQ taps world's communications) et al. and combining that with the traffic between search engine proxy and the incumbent (query, time, size are accessible by PRISM), all those seemingly private and protected information can be revealed. This is a common method know as Traffic analysis.

The NSA system XKeyscore allows to recover search engine keywords and other communication just by observing connection data (meta data) and combining them with the backend data sourced from the the incumbents. The system is also used by the German intelligence services BND and BfS. Neither the encryption with HTTPS, nor the use of proxies, nor restricting the observation to meta data is protecting your search queries or other communication content.

Unfortunately, unlike YaCy, Faroo is not open source, which means that its code can't be audited -- an essential pre-requisite in the post-Snowden world. Another distributed search engine that is fully open source is Scholar Ninja, a new project from Jure Triglav:

I’ve started building a distributed search engine for scholarly literature, which is completely contained within a browser extension: install it from the Chrome Web Store. It uses WebRTC and magic, and is currently, like, right now, used by 42 people. It’s you who can be number 43. This project is 20 days old and early alpha software; it may not work at all.

As that indicates, Scholar Ninja is domain-specific at the moment, although presumably once the technology is more mature it could be adapted for other uses. It's also very new -- barely a month old at the time of writing -- and very small-scale, which shows that distributed search has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream. Given the serious vulnerabilities of traditional search engines, that's a pity. Let's hope more people wake up to the need for a completely new approach, and start to help create it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: distributed computing, privacy, search engines