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UK MPs Threaten New Laws If Google Won't Censor Search
It's not just Japan that wants to regulate how Google displays search results: judgecorp writes "A committee of British MPs and peers has asked Google to censor search results to protect privacy and threatened to put forward new laws that would force it to do so, if Google fails to comply. The case relates to events such as former Formula One boss Max Mosley's legal bid to prevent Google linking to illegally obtained images of himself."
Why should Google have to censor its search results? All Google is doing is indexing and displaying stuff that's already on the internet. It should be the people who posted it that have to take it down, not Google. Trying to censor Google, for whatever reason, completely undermines one of the things that makes the internet as brilliant as it is.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Max Mosley is an idiot; all he's doing with his legal action is drawing *more* attention to his Nazi-themed orgies and ensuring that, even if he's successful, instead of people finding stories and images about said orgies when they search for him, they'll find stories and images about him trying to censor the stories and images about said orgies.
It's hard to claim it's a privacy issue when it's already in the public domain.
"If Google capitulates to people who want their search results censored"
I think you meant:
If Google capitulates to people who want MY search results censored
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Except for the fact that I'm not aware of cases when those who passed a law being actually held responsible for it when the law is then challenged in court or otherwise "be bad"
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Cases like this show an understandable lack of understanding about how this technology works.
As others have pointed out, going after an indexing service is pointless; however, I find it understandable. Google is the first point of contact to this content for millions of internet users. So, looking from the outside, I can understand how someone would confuse that with providing access to the content.
I hope that Google's laywers are able to make courts in the UK and Japan understand their role in the internet ecosystem.
It isn't just the legal implications. They would have to setup a system (infrastructure, allotted person time, and so forth) to implement and manage the relevant filters, to deal with appeals, and other complications. All that before anyone had started taking legal action. They are not going to volunteer for that sort of hassle.
These laws sound like the worst thing ever until someone posts your credit record online, a nude picture of your daughter, or your copyrighted code that you worked on for ten years and hoped to sell to finance your retirement.
Then, suddenly, they sound great.
The UK has a point about protecting privacy. If any point of failure can overcome the Streisand effect, it's the search engines. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
That's exactly why these laws shouldn't exist. It's why the freedom of speech is explicitly called out in the US Bill of Rights--because it's such a clearly bad idea, but seems so reasonable when it's something you want to suppress. If I had my way, nobody would be allowed to talk about Justin Beiber or the cast of The Jersey Shore ever again. Luckily for them and their fans, I can't get my way.
A big part of being a good person is making it impossible to be otherwise when you would be tempted to do something immoral. We (used to) have checks and balances encoded in our laws that are probably very inconvenient at times, but they were added with the foresight that simple restraint wouldn't be enough when times get tough. It's human nature.
Another thing about human nature: I guaran-fucking-tee you, nothing can overcome the Streisand effect. It's practically a law of physics. It existed before the internet ever did, and will continue to exist for as long as people are interested in what other people are trying to hide. Bringing search engines into it will do nothing but whip people into an absolute frenzy to find out what's being hidden, and we'll just spawn or co-opt another communication channel. That news will get out.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
In the Max Mosley case the pictures were illegally obtained and possibly violated his human rights (in the EU a person has the right to a private life). If that is the case then it would seem that Google has a legal obligation to remove illegal images.
I'm not saying that the law is necessarily right to deem these images illegal, but if they are then Google, like any other company, has to comply with the law.
Google isn't hosting the images. Wouldn't it make more sense to go after the people who are hosting the images and/or put them up in the first place? I realize that Google is a big foreign company, but that doesn't mean they should take over law enforcement responsibility just because the EU/UK can't be arsed to track down the actual offenders. "I saw it in a Google search, so it must be their responsibility." It seems that it is getting to the point where Google needs to put disclaimers on all search results pages for the small minds in the British and EU parliament - something like, "Google is not responsible for the content of outside websites linked in our search results, you twit!"