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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."
The search engines from Google and elsewhere already flag sites that are "spam" or which host "malicious content."
Maybe they need to add a "gossip" flag as well.
Unfortunately there would be no shortage of lawsuits from "entertainment magazines" if they did so.
And that's really the crux of the problem. If Google capitulates to people who want their search results censored, it's just a matter of time before the censored sites sue Google for the censorship.
So really Google has a choice between being sued by the censors for not complying, or sued by the censored for complying. Either way, someone expects to be paid for doing nothing useful to society, as is always the case when there is a "big money" company or business involved in the equation.
The UK is free to block Google entirely if they so choose. And good riddance to them, the Chinese, and every other nation that thinks their censorship laws trump the free access of an international resource.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's that Max Mosley doesn't want people to know that in private he enjoys orgies while dressed as a Nazi.
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.
Twitter user posts illegally obtained photos someone else, Google search results have Twitter in them, Google must remove Twitter from it's search results? That doesn't seem wildly excessive.
Translation: Collecting, cross-referencing, and archiving personally-identifiable information is the job of the government.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
should block access from the UK and Japan for a week. Sure the stock price might take a brief hit but uncle with all this whiny BS. Let them go back to the internet stone age.
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)
First off - this is a report by MPs - not even on the first step of becoming law - despite somewhat hyperbolic reporting.
Second - it clearly states that a free press / freedom of speech are paramount
Third - the only "Censoring" of Google etc. is a requirement to follow the terms of a court order - in the UK the courts are separate and distinct from the government.
Exec summary pasted below [from a PDF document - hence some formatting funnies]
I don't get people. You can have something that SEARCHES, or something that doesn't. Once you start censoring the search, the engine becomes, to a varying extent, a PR outlet - and useless. But each person or organization that doesn't want THEIR pet bugaboo found apparently assumes they're the only one with that right.
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.
"The lawsuits of the many outweigh the lawsuits of the one."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
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.
Google employs over 32,000 people. Some of those old-school, sovereign nation-states (namely the Vatican City, Tuvalu, Nauru, San Marino, and Palau) have fewer.
Considering the effects of a global economy, Google's business also affects the world more than many other countries who don't participate much in international trade.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Surely if you fire them out of a canon, they wind up in the apocrypha?
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
In a sovereign nation-state, starting from the assumption that it is democratically governed, each and all have opportunities to change their leadership - as well as changing the course the collective body is following.
LOL. You've clearly never lived in the UK.
Not only is the British government determined by the votes of about a million people in the Midlands, but they 'voted the bastards out' in the last election only to discover that the other bastards were just the same.
That's not necessarily true in the UK. Truth is only a defence if there's a demonstrable public benefit.
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
And if the material that comes up on a search is slanderous, that's grounds fir a defamation suit.
Unless it's true. Telling the truth is never slander, no matter how embarrassing it may be.
it is in UK.
Not true, but the burden of proof is on the teller in some circumstances. There are also offenses other than libel/slander (like official secrets violations or privacy violations) which limit what truths you can tell where and how.
Meanwhile, what happens to said bad law? Do you all just suffer until the next election when someone can get rid of or otherwise neuter it?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Remember, the colonies revolted and don't have this problem.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars