Slashdot Mirror
Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video
New submitter edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire Internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook, and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible. The thing is, the video is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment."
Sure, the obvious spin the summary evokes is that the judge is one of those numbskull government bureaucrats, who thinks the Internet has a central authority that can respond to such requests. Let's all laugh at the silly judge and reinforce our anti-government hivemind.
On the other hand, the judge likely ordered that the video be taken down, knowing perfectly well that it's impossible to be removed completely. However, those big companies make up the majority of the video's audience, so if they take down the video (and its associated accusation of Mr. McKeogh), the effect is to substantially reduce the harm to Mr. McKeogh's reputation... which is exactly the goal. Since the ruling is in Ireland, where those companies keep their double-Irish tax avoidance entities, the companies will of course want to stay in the good grace of the Irish courts.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Taking a stand against ridiculous court orders. Civil disobedience to promote awareness and justice. Defiance of an illegitimate order from a lawful authority.
Basically, to point out the futility of what is frankly an idiotic order. The experts ought to tell the judge that once it's on the internet, it's there for all time.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Google and them do a lot of business through Ireland, it might not be so easy for them to just ignore an order from an Irish judge.
Except he is innocent. So the Streisand effect is a good thing for him if it gets the word out that it wasn't him in the video.
Except Google uses Ireland as a tax haven, so first they'd need to find another jurisdiction in which it would be beneficial for them. And I'm not sure they'll easily find one.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Stupid judge, you can't order that, you ignorant ninny...
Sadly this is not that uncommon. In the UK last year there was a spate of so-called "super injunctions" being issued to various celebs; these were meant to not only prohibit publishing details of the subject under injunction but also any reporting of the mere fact that an injunction had been granted.
At one stage the High Court granted a permanent injunction against the "whole world" to prevent details of a married celebrity’s affair from being revealed (Super injunctions and the law). Much hilarity ensued.