Slashdot Mirror
EU Court Backs 'Right To Be Forgotten'
NapalmV sends this news from the BBC: "The European Union Court of Justice said links to 'irrelevant' and outdated data should be erased on request. The case was brought by a Spanish man who complained that an auction notice of his repossessed home on Google's search results infringed his privacy. Google said the ruling was 'disappointing.'" The EU Justice Commissioner said, "Companies can no longer hide behind their servers being based in California or anywhere else in the world. ... The data belongs to the individual, not to the company. And unless there is a good reason to retain this data, an individual should be empowered — by law — to request erasure of this data." According to the ruling (PDF), if a search provider declines to remove the data, the user can escalate the situation to a judicial authority to make sure the user's rights are being respected.
http://search.slashdot.org/sto...
John
Thank god for the european union......
Holy hell does the US government look like a douche now ~(lol)~
Almost Nobody has a unique name.
I could be running for office, running a business, or selling my artwork, and have someone with the same name demand all link be removed when his name is keyed into the search engine.
How is Google to know which individual is being searched?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Slashdot court backs the right of editors to forget which stories have already been posted.
There's a glitch in the Matrix today.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Dear Europe,
You have been forgotten by Google.
Seriously, that's what I would do. How long would this law stay around? I mean I understand there are people who wish annoyingly stupid things in the past weren't tied to their names, but the legalization of the right to forget is a slippery slope (i.e. Stalin photoshopped Trotsky out of his photos) with plenty of examples of why revisionism is a bad idea. I sympathize with the originator of the idea, but if we are led to believe that most people are honest and decent, then a simple explanation is all that would be in order to understand his plight. To those ignorant who would see something on Google and blindly discriminate against individuals forever, I think it says more about society's inability to have mercy, then the need to enforce an unenforceable right to be forgotten. What next? When we determine how to erase memories, everyone will have to sit in the chair to forget about stuff like this?
Google isn't the one presenting the data. They're just indexing it. If you prevent search engines from indexing the data, the out-of-date data is still out there. Readily available for anyone who's doing a background check using resources other than a public search engine to find and turn down your loan application.
So this decision actually makes it harder for the little guy to find out there's bad data about him floating around out there, so he can go about getting it fixed. The next guy in his shoes will just get his loan or credit card application denied. He'll have no clue he was denied because the actual data repositories have incorrect data on him, and he'll have no easy/free way to figure out what that bad data might be and who is housing it.
So I'm in the EU and often agree with the supreme court's decisions - but this is bullshit. The information is showing up on google because - it is in the public record - ie its been published in newspapers. That's that guys problem - but it is his problem - nobody elses. They're asking google to ignore publically available info because "i don't like it" no thanks . just wrong. feel sorry for this little guy but the decision is still wrong. I killed my wife 20 years ago but I served my time and now that info is irrelevant - yes if you want to read the daily news from 1973 you'll know what I did, but can't find it on the internet. Fuck those judges.
This guy was really disappointed by Revolutions.
There is a right to remove the reference on a search engine but the source still exists...
How many search engines are there?
Juristriction over a particular search engine is from where?
Nice try!
These countries believe that if you did something dumb when you were 18, you should have the right to move on from it by the time you're 40. If you can't do that, there's no point in turning your life around. I can't say I entirely disagree with them--barring the obvious massive technical difficulties, it's a pretty nice thought.
because they're so stupid. Fucking idiots.
Really, why is the EU even considering this?
I can sympathize with somebody who has done something in the past that they wish other people would forget about, but I can all to easily see the ramifications of implementing this leading well into historical negationism.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What could possibly go wrong?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Had a bad day?
... keeps his back to the screen. From his window he sees the Ministry of Truth, where he works as a propaganda officer altering historical records to match the Partyâ€(TM)s official version of past events.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
I'm certain a lot of former prison guards at concentration camps would have loved to have had the ability expunge old records that would be used in the future to implicate them. Whoops, EU newspapers have a bad opinion of a third world dictator, so now he can sue to have them "forget" it all. Pop singer decides to switch to Christian rock instead, so sues to remove all old information about her that would detract from the new image being created.
And no, there is no formal definition what is a person or action of public interest. This will be decided by courts on a case-by-case decision. As it should be, humans should judge, not algorithms.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
Sure, at first glance it looks good, but really this is a bad decision. We're going to see Scientologists demanding removal of any anti-Scientology material. The whole thing is a bit Stalinesque... people feel they have the right to erase the past just as Stalin erased those who fell out of favor from photographs.
Once what you do is in the public record, it's out there. You have no more right to demand its removal from the Internet than you do to demand libraries cut out articles about you from archived newspapers.
NapalmV sends this news from the BBC: "The European Union Court of Justice said links to 'irrelevant' and outdated data should be erased on request.
No sweat. There's no such thing as irrelevant or outdated data. Problem solved.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...he says while making a Matrix reference.
No.
Scientology is not a person. Therefore data that is stored and processed about Scientology is not personal data.
the Court holds that
a fair balance should be sought in
particular between that interest and the data subject’s fundamental rights, in particular the right to
privacy and the right to protection of personal
data. The Court observes in this regard that, whilst it
is true
that the data subject’s rights also override, as a general rule, that interest of internet users,
this
balance may however depend, in specific cases, on the nature of the information in question
and its sensitivity for the data subject’s private life and on the interest of the public in having that
information, an interest which may vary, in particular, according to the role played by the data
subject in public life
.
Can you think of some compelling reason for Google to inform anyone on the planet that searches for some ordinary person's name that they had financial problems and couldn't pay their mortgage in the 90s? Or that they had an embarrassing illness? That they were sexually assaulted?
Any "right to be forgotten" needs to be accompanied by a "right to remember". Information legitimately published should never have to be removed from the web or pruned from search results. Information disclosed illegally is, of course, a different matter, but legitimate information, once published, should never be suppressed.
Yesterdays decision is a blow to freedom of speech. It allows sweeping factual, legitimately published information under the rug simply because the subject doesn't like the fact that the information is public. It is censorship and nothing less.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
slashdots cache of approved articles expires after two minutes, that's why the editors keep approving similar stories all the time.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Hmm, so what if I exercise my right to forget all the EU's product registration codes and email addresses tied to them?
I thought they had me nailed down with their consumer rights laws to provide services consumers paid for... But someone has just requested I forget all data concerning their email address matching *@*.co.uk, and there's no way for me to know that those aren't actually their accounts. I expect similar emails from other country names soon. I'd send out a mass mailing to confirm, but that's against the anti-SPAM laws.
Guess I'll just halt all downloads to anyone who's government is run by morons. Nice going idiots.
Hi
I was reading the comments and I begun to experience the feeling that many of the people commenting have no idea what the EU jugdes said.
Basically the man who started all is a "John Doe", no politician, no businessman. 15 years ago he got financial problems and lost his home. After a while he recovered from that and then, one day, he went to a company and discovered that the record of his past problems are still on the internet, not only that, he got difficulties everywhere trying to get a credit card, buying something on credit and so and so.
The judges sais, IF you are not a public figure, you must have the right to ask people like google to remove the links to old information who can be bad for you, IF this information is no more useful, it must not be linked if it harms you. If you are a public figure it is on the public interest to keep this info alive. If the information is irrelevant, don't mess with the justice.
The info is not erased, the records are still on the web, the only thing erased is the link on google, so if someone look for your name on internet, he won't find that 20 years ago you lost your home because you got financial problems. If you are a bank, you have direct access to this information, you don't need to look for it on internet.
So basically it means that EU citizens got rights.
Regards
Pablo
Basically none of the technology which is now used to spy on Americans, destroying their privacy, existed when the Bill of Rights was put together. And basically none of it could have been forseen. So what? That corporatists and governments find new ways to surveill people for fun and profit using new technology shouldn't be a work around for the INTENT of the rule of law. People have a right to privacy.
You should be able to sue Google and win if you request Google NOT store your information without your permission.
Of course that would put Google as we know it out of business. So what. Good riddance.
We used to think of Microsoft as the great evil. Microsoft was nothing compared to Google as a blight upon humanity.
You say it yourself: your crime is forgotten in real life. Only if one knows where to look and take a lot of trouble, it could be found again. Not so with Google. Heck, I could just type in the name of a village and find the article describing a domestic murder from 20 years ago. That is way different. Information can hurt. Even information that is not true.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
This link points to a search of the BBC news site for the text 'Mario Costeja Gonzalez'. The search results contain links to articles on the BBC news site that mention the fact that Mario Costeja Gonzalez had financial difficulties in 1998.
Is Slashdot responsible for the content of the link ?
Is the BBC responsible for their search results ?
The ruling seems to suggest that the BBC can publish a news article that mentions the fact that Mario Costeja Gonzalez had to auction his house, but they have to prevent the article from appearing in the search results on their own site ?
I find it really strange that so few people have commented on this - this has the potential for huge impacts on the quality of information available on the Internet!
As far as I can see, the court must be populated by judges that have zero clue how the Internet works. The particular case that provoked the decision: A Spanish man went bankrupt, and his house was auctioned off. This is part of the public record in Spain (in particular, it appears in newspaper articles) and Google - obviously - has indexed this public information and provides links to it.
The court does not say that the newspaper articles must be removed - in fact, they are specifically allowed to remain. The court says that Google may be told not to link to those pages, when given a search on this person's name.
So now individual people can tell search engines "I don't like that link, delete it"? Even though the information is publicly available and objectively, factually true? Does this make any sense?
How will this scale, when millions of people want to edit their lives in the Internet? How are these requests supposed to be checked? First, what is the definition of "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" information? Second, how do you determine whether the person making the request is the person affected (especially given the possibility of shared names)?
Finally, what effect will this have on search results? What you want to hide may be exactly what I really need to know! Why does this businessman think his previous bankruptcy is irrelevant - is that not precisely the kind of information that his potential customers and/or employers are legitimately interested in?
This decision demonstrates appalling technical ignorance on the part of the court, and has the potential to seriously screw up the concepts behind public search engines.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If I want to talk about you on my server, that is fine, I have a right to free speech that trumps your right over there. I can give any details I know about you and keep it up indefinitely. You do, of course have the right to request that I take it down, that is your right. So,try this experiment and make note of the outcome; request as well as you can, in one hand and shit as much as you can in the other hand; note which hand will fill up first...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Which is funny because the case was decided about a lawyer who wanted to expunge results pointing to news articles about court proceedings involving his personal life and finances. You know, public records that the government maintains and provides to the public.
Truly the court has a dizzying intellect.....
that I forgot to forget this story.
... because we have a history of mocking those who burn books. We believe that free speech is more important for the continuation of society than enforced niceness and homogeneity. Historically, we believed it so strongly that we violently wrested that right from the grips of European tyrants. So yes, somewhere in our not so distant cultural history, we killed a lot of people to get the freedom of the press. We confuse press and speech here, but that's a detail. We believe it so strongly that we let fucktards pronounce all sorts of retarded conspiracy theories, and even let them control AM radio, because we believe that freedom of the press is more important to maintaining a strong society than being nice.
Amazingly enough, Slashdot does not allow users to delete their accounts.
Worse, it does not even allow users to change their nicknames.
So, if you're concerned about Web analytics or analogous technologies
connecting your Slashdot postings to postings made with stylistic language,
zip codes, other inferred demographics, or even nicknames similar to those
of your Slashdot postings, you're shit out of luck. And speaking as one who
works in the field, such connections and inferences are far from mere
paranoia. Analytics and inferential knowledgebase-driven tracking is what
drives NSA data mining, many types of clicktracking, and magically targeted
Netflix & Amazon messages, and these methodologies are still barely out of
their infancy -- data collected today is likely to yield far more
information when mined 5 or 10 years from now, when increased data-storage
and processing capabilities eliminate some of the scalability constraints of
current technology. DNA computing, anyone?.
Still unconvinced? As recently as last March
(http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/03/11/218221/facebook-knows-if-youre-
gay-use-drugs-or-are-a-republican), Slashdot itself reported that
researchers, using only Facebook metadata (not postings), could generally
predict a user's sexual orientation, political party, IQ, likelihood to use
drugs, and other personal characteristics. Hence, prudence dictates that
online users should ALWAYS delete unnecessary traces. And older Slashdot
postings, which may be far more revealing than a Facebook "like," should
certainly be high on the list of deletion candidates -- even if you always
post as an AC.
Amazingly, Slashdot refuses to provide basic posting-deletion functionality.
It refuses to allow even half-assed attempts to hide one's identify by
changing a nick. And it won't acknowledge email requests to explain these
policies. When I sent a message to Slashdot last month asking for
clarification or assistance with deleting my account or past postings, I
received a form letter apologizing for "Slashdot's inability to reply to
every question about its new beta system."
Jeez, can't we even get kissed when we get fucked?
So what can a helpless Slashdot user do? Well, to start, I'll be continuing
to submit this message as a story proposal until I get some kind of reaction
from a Slashdot decision-maker who thinks I'm raising a valid issue. In the
interim, I STRONGLY urge anybody thinking of opening a Slashdot account, or
of posting other than anonymously, to think again. Search on Google (or
better, on the Patent Office Web site) for terms like "web analytics,"
"inferential statistics," "knowledgebase," "big data," "natural-language
prcoessing," or even just "cybersecurity." Or page through a copy of the
already-outdated, but still relevant, book "Dragnet Nation." And remember
that, once you open that Slashdot account, once you post that Slashdot
message, there's no redo.
Shame on you, Slashdot! I could understand seeing these kinds of policies on
a Duck Dynasty fan-club forum, but you guys are supposed to have a clue.
To anyone who claims this is infeasible: bullshit. In spite of some heated (and misinformed) opinions that are being vented in the media, this ruling does not specify that Google has to automatically erase all unwanted results; it only has to erase specific unwanted results upon request by the user. Given a proper legal framework (which will probably be there; the EU is not a common law jurisdiction), this is far less far-reaching than DMCA take-downs, which are already supported by pretty much every company out there.
Disclaimer: I'm neither talking about the philosophical implications of this law nor about the potential for abuse, just about technical feasibility. Though as far as abuse potential is concerned, I cannot imagine it being much worse than the DMCA...