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NapalmV sends this news from the BBC: "The European Union Court of Justice said links to 'irrelevant' and outdated data should be erased on request.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
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.
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.
... 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!
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!
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.
As you say the idea that banks and other financial institutions are doing credit checks by doing internet searches is laughable. The guy got into financial difficulties, this went into his credit reference, it will likely stay there for ever as it is relevant information.
The question then has to be how does the fact that Mr Gonzalez put his house up for auction which is factually correct information actually harm him? You can put property on the market for a million reasons all of which are perfectly legitimate, so what's the problem?
Now had the information been inaccurate, in some way factually wrong or gathered using illegal means then it should be removed.
The stupid thing is now everyone will for ever know that Mr Gonzalez had financial problems. Or perhaps the court thinks that this ruling should be redacted...
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.....
Actually - financial institutions do use facebook and google to run checks on people. I've done it myself as part of a financial institution on a regular basis. It's kind of fun when people brag on facebook about committing fraud :)
that I forgot to forget this story.
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...