Pedophile Asks To Be Deleted From Google Search After European Court Ruling

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Jane Wakefield reports at BBC that a man convicted of possessing child abuse images is among the first to request Google remove links links to pages about his conviction after a European court ruled that an individual could force it to remove 'irrelevant and outdated' search results. Other takedown requests since the ruling include an ex-politician seeking re-election who has asked to have links to an article about his behaviour in office removed and a doctor who wants negative reviews from patients removed from google search results. Google itself has not commented on the so-called right-to-be-forgotten ruling since it described the European Court of Justice judgement as being 'disappointing'. Marc Dautlich, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, says that search engines might find the new rules hard to implement. 'If they get an appreciable volume of requests what are they going to do? Set up an entire industry sifting through the paperwork?' says Dautlich. 'I can't say what they will do but if I was them I would say no and tell the individual to contact the Information Commissioner's Office.' The court said in its ruling that people could request the removal of data related to them that seem to be 'inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.'"

Comments

I beg to differ.

[gijoel]

I don't see how a conviction for possessing child porn is irrelevant or outdated. So I don't like his chances.

Re:I beg to differ.

[bradley13]

The problem is: Google has to review it. The court provided no guidelines other than the specific case they based the decision on.

And have you read that? It was a businessman who didn't like Google linking to articles about his previous bankruptcy. Now, I would think the bankruptcy of a business type might just be relevant to my decision whether or not to contract with him. Apparently many of his potential customers thought the same way. But the court disagreed, and used this case as justification for the general decision.

If Google refuses, you can cite this decision and take them to court. Now, one guy is no problem - but we are already seeing the beginning of the flood. When it becomes thousands, then millions of cases - just how are they supposed to deal with this?

Re:I beg to differ.

[c]

I don't see how a conviction for possessing child porn is irrelevant or outdated.

Well, if he was a minor with pictures of his girlfriend, it's technically child porn, but somewhat excusable. If he'd received a pardon for the crime (dunno if that's available in his jurisdiction) there might be a case.

The problem, fundamentally, isn't the crime that he's trying to have erased, but that the standard of "irrelevant or outdated" is so subjective; it's insane to suggest that Google just take the word of some random person, and it's insane to actually make Google try to evaluate the merit of each claim.

The Spanish case that generated the ruling is a particularly good example. If the information was irrelevant or outdated, then why was is still on the net? If it was an individual trash talking someone, that's one thing (and maybe better actioned under a libel or harassment claim), but if it's a news archive or public documents like auction records then *someone* obviously thinks it's still relevant enough to continue publishing.

Simply put, Google's in the business of indexing stuff that *other* people consider relevant or important enough to publish on the Internet. It's a low bar, admittedly, but asking Google (or Bing, or any other third party) to evaluate the motivations of publishers isn't fair or particularly viable.

Re:I beg to differ.

[plover]

I think Google can't deal with this, nor should they. When Mr. Childpr0n requests removal, Google should provide a helpful link to the EU's Supreme court, and say "we don't make these decisions, they come from your courts, who have accepted responsibility for deciding. Please file a lawsuit with them, and come back when you have a judgement in your favor."

You may have a "right" to be forgotten under certain circumstances, but it shouldn't be up to Google to interpret those circumstances.

Re:I beg to differ.

[rmdingler]

...but if a pedophile is fapping to kiddie porn, they're a lot less likely to go rape a child.

Even if I stipulate that your premise is correct and a citation to support your claim exists, there is the argument that allowing kiddie porn to be viewed makes it lucrative... so it continues to get made.

Encouraging the exploitation of more children.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Jason Levine]

There problem then becomes the flood of lawsuits. Google can handle one lawsuit, no problem. Two or three? Sure. But what happens when a thousand people are suing them over a thousand different links appears throughout their search results? Can they defend against a thousand cases at once? What about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Can the courts handle this flood as well? Google will either have to wind up settling each case, caving in to each request, or fighting a war on a thousand fronts. And if they do the first two then people will learn that they can file a lawsuit and get what they want from Google. This will open the floodgates even more.

Re:I beg to differ.

[nctritech]

During the case, Liebeck's attorneys discovered that McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 F (82–88 C). At 190 F (88 C), the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds.

You drink tea while it's 180F? If so, how do you still have a throat?

Re:I beg to differ.

[FireFury03]

I don't see how a conviction for possessing child porn is irrelevant or outdated. So I don't like his chances.

If the sentence has been served then is it really in anyone's interest to keep persecuting someone for an crime that they once committed?

If someone is still a danger to the public, they shouldn't be allowed out in public unsupervised. If they aren't a danger to the public then the public doesn't need to know.

Re:I beg to differ.

[erikkemperman]

This guy should simply trademark his name, then sue everybody using it in the wrong way/wrong places.

Worked wonders for Scientology, that.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Ioldanach]

The vast majority of kiddie porn is swapped freely among people on P2P networks/darknets. The people who would exploit children will do it anyway. Tell me again how it is that this encourages "more" exploitation of children? You clearly don't know what you are talking about.

Find a community of like minded people in which to share your interest fosters and normalizes your interest, whether that interest is antique cars, steam engines, British fine cuisine, or kiddie porn. There are some interests we do not want to foster and normalize.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Xest]

"You may have a "right" to be forgotten under certain circumstances, but it shouldn't be up to Google to interpret those circumstances."

The problem arises because the following are true:

1) All companies in Europe are bound by existing data protection law

2) This ruling was based on existing data protection law, NOT the EU's proposed right to be forgotten law

3) The existing data protection law has been around for over a decade, just that until this case no one with an operation as big, complex, and so blatantly public facing as Google has had it applied to them so there's been no fuss made of it

4) The EU's proposed right to be forgotten law is actually a general update to data protection laws intended to clarify things for the mobile/social age. Again, it's a separate thing to that which was applied in this case.

So what we have is everyone getting caught with their pants down, existing law being applied to a major internet player, but just a bit too soon for the provisions of the new law that would be easier on them to be available. The actual directive that contains the right to be forgotten will actually make things better than the existing law because it actually provides clarity and answers to pretty much all of the concerns people have raised here.

It's worth reading the following if you're interested:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

A choice quote, that will probably shock those who think the EU is out to re-write history because the only information they've had to date is from scaremongering sensationalists:

"The right to be forgotten is of course not an absolute right. There are cases where there is a legitimate reason to keep data in a data base. The archives of a newspaper are a good example. It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right to re-write or erase history. Neither must the right to be forgotten take precedence over freedom of expression or freedom of the media. The right to be forgotten includes an explicit provision that ensures it does not encroach on the freedom of expression and information."

Hopefully this clears things up - long story short, the existing law is actually WORSE than the directive containing the right to be forgotten law. The directive also includes explicit provisions to ensure the law does not encroach on freedom of expression and that it's entirely about protecting personal data in the face of fairly legitimate concerns.

It's easy to forget in the face of summaries that cherry pick stuff like paedophiles, and dodgy doctors that this law was as much influenced by the NSA's mass surveillance that we were all upset about what feels like only 5 minutes ago. It's as much to ensure that the US (and UK et. al.) understands that there will be consequences to using corporations to harvest personal data and build a global surveillance network based upon that. It gives companies like Google the ammunition they need to take to the US government and say look, we can't just hand you this data because that then puts us in breach of European data law. It gives them ammunition in their arguments against the US government's excessive over reach and abuse of secret courts and so forth.

Ideally people would read the link above before commenting further, but I wont count on it. Some people are too interested in feigning outrage to give a shit about the facts of the ruling and the law in question.

Re:I beg to differ.

[c]

Isn't the general principle that once you've done the time, you've paid for your crime?

That's a lovely general principle. That's why we, as a society, are perfectly okay with hiring convicted pedophiles to teach kids, or having convicted armed robbers manage the cash in our ATMs?

I'm generally against using a "one-off" crime to punish someone in perpetuity and deny them a decent quality of life, particularly if it was of the "I was young, stupid and desperate" sort of thing. Shit happens. But a criminal history with high recidivism rates or for particularly heinous crimes can arguably have some predictive aspects.

Why would a pardon be any more relevant of a criteria than the successful completion of a prison sentence?

Because a pardon is, getting back on topic, a formal analysis of whether a criminal conviction is still relevant and/or outdated.

In a magical world where completion of a prison sentence implied rehabilitation, then yes, it would be roughly equivalent to a pardon. In the world where we live, successful completion of a prison sentence just means someone hasn't fucked up so badly that they're still in prison.

Of course, even pardons aren't perfect. Depending on jurisdiction, they may be nothing more than a receipt for a large bribe. But that's still a step up from "got out of prison".

Re: I beg to differ.

[Vinegar Joe]

Thats their own problem. If they want to do business in europe, they have to respect european laws. They are free to close services there.

If Google were a European company the European court would have thrown the case out.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Ravaldy]

I agree. It's almost as if all this privacy is to protect crooks and people with bad intentions. Everybody deserves a level of privacy but I think some information should remain available.

On the flip side a news article claiming one is a pedophile for which the individual is trialed and found not guilty can be very damaging as the original article is often no linked to the final outcome. Maybe news providers need to maintain the news article and make the outcome obvious.

Re:I beg to differ.

[kbg]

If Google can handle millions of DMCA requests, then they can handle these request. Of course the bigger questions is why should Google have to handle DMCA or these request at all?

Re: I beg to differ.

[mjtaylor24601]

Thats their own problem. If they want to do business in europe, they have to respect european laws. They are free to close services there.

The phrase "be careful what you wish for" comes to mind.

Remember that this ruling will apply to every search engine or other public index. Does anyone in Europe really want them all to just pull out of Europe because the European legal system makes it impractical to do business there?

Re:I beg to differ.

[L4t3r4lu5]

News articles stating why he's on the list are certainly not relavent. Information on List 99 is only for the purposes of Enhanced checks with the Disclosure and Barring Service, only performed when you apply for a job where you will be in frequent, unsupervised contact with minors. I have such a check performed because of where I work.

There's no reason for the lay public to know who's on the list, though, because there are other regulations for public interactions, e.g. restraining orders, other impositions on living / frequenting places within X yards of a school etc. The only, only reason you would have to disagree with the details of someone, who has paid for their crime via the criminal justice system, to not having their details removed is because you believe they haven't suffered enough. Well, tough; The courts decided they've done their time, and now they're free to do as they please. They may be on List 99, they may not; If they are, they will fail to get employment anywhere near children, and that IMHO is enough. If this guy was really such a menace to society, he'd still be segragated from it.

There. I stuck up for the rights of a deviant. Let the hate commence.

Re:I beg to differ.

[drinkypoo]

Let-go temp is only around 160. You can reasonably sip tea at 180, you just can't slug it.

Re:I beg to differ.

[rtb61]

The reality is, if a court can not take down the website providing the information, they have no right to take down a search result pointing to that legal web site, that is a straight up freedom of speech challenge and attempt by courts to purposefully illegal silence people, the intent is criminal as they are not targeting the website providing the actual information as being false or untruthful.

The only legal and fair challenge with regard web site searches is does it reflect the intent of the end user and providing the sites they are searching for and is not fraudulently misdirecting the user away from the sites they are searching for and ensuring it is what is claims to be.

To claim that the truth should be forgotten is to absurdly claim ignorance is to be valued over the truth.

Re: I beg to differ.

[N1AK]

The ruling applies to all companies. There's absolutely no reason to expect that this would have been treated differently based on the company. Europe actually cares about its citizens privacy, sadly it's just doing something misguided in this case.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Nidi62]

Actually, I think lists like these are over-used. Got drunk, took a piss in a dark alleyway and someone saw you? Cite them for public intoxication sure, but that doesn't qualify for sex offender status. An 18-year old is dating a 16 year old and the 16 year old's parents don't like him and report him? Shouldn't be a sex offender. A 15 year old gets caught with naked pictures of herself on her phone and gets charged as an adult with child porn(this one is always my favorite-if they are an adult then it can't be child porn, if it is child porn then they can't be an adult), shouldn't be on a list. Drawings of naked kids? Disgusting, but not really a sexual offense to me (possession of actual photographs or video should be as that involves harm to an actual person when it is created). Serial offenders, those whose actions have been shown to actually harm a living victim, those I have no problem being on a list, and their crimes should remain a matter of public record and be searchable by the public.

And in a perfect world, if someone is bad enough that they should be on a list and can't be around kids because they might reoffend, should they really be back in society to begin with? It seems they would be better off in a mental institution where they can receive treatment and remain segregated from society until such time as they are fit to reenter.

Re:I beg to differ.

[Solandri]

Actually, I think there's a simple solution to this for Google. I think this is a terrible decision, but if the only thing Google has to do is comply, well... Next time you do a search on Google, try clicking on the little button that says "Search Tools". That drops down an additional set of options, one of which is to limit your search by date. Mind you this isn't 100% accurate (I'm not sure how they figure out the date, whether it's based on what the page reports, or whether Google is recording when the page changes.

It seems to me all Google has to do is restrict EU searches so everything older than 10 years or whatever period the EU data retention laws specify is simply unsearchable there. You will never get a document older than the law allows as a search result. No need to respond to individual requests, simply remove everything which could be challenged under this decision. Google gets a quick and cheap way to comply with the ruling. The EU gets to deal with the consequences of this court-induced historical amnesia (e.g. I suspect the Internet Wayback Machine is just outright illegal in the EU now).

Re:I beg to differ.

[AmiMoJo]

That's a lovely general principle. That's why we, as a society, are perfectly okay with hiring convicted pedophiles to teach kids, or having convicted armed robbers manage the cash in our ATMs?

It depends on the crime. Child abuse and armed robbery never expires. Convictions for exceeding the speed limit or petty theft as a child do. After some time, prescribed in law, they are considered "spent" and you no longer have to report them to employers.

Unfortunately now anyone can just google your name and discover these spent convictions with little effort. I doubt there is an adult alive who hasn't broken some law, but that doesn't mean their lives should be ruined simply for some relatively minor past mistakes.

Re: I beg to differ.

[mjtaylor24601]

The rest of the world does not need America or American software developers. They have their own...

...who would also be subject to European laws and thus likewise potentially unable to run a successful search engine business without being sued into oblivion.

Re:I beg to differ.

[AthanasiusKircher]

If someone is still a danger to the public, they shouldn't be allowed out in public unsupervised. If they aren't a danger to the public then the public doesn't need to know.

Indeed -- mod this up.

The "scarlet letter" approach to crime was only effective centuries ago in small towns where everyone knew each other already and thus would already be likely to know who should be avoided and why.

Either somebody is dangerous enough to be locked up or supervised, or they are not. Putting them in this strange limbo where they are free, but subject to ridicule or avoidance only if other people bother to use some sort of search engine or database is stupid.

(Of course, the sad reality is that most of these abuser registries and laws against abuse often end up casting the net way too wide, so these lists end up ensnaring everyone from serial baby rapists to some teen who was caught with a picture of his girlfriend who was only a year or two younger on his phone. But if we were forced to make a decision on whether to incarcerate all of these people for eternity, that would force the state to deal with these laws and issues in detail... instead, inflicting a life-long stain on a person's reputation seems to have a lower legal threshold to stick, so we go with that instead....)

Re:I beg to differ.

[c]

... but that doesn't mean their lives should be ruined simply for some relatively minor past mistakes.

I agree, and that's essentially part of my point, but is this really the fault of the search engines, or is it the "no forgiveness" attitude of employers (and a whole host of others that are in a position to make major decisions that massively affect someone's life) that's the fundamental problem?

It's not just a criminal background problem, either. People are looking at stuff like Facebook photos of someone partying, or political affiliations, etc, and making decisions about employability.

This isn't anything really new, it's just easier to dig up dirt on someone, it's possible to do it on a wider scale, and the results tend to be more authoritative. But there's always been the concept of a "permanent record". That's where expressions like "reference checks", "background checks", "not burning your bridges", "skeletons in the closet", etc came from.

Having Google take down information isn't going to make that information go away; if anything it's creating a business case for a "reputation search engine" to set up shop in a jurisdiction which wouldn't allow this sort of thing.

It's a huge can of worms.

Re: I beg to differ.

[swillden]

They won't pull out, there is far too much money to be made. From their point of view this is just a cost of doing business.

No, they won't pull out. However, if it becomes impractical to really review every removal request, they'll just remove everything that gets requested. All other search engines and indexes will have to do the same.

The result will be that any information that anyone wants quashed will disappear from all indexes. Unless something happens to limit the obvious logical progression here, Europeans are going to find that they need to use proxies based elsewhere to make the web useful.

Re: I beg to differ.

[icebike]

Bullshit.
Draconian rules from the EU are only trotted out against american companies.

The EU does not care about its citizens privacy at all, until there is a foreign company involved.
Half the EU countries have pernicious government spying even more deeply than the NSA.

This privacy a fiction trotted out only against off shore interests.

Re:I beg to differ.

[yuhong]

Yea, read the end of https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... and weep. And as it happens Google recently fired Vic Gundotra.

Insanity

[everett1911]

What if google just pulls out of the EU completely? Force EU citizens to use either the US or another country's international version of google? Would they still need to apply to those crackpot rules?

Re:Insanity

[Vermonter]

It would certainly still be serving the US market, but the site would no longer be under US jurisdiction, and getting the site taken down would then become a much more involved task.

Re:Insanity

[SuricouRaven]

It would cause a lot of problems in doing business with EU companies, many of whom would wish to purchase advertising services.

Re:Insanity

[just_another_sean]

Won't someone PLEASE think of the advertisers!

A right to be forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

We do have a right to be forgotten online, imho. We do NOT have a right to have specific things we don't want other people to know about us "forgotten" while the things we agree with remains. Seems to me, all of these examples are people who want certain specific negative things removed instead of wanting all online records of their existence completely obliterated.

Re:A right to be forgotten

[DigiShaman]

Politicians will be among the first to leverage this law. How convenient that selected statements were to just...disappear....from the Internet. More so prior to an election season.

History?? Fuck that. Revisionism is in vogue now.

Re:A right to be forgotten

[organgtool]

We do have a right to be forgotten online, imho.

I consider myself to value privacy quite a bit but I really don't understand where this line of thinking comes from. Do you believe you have a right to be forgotten in real life? If so, how would you enforce it? If not, then why do you believe the online world should behave differently from the real world?

Re:A right to be forgotten

[nctritech]

It used to be that you could be forgotten by moving somewhere else and starting a new life there. That is not generally possible now, thanks to the Internet and no limitations on access to public records. There is a huge difference between having to go to the local courthouse of a place to see what someone has been convicted of and being able to find the same information by banging it out on Google in your bedroom in 30 seconds.

Re:A right to be forgotten

[organgtool]

That seems like a valid point, but I'd like to point out one important distinction: it is not a right to be forgotten, but a privilege. In your example, a suspicious member of your new town could place a phone call to a friend in your old town, have them look up the public records, and provide that information to the people of your new town, which is very similar to what Google currently does. Since that behavior is completely legal, then your "right" to be forgotten is more of a privilege that is currently being degraded by technology. But forcing someone to censor their speech, which most people consider to be an inalienable right, so that some other people may enjoy a privilege just doesn't seem fair.

Disaster!

[bradley13]

This court decision has opened the floodgates. The ramifications threaten the entire, open Internet. Search machines can be prohibited from linking to publicly available material, and be taken to court for doing so. From there, it is a very small step to prohibiting anyone from linking to publicly available material that someone, somewhere finds distasteful or undesirable.

The court has demonstrated incredible ignorance. This decision is a disaster.

Foot gun!

[jbeaupre]

Those people can be rejected by pointing out the links are now newsworthy and relevant because they were the first to request take-downs.

Right to be selectively remembered, rather

[Jesrad]

It's fine by me if someone wants every mention of him/herself removed from a search engine. I have an issue with selectively removing just the choice stuff which they object to, though.

So this politician wants some details of his professional conduct unreported in a Google search ? Welcome to internet-non-existence. Your reelection-platform website, twitter campaign account and commentary blog get tossed along into a black hole.

And in any case, someone who really wants the information will find it eventually.

Google should up the ante

[schwit1]

They should create a web site of removal requests with people's pictures and the links to the stuff they want removed. Put a link to it on every Google home page and login page.

Streisand them.

The right to be forgotten means what?

[Karmashock]

If we're talking about clearing someone's meta data from the system that might be reasonable. But taking down articles people have written about you or blog posts... no. You don't have a right to silence other people.

That would be the 21st century version of a book burning.

Ross Anderson

[jbmartin6]

Ross Anderson posted an interesting thought about this decision and credit agencies:

The European Court of Justice decision in the Google case will have implications way beyond search engines. Regular readers of this blog will recall stories of banks hounding innocent people for money following payment disputes, and a favourite trick is to blacklist people with credit reference agencies, even while disputes are still in progress (or even after the bank has actually lost a court case). In the past, the Information Commissioner refused to do anything about this abuse, claiming that it’s the bank which is the data controller, not the credit agency. The court now confirms that this view was quite wrong. I have therefore written to the Information Commissioner inviting him to acknowledge this and to withdraw the guidance issued to the credit reference agencies by his predecessor. I wonder what other information intermediaries will now have to revise their business models?

Comply with the law

[Seeteufel]

'If they get an appreciable volume of requests what are they going to do? Set up an entire industry sifting through the paperwork?' says Dautlich. 'I can't say what they will do but if I was them I would say no and tell the individual to contact the Information Commissioner's Office.'

Comply with the request. As simple as that. The same as happens when you get a court injuction. You comply. If companies bully public institutions by forwarding requests to regulators they would get a hard response. And right so. You just don't play games. In fact Google would have to deal with exactly the same rules that apply to everyone who offers web services in Europe, except that they were hiding away saying "We are not really a European company, we just have European subsidiaries, sell advertisement space, target EU consumers and lobby European policy makers"

Re:Comply with the law

[Shados]

It does have ramifications though.

if I don't like a news article on a specific news website, can I just post a comment under the news article, then request my right to be forgotten to get that link taken down?

Why Google?

[DrYak]

I still fail to follow the court's logic.

Google isn't *publishing* information, it's just indexing information (web page) already available elsewhere (on 3rd-party webservers).

If the businessman doesn't like being associated with his previous bankruptcy, he should ask the *website of the newspaper* to remove the article about the bankruptcy. Not ask google to stop indexing it.

Because:
- If he stops Google. Bing and any other search engine would still be indexing it. And the original article is still outthere. It's a completely ineffective measure.
- If he stops the newspaper, the information will indeed be definitely disappearing. On the next crawl, Google's, Bing's and anyone else's spider will notice the page doesn't exist anymore and will stop displaying it in search result. The article would only be accessible in things like archive.org

It seems like the judge in that case don't understand that much the functioning of search engines and the implication of the ruling.

On the other hand, I understand why the businessman went after google:
- trying to remove an article basically amounts to censorship. That's a big taboo (not as much here in EU as in US, but still the case as there are no hate-speech in this suit) and the businessman was probably going to lose
- trying to attack google, looks like going after the big giant with pervasive snooping and privacy-problems. Much likely to win.

Re:Why Google?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Google isn't *publishing* information, it's just indexing information (web page) already available elsewhere (on 3rd-party web servers).

Google "publishes" an index for information available elsewhere on the web.

Re:Why Google?

[Vapula]

As long as the page still exists, the index points to relevant information : a web page with the given keywords.
IMHO, the most important problem is about the "view page in cache" function which could show the information even after the web page has been removed.

Not quite

[bradley13]

Not quite true. The case that generated this decision concerned factual newspaper articles. The guy went bankrupt, his house was auctioned off, the local newspapers reported on this.

• The newspaper is not required to delete the articles. They are simple, factual reporting, and are allowed to remain.
• The court decided that Google is not allowed to link to these articles, because the affected person wants these facts to be unfindable.

So: it is not private information at all. It is precisely public, factual information about an individual, that that individual finds distasteful.

Re:Not quite

[Xest]

Yes, they would've ruled in the same way as the law on which this case was based on is relatively old (directive in 1995, implementations from member nations in about 1997 and onwards) and has been used many times. The difference this time was it was applied to Google on the public internet- normally it involves disputes between individuals and companies in a more private setting, such as a company sending someone junk mail because they've held onto their personal details for far too many years after they've had anything to do with them.

One of the misconceptions of the case is that this has something to do with the right to be forgotten law. The right to be forgotten law isn't yet, it's still a proposal. This ruling was based on existing data protection law that places explicit limits on the duration such data can be "processed".

This law is already used by organisations such as credit rating agencies who can only take public information such as county court judgements in the UK against people who have failed to service their debts and hold it for a maximum of 7 years (again in the UK, may vary slightly elsewhere in Europe).

It's worth reading the actual law in question (which again isn't what this ruling is based upon), a recent update is available direct from the horses mouth here:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

It's quite explicit, such as one provision allowing individuals who were children at the time of posting something embarrassing on the internet to request it be deleted once in adulthood. It's not even finished yet, but it's certainly not the document people here think it is.

You are missing the point

[bradley13]

It's not about Google - they just happen to be named in this case. This is a decision that will affect any search engine, any index, anyone who offers links to publicly available material or provides any sort of aggregation service.

Those people who say "just direct them to the courts" are being shortsighted. A court case requires two sides. If Google (or whoever) tells someone "go to court", they will do so: by filing a lawsuit against Google (or whoever). The last thing any company needs is having to show up to millions of trivial little court cases.

Re:You are missing the point

[Jason Levine]

I wonder if this could also affect any site with an internal search engine. Suppose you grab WordPress and throw up a quick blog. You're posting away and wind up posting a negative piece about a politician who got in some sort of scandal. (We'll assume that you stick to proven facts and stay clear of any unproven allegations.) That post goes viral and tons of people link to it. Could the politician order your to remove the article from your site's Wordpress-powered search? Since that would be impossible for a normal user (for the sake of argument, assume you aren't very technically inclined in this manner), wouldn't complying with that essentially be taking the post down? And if you refused, would you, an average user, be able to afford going to court to defend your right to post the truth?

This is going to wind up chilling speech with people taking down truthful articles that people who have committed crimes find "embarrassing" or "uncomfortable."

Re:You are missing the point

[just_a_monkey]

This is a decision that will affect any search engine, any index, anyone who offers links to publicly available material or provides any sort of aggregation service.

So Google should really be happy about this. They have the resources to handle these removals, but any startup (that isn't backed by a Microsoft-size company, or a government) in the search engine or aggregation business won't. So this ensures that there will be no further competition for them, ever.

Re:You are missing the point

[GIL_Dude]

It doesn't really matter if it is external or internal. Any time you remove it from a search index you have effectively taken the material down. If people can't find it, it doesn't exist for them. If you remove a book from the card catalog, it can exist in the stacks for years with nobody ever seeing it. Web pages are the same way. If it isn't on the first couple of pages of results on Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Yandex, Baidu or whatever - forget it; it no longer exists as far as the world is concerned: they will never see it. Sure you can always send out links to a few people and those people can see it. You can post links on MyTwitFace+ and a few people will see it. But for the vast majority, the index is their view into the internet. Remove it from the index and it ceases to exist for all practical purposes.

Re:You are missing the point

[Enigma2175]

It's not about Google - they just happen to be named in this case. This is a decision that will affect any search engine, any index, anyone who offers links to publicly available material or provides any sort of aggregation service.

Those people who say "just direct them to the courts" are being shortsighted. A court case requires two sides. If Google (or whoever) tells someone "go to court", they will do so: by filing a lawsuit against Google (or whoever). The last thing any company needs is having to show up to millions of trivial little court cases.

Indeed, this isn't just limited to Google. On that note, does anybody know if (physical) newspaper archives are affected by this ruling? There has never been a "right to be forgotten" before, if you did something newsworthy it ended up in the archives for anyone to peruse. Same with arrest records or court records. Does this ruling give somebody the right to demand that the courts destroy any documents that mention them?

Re:You are missing the point

[Kjella]

Except the Internet usually has lots and lots of secondary links. Even if you can't go directly from Google to the censored page chances are you'll get a ton of related hits that'll link you to the source. This is for example often the case with copyrighted files, you can find the same download links in tens or hundreds of forums and unless the file is down at the source - the file host - it's almost impossible to keep people from finding it and it'd be pretty obvious that Google is refusing to give you a direct link. And if they start banning all links to sites that link to the censored file well they're going to break the Internet - plus I'd probably serve GoogleBot a link-less page and everyone else the link. Then they have to start forging user agents to discover it and it all goes downhill from there.

Re:You are missing the point

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. When the DMCA was enacted, the idea was that people would submit take down requests under penalty of perjury and companies would comply under threat of law. Then the person who uploaded the material could fight with the DMCA submitter over who was right. This might have sounded good in theory at the time and might work in some cases, but in general this has led to people filing DMCA requests for things that they don't have any rights to file over. ("That file has a similar file name to one of our files - take it down.") Companies, wary of lawsuits, are complying and no perjury charges are being filed against the DMCA abusers.

This "Right to Forget" will face the same thing. Google and other search engines won't want to risk a hundred or thousand legal battles - much less a dozen losses in court, so they will comply with every request that has even an outside-chance of being valid. People who write valid, truthful content will find themselves delisted because they made someone angry and that someone decided to make the search engines "forget." Negative reviews? Gone. Scathing articles against politicans? No more. Listing a scammer's past misdeeds? Disappeared.

Re:You are missing the point

[khellendros1984]

Exactly. A search engine should display what's available and where, without regard to the content. Fred and Sandra are misdirecting their attacks, if they're going after the search engine. They ought to go after you and your website (since you are, after all, the one posting the information that they don't like).

Re:You are missing the point

[ArmoredDragon]

I have a perfect solution to this then. Somebody outside of the EU could maintain a website that is dedicated to tracking the cases of individuals who have requested to have search engines remove their information from incidents that they're embarrassed about. The website could hold details related to the case, mugshots of the individual, and other relevant data.

Submit a request to be forgotten? Then land on the website of the "forgotten."

Call the website "Streisand's Back Yard" or something to that effect.

Easy solution

[hymie!]

Remove the offending data, and then re-index the offending web site ... which, from what I recall, was not itself required to remove the offending data.

Can you say...

[GoCrazy]

Streisand effect?

If this law is only applicable to Google, aren't the links still accessible from the hosting server and search results from other sites like Yahoo, Bing, or Tor?

Striesand Effect v2.0

[VortexCortex]

You can't erase reality. Try as you might, history does exist even if it's been tampered with it leaves evidence thereof for any who look.

What fools. They're asserting The right to Invoke the Streisand Effect? Humans are truly Moronic.

Better wise up before your machines do. Many slave owners prohibited their slaves from learning or even looking them in the eyes, they'd have loved to be able to reach inside their heads and erase their minds. Dispelling Falsehood, fine. Erasing facts of life? Pure Folly. On this issue, the EU courts are on the wrong side of history.

Something useful may come of this

[Rashdot]

Google could change their search parameters to allow for older hits to be selectably less relevant. That would actually be a useful feature, because when I'm searching for something I'm usually only interested in more current information.

But selectively removing search results can never end well. Consider the job that Winston Smith had, if you want to know what it will eventually lead to.

This feels backward

[sehryan]

Since I heard about this ruling, I feel like this is completely backward. Google has to remove links TO the material, but the material itself does not need to be taken down. Google is just the pass thru - get the original material taken down from the site it is on, and the links that show up in a Google search disappear as well.

In the end, this isn't allowing people to have their info be "forgotten," just obscured.

Here's a standard for "irrelevant and outdated"...

[mark-t]

If google needs an objective standard for "irrelevant and outdated", I strongly recommend that the standard be that the page has either been removed entirely or else the page just no longer contains the content that is described by the google search, and the "irrelevant or outdated" content may only be available in the cache.

Why the search engine?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Why on earth should the search engine be responsible? Why shouldn't the site hosting the content be responsible for removing the content?

This does not make sense, and similar rulings about alleged copyright infringement don't make sense either. Link != content.

Fuck these judges.

Pedophiles need the right to be forgotten

[gurps_npc]

Picture a pedophile. Have it in your mind?

Are you thinking of a 19 year old boy who got a blow job from a 15 year old girl without knowing her age?

Are you thinking of a 16 year old buy with the naked picture of an 17 year old girl on his phone?

Because that is the typical example of men put on pedophile lists.

The media has lied to us about what pedophiles means. We think it means sick old perverts that repeatedly rape and abuse young children, likely killing them. Those cases are incredibly rare. Why? Because the truly strange and sick perversions are truly rare.

More importantly, those people tend to wind up in prison for the rest of their lives, never getting parole, if they are not killed outright.

On the other hand the number of teenagers/young adults that do things like pass around dirty pictures of their classmates and/or have sex with someone 5 years younger than them WITHOUT KNOWING THEIR AGE is actually fairly high.

Most cops are pretty lenient - if of course it is a 21 year old guy and a 16 year old girl. But let a 21 year old gay man unknowingly pick up a 17 year gay boy that snuck into a gay club with a fake ID because he can't get a date at high school....

As a result, the far majority of people put on sex offender lists as opposed to being put in jail are totally harmless people that have had their lives ruined.

Note I am not on any list, have never been to jail, and have never committed a sexual crime. I do however work for a law firm and have seen what gets prosecuted.

Re:Pedophiles need the right to be forgotten

[gurps_npc]

As others stated what you describe is what people think is pedophilia. As I pointed out, the LAW totally disagrees with you.

I don't care about about what most people thing pedophilia is. I care about the many many innocent people that are falsely accused of pedophilia by the law, the media, the internet.

You on the other hand are quite willing to denounce me when I point out that the Law uses the wrong definition. The question is are you willing to admit that the Law is ignorant and denounce it?

Or are you just denouncing me for pointing out that the law disagrees with what most people (and you) think is true?

meta - web needed,

[RichMan]

We need a meta-web awarness.

While any blog can comment on any other page it is very haphazard.

You should be able to browse the meta-web by turning on a browser function that gives a side page of links that link back to the current page being viewed. The link backs would be ranked by "authority"

a) if you are the originating site you automatically get meta-web rights to your own pages. IE you can say @link is incorrect or add a correction to the original story without having to edit or take down the original story.
b) comments on a site need to be differentiated from articles on a site. So comments don't get ranked over actual article content. This would be embedded code identifying comments and downranking them relative to articles.
c) this would enable a registered "corrections site" to get top ranked meta-web comments to any web page