Slashdot Mirror
Following EU Ruling, BBC Article Excluded From Google Searches
Albanach writes: In 2007, the BBC's economics editor, Robert Peston, penned an article on the massive losses at Merrill Lynch and the resulting resignation of their CEO Stan O'Neal. Today, the BBC has been notified that the 2007 article will no longer appear in some Google searches made within the European Union, apparently as a result of someone exercising their new-found "right to be forgotten." O'Neal was the only individual named in the 2007 article. While O'Neal has left Merrill Lynch, he has not left the world of business, and now holds a directorship at Alcoa, the world's third largest aluminum producer with $23 billion in revenues in 2013.
Before you laugh about these high profile cases of people trying to be "forgotten," remember that after a while, these removals will become so commonplace that people will stop paying attention, and the system will work as intended.
What about this slashdot entry? Will it also not appear in google search results?
...controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Didn't take long to find the giant flaw in with the "right to be forgotten," did it? One percenters will now use it to selectively edit their Internet profile.
On one hand you have a guy who got in a bar fight when he was in college. Some drunk idiot spills beer on his girlfriend, so he confronts drunk idiot and beats him down, then gets charged with assault. On the other hand, you have this piece of shit (Stan O'Neil).
Which is worse? The college kid having an assault charge hanging over his head the rest of his life, or guys like Stan O'Neil being given a free-pass when they rape millions of people for billions of their hard-earned dollars.
Perhaps the answer is to have a 15-year (or 20-year) waiting period before you can exercise your right to be forgotten? Maybe the answer is just not to commit a crime in the first place.
I don't know why the journalist is blaming Google for this ("So why has Google killed this example of my journalism?") when it's obvious they're not doing this voluntarily.
Because the people in charge are terrified of Google, the Internet, and their citizens use of it. So the BBC, kowtowing as usual to power, but still with enough journalistic testicles to make some form of protest, blames Google.. in the hope they can get away with it. Rather than pinning the blame on the corrupt shitpile of lawyers and wonks who forced Google to do this in a desperate attempt to make money the deciding factor in information control and suppression.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
I suspect Google's playing at what is called "malicious compliance". They don't like the law, because they don't like spending money, just making it. So what they really want is to wind up the news outlets to turn them against the law, because only the press has the power to form public opinion. So I'm very glad to see the BBC pushing back rather than swallowing the bait.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
He doesn't really blame Google. From the article:
He does question why there's no apparent right to appeal. It would certainly seem reasonable to allow the person responsible for an article to highlight why it is still relevant or not outdated since often they will have better knowledge of the subject area than a paralegal.
We can call it the Ministry of Truth