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European Commission Spokesman: Google Removing Link Was "not a Good Judgement"

Posted by samzenpus on from the we've-always-been-at-war-with-Eastasia dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with this article from the BBC about Google's recent removal of a news story from search results. "Google's decision to remove a BBC article from some of its search results was "not a good judgement", a European Commission spokesman has said. A link to an article by Robert Peston was taken down under the European court's "right to be forgotten" ruling. But Ryan Heath, spokesman for the European Commission's vice-president, said he could not see a "reasonable public interest" for the action. He said the ruling should not allow people to "Photoshop their lives". The BBC understands that Google is sifting through more than 250,000 web links people wanted removed."

42 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh... by bradley13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...but that's exactly what the ruling does. The original case was a businessman objecting to Google links to newpaper stories about his life. This is no different.

    Fact is, the court that issued this ruling screwed up big time. Perhaps, if Google can find a few more egregious deletions to make, the European Parliament will correct the error.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Well, duh... by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Informative

      The original case was a newspaper notice of a personal bankruptcy of a pretty obscure person, while this is a story about a very public CEO resignation. The decision is a bit of a mess, I agree, but this case pretty clearly falls outside its scope, which explicitly says that stories involving public roles are excluded (which resigning as CEO of Merill Lynch certainly counts as).

      From the explanatory summary (pdf) that accompanied the decision, explaining when search-engine operators may turn down removal requests:

      The request may for example be turned down where the search engine operator concludes that for particular reasons, such as for example the public role played by John Smith, the interest of the general public to have access to the information in question justifies showing the links in Google search results.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Well, duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I rather suspect that was the point. Google is deliberately waving around the stupidest example of the implementation of the law they could find in hopes that somebody will notice what a bad idea the law was.

      It doesn't even take activism to inspire this, what business wants to pay someone to sort through people requesting that the picture of them kissing the fat chick while drunk be taken down?

    3. Re:Well, duh... by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ...but that's exactly what the ruling does. The original case was a businessman objecting to Google links to newpaper stories about his life.

      The whole concept of the law applying to everybody is surprising sometimes. ;-)

      Anybody can request that data about themselves can be deleted. The law also allows links to be removed. The business can comply, or claim they have a reason outlined in the law, such as a business need for record keeping. If they fight it the person can fight it through the courts. If enough people fight it the company will suffer the pains of thousands of lawsuits.

      While the news stories themselves can remain under the terms of the law, it is no surprise that people absolutely will try to make things hard to find. That's the entire point of the law. It applies to not just convicted criminals but also to politicians and prominent figures. ANYBODY can request that data be deleted under the terms of the law.

      The law is to allow things to fade from the collective memory and makes it difficult for them to be found.

      Removing the link to unsavory things IS the purpose. This IS what the law was designed for.

      The expressed right to be forgotten includes forgetting about news stories.

      I suppose next people will be upset when links to all negative stories related to upcoming politicians will suddenly vanish under the requests.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    4. Re:Well, duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "pretty obscure person" vs "very public CEO" is a matter of *your* perspective. If you're looking to go into business with the "pretty obscure person" then it's highly relevant for you. In both cases they are public articles by newspapers.

      What should happen is these requests should be put to the newspapers themselves, except then everyone would realize that it's censorship. And that's exactly what it is. So instead we have the silliness of asking a rich search company to do contortions to do filtering instead.

    5. Re:Well, duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      google is in a no win situation here. The sheer volumne of material they have to sift through makes it impossible to hire enough people, but the decisions require personal attention. If Europe wants to specify every link google can and cannot make available then they need to let google know in a timely manner. They want it both ways.

    6. Re:Well, duh... by sg_oneill · · Score: 3, Informative

      It all strikes down to why law can be so complicated. When done right, laws are subtle things.

      Ideally we'd like a "right to be forgotten" that means when I ask Facebook to delete my account, then by delete I mean "not a single bit of my accounts data remains". What we DONT want however is if I go raping or beating people I can get news articles about me supressed. Distilling those distinctions into laws however can end up quite tricky because of all the edge cases.

      That requires legal expertise, and unfortunatlely whatever law results is going to be complicated and full of edge cases.

      Which, of course means nobody is going to understand the bloody thing.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    7. Re:Well, duh... by gbjbaanb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      in this particular case, the guy the article was about didn't make the 'forgetme' request, it was some Joe Schmoe who was objecting to a comment he posted in the comment section under it.

      I don't know if the guy's comment is irrelevant now, I doubt it as it was just some feeble comment he wrote - not an article directly about that user. It could be he wrote something he is now embarrassed about, but more likely it is just some dick who wanted to try the system out.

    8. Re:Well, duh... by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fact is, the court that issued this ruling screwed up big time. Perhaps, if Google can find a few more egregious deletions to make, the European Parliament will correct the error.

      Fact is, the European Parliament passed a law that was so full of holes that it was inevitably going to be abused before it was passed and, despite this being pointed out frequently, they went ahead and passed the law anyway instead of maybe taking a bit of time to plug some of the holes and clarifing under what circumstances is could and, more importantly, could not be used. At least it's starting to look like some members of the EC are starting to realise that the EP messed up, but somehow I doubt that they are going to be able to convince their colleagues to do anything about it because that would entail them effectively admitting that they messed up.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    9. Re:Well, duh... by Karmashock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      agreed... the eu had a stupid ruling that is having predictably stupid consequences.

      --
      I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    10. Re:Well, duh... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The original case was a newspaper notice of a personal bankruptcy of a pretty obscure person, while this is a story about a very public CEO resignation.

      And yet, that is completely and utterly irrelevant because either way, the public interest is harmed, not served, by permitting someone to hide facts. That will never make the world a better place.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Well, duh... by FireFury03 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...but that's exactly what the ruling does. The original case was a businessman objecting to Google links to newpaper stories about his life. This is no different.

      Fact is, the court that issued this ruling screwed up big time. Perhaps, if Google can find a few more egregious deletions to make, the European Parliament will correct the error.

      I think the big problem here is that Google are expected to be the judge, jury and executioner and are getting smacked down when someone thinks they made the wrong judgement call. This stuff should be going to an independent judge instead of expecting Google to uphold a new law that has a fairly vague scope.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    12. Re:Well, duh... by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the big problem here is that Google are expected to be the judge, jury and executioner and are getting smacked down when someone thinks they made the wrong judgement call. This stuff should be going to an independent judge instead of expecting Google to uphold a new law that has a fairly vague scope.

      Yeah, that would work.

      The article states that Google alone is getting over 1000 requests per day. How many other companies are getting requests, and at what rate?

      While it would be ideal for some humans to look at the tens of thousands of requests made daily and carefully judge the merits of the request, it won't happen.

      It won't happen for the same reason real people don't look at the DMCA takedown lists.

      There are too many, and it is easier to just automate the system than to validate that every single line item is an actually infringing item. It won't take long before the requests become fully automated much like the DMCA lists are. People will download a simple tool that scours the interwebz for your name, then submits takedown requests for every match. There will be many incorrect matches made as the plebeian masses use the simple automated tools.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    13. Re:Well, duh... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Fact is, the European Parliament passed a law that was so full of holes that it was inevitably going to be abused before it was passed and, despite this being pointed out frequently, they went ahead and passed the law anyway instead of maybe taking a bit of time to plug some of the holes

      you can't plug the holes in a fishing net designed to catch as many fish as possible. at least, not without a whole lot of dolphins

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    14. Re:Well, duh... by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, the big practical problem with this decision is that it requires case-by-case analysis, which is probably impractical at Google's scale. This particular case is really pretty clear-cut: it's the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, and it's a story about his CEOship. If Google did case-by-case analysis, it would be easy to reject this takedown request as easily within the scope of the "public role" exception. However they probably (for understandable reasons) don't want to do that kind of case-by-case decision making.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    15. Re:Well, duh... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      ...but that's exactly what the ruling does.

      No, it isn't. It wasn't even the guy mentioned in the article who requested the removal, it was someone who wrote a comment on the article. If you search for "Stan O'Neal" the article still comes up, it's only searching for the commenter's name that has been censored. The commenter is not a public figure, just a random internet user.

      This morning on the radio a spokesperson from Google was quite clear that they would not allow public figures to use the right to be forgotten in this way. They only acted because the comment writer is a non-notable member of the public and there is no public-interest angle.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    16. Re:Well, duh... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the main issue I have is that this EC spokesman is expecting Google to make decisions regarding the public interest rather than erring on the side of caution and removing everything - the moment they do make decisions regarding the public interest, you can bet your arse they will be hauled back into court and have to justify themselves.

      So by going to the extreme and implementing the ruling across the board (barring obvious requests that can be rejected), Google is protecting themselves and showing what a stupid ruling it is in the first place. There is no alternative approach that Google can take that doesn't open them up to further legal action.

    17. Re:Well, duh... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And yet, that is completely and utterly irrelevant because either way, the public interest is harmed, not served, by permitting someone to hide facts. That will never make the world a better place.

      In Europe we aim to rehabilitate people who made mistakes. People who make financial mistakes, broke the law or just generally did something stupid in public are given the opportunity to move past those mistakes and have them forgotten. The law enforces that to a reasonable degree - it can't erase old newspaper articles, but it does allow a person not to mention certain criminal convictions or hide historic bankruptcies from the bank after a period of time.

      I understand it is different in the US. Criminals in particular are branded for life, no matter what their crime or what kind of life they live after being punished. We don't do that here, and consider it in the public interest to give people these opportunities so that they can be productive members of society again.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:Well, duh... by jabuzz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Requiring the removal of incorrect data anywhere is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that now links to 100% factually correct data has to be removed if the person involved no longer likes it.

    19. Re:Well, duh... by NicBenjamin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The original case was a newspaper notice of a personal bankruptcy of a pretty obscure person, while this is a story about a very public CEO resignation. The decision is a bit of a mess, I agree, but this case pretty clearly falls outside its scope, which explicitly says that stories involving public roles are excluded (which resigning as CEO of Merill Lynch certainly counts as).

      From the explanatory summary (pdf) that accompanied the decision, explaining when search-engine operators may turn down removal requests:

      The request may for example be turned down where the search engine operator concludes that for particular reasons, such as for example the public role played by John Smith, the interest of the general public to have access to the information in question justifies showing the links in Google search results.

      I don't believe you understand why google's pissed.

      They're a for-profit American corporation. They make money selling information to people. They keep costs low but refusing to use actual humans to do any of the work, when computer algorithm will work fine.

      But this ruling specifically assumes they have an actual person sitting around, with nothing to do but read these requests, and then spend an hour trying to figure out if Jose Juerez in this story is a nobody who can use his right to be forgotten, or he's a Jose Juarez who is a figure of public interest. Moreover the guy has to know every EU language, every EU minority language (so Sorbian with an 'o' counts, because German citizen Sorbians are also EU Citizens), prominent local non-EU languages (such as Serbian, with an e), and probably also at least a smattering or major world languages like Russian and Chinese.

      Since that person does not actually exist, they either have to hire a staff of several dozen, or they have to hire a couple really good lawyers who know the more prominent EU languages (ie: a Frenchmen, an Englishman, a German, maybe a Scandinavian because most of them can at least BS their way through all four of those languages, etc.), and then pull poor Nicolo Popescu from his team in analytics when a Romanian has a request. Then you have to hope Nicolo (hired for his ability to see patterns in data, not his communications skills), and the EU-fluent-lawyer he's talking to can communicate some very sophisticated legal concepts to each-other.

      So even if they only have 50k requests, as the BBC reported, this is not a cheap program for them to administer. They're paying something on the order of $150-400 an hour per person they hire because you need multi-lingual lawyers, they need to bring in the random dude who happens to know Gaelic once a month, they need to do some pretty strong googling of their own to confirm the complaints aren't BS generated by Yahoo bots specifically to fuck over their bottom line, etc. 50,000 complaints times $150 is $7,500,000 so even if each one only takes an hour (and it'll be more like five, especially for EU languages that aren't world languages like Italian or Portuguese), 250k complaints (as in this summary) is nearly $40 million assuming that they only take an hour. It's probably gonna be closer to the $250 million range by the time they actually get done investigating. And that's in seven weeks. Over a full year this is is is almost certainly gonna cost them $1-$2 Billion.

      So in other words google has two option. Agree to hire it's own Eurocrats for roughly $1 Billion a year, or make an algorithm that automatically accepts any request. As an American corporation they are loathe to spend that money on regulatory compliance until the actual regulators actually rule they actually have to have staff costing an actual $1 Billion. Note that, in general, each use of 'actual' in that last sentence requires at least one court ruling. American corporations really, really, really hate spending

    20. Re:Well, duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We need more dicks like this, then, to point out the absurdity of the system. I hope Google responds to all such requests, and that they leave a gap on their search page with a message "This link has been removed in support of the right to be forgotten" in its place.

    21. Re:Well, duh... by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "A new law that has a fairly vague scope"? It's a law which dates back to 1995, and its scope is fairly clear. See the ECJ's Factsheet.

      The whole idea of treating a news report as "personal data" seems completely flawed to me.

      But in any case, there seems to be a "public interest" judgement to be made, with respect to this law. In general I think "public interest" judgements need to be made by judges and other public organisations within an established framework, rather than as ad-hoc judgements by private businesses.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    22. Re:Well, duh... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      agreed... the eu had a stupid ruling that is having predictably stupid consequences.

      the obvious solution is to have all mentions of it removed from internet search results. ;)

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    23. Re: Well, duh... by mjtaylor24601 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the cost of ethically maintaining their services becomes excessive, they can bear the cost ir shut down.

      The cost of "ethically" maintaining their service is that sometimes a case will fall through the cracks and information that probably should have remained available will be unduly censored because Google can't afford to do exhaustive analysis of every request that comes in. And that's a cost we all get to bear.

      --
      I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
    24. Re: Well, duh... by thaylin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Umm, they are not the stewards of the information, they just point to it. It is not their jobs to police the internet for you.

      --
      When you cant win, ad hominem.
    25. Re: Well, duh... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It's not 100% different from discovering your ex-girlfriend has posted that info about you, and wanting it taken down.

      Except there are already laws for that, and this wasn't necessary. If those laws didn't cover enough of the EU, they could have been expanded, instead of creating a law which would also permit suppression of information that clearly is in the public interest.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    26. Re:Well, duh... by thaylin · · Score: 2

      Except they ruled for a Businessman, who by nature has a public standing, so it is very contradictory.

      --
      When you cant win, ad hominem.
    27. Re:Well, duh... by swillden · · Score: 2

      Just one correction, not related to your point:

      They make money selling information to people.

      What Google actually sells is an advertising service, which is made more effective by using information in two ways, first to attract viewers, and second to decide which of the viewers is likely to be interested in which ads. The phrase "selling information" sounds like they're providing information to a party who gives them money in return, which isn't what Google does.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    28. Re: Well, duh... by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 2

      We definitely should use Google' and Photoshop that way in everyday language. If we do it enough Google and Adobe will lose their trademarks.

      I xerox that remark!

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    29. Re:Well, duh... by StToast · · Score: 2

      I would say they sell access to you for advertising. As an advertiser, you designate how many people you would like to targeted for your adverstising, based on your requested triggers/demographics. Google takes your order, and presents the ads to their users. It's not like they take the order, and then present the infomation to the advertiser to be used. They (Google) take the request and serve the ads provided by the advertiser to the people that they decide should see it based on the information that they (again Google) have.

  2. So... by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 2

    The important question for me personally is this: As someone living in Europe, how can I ensure that I see the US search results? Does switching to google.com suffice? Or do I have to use a proxy or VPN?

    1. Re:So... by Andtalath · · Score: 2

      Google.com redirects you to the appropriate country.

    2. Re:So... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 2

      Try www.google.com/ncr

    3. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wrong, at least at the moment. You can turn off the google national redirect by simply appending "/ncr" to the url, i.e. http://www.google.com/ncr will take you to the USA site even if you are in Europe. However whether Google is forced to take that option away given some of these stupid EU and national court rulings is another matter.

  3. Not the whole story- it goes deeper by lostandthedamned · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apparently Robert Peston did some digging and it wasn't searching for the Article that was being removed but searching for one of the comments. Right to be forgotten is all well and good, but using that to try and remove a post you yourself put in a public place is a bit barmy. Props to the first person who changes their name to Anonymous Coward then makes the request for all their posts to be unsearchable.

    1. Re:Not the whole story- it goes deeper by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had an issue with a comment I wrote on the BBC site years ago. Due to the way the page was laid out when you googled my name the snippet they displayed from the BBC site had some other person's vaguely racist and childishly simplistic comment next to my name. I contacted Google and they said contact the BBC. I contacted the BBC and didn't get a response, but about six months later the page was taken down. I didn't really want a complete take-down, just a fix for their layout.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. My two cents... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google shouldn't have to make intelligent decisions as to what needs to be removed. It should all be automatic. Either everything is removed, or nothing is removed. Only by court orders otherwise.

    Those people, who want to be forgotten, should go after those hosting the material, not the search engine pointing. Don't we have an expectation to know where things are when searching? The search engine should be neutral is discovering the information.

    The existence of a site doesn't necessarily mean something is negative. Facts are facts. If it's copyright infringement, defamation, libel, whatever, then it's the site that should be dealt with, not someone pointing to it.

    To me, the E.U. isn't making progress. (I'm an American in the U.S.A.)

    How does the existence of facts make a person any less qualified to do a job, if said facts aren't relevant? Employers, lenders, whatever, shouldn't be allowed to take factor in certain things when it comes to hiring people. It should be illegal. Kind of like how when asking about criminal activity, here in the U.S., I don't think they can count convictions over 10 years old. Why not do that sort of thing for stuff over there? Wasn't this whole thing originally about some guy and his tax foreclosure on his house or something like that?

  5. A good idea, but... by bigalzzz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whilst it's a good idea for most people to be able to hide some embarrassing stuff about them, sadly it can be used to hide information that should be public. For example I know of someone who owes me a considerable amount of money, and several others. He deliberately ran up the debt with no intention of paying. Whilst trying to find information about him the other day Google showed that it has hidden a results because of the right to be forgotten. I know that he's done this so he can get out there and con more people with less chance of being found.

    1. Re:A good idea, but... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Whilst it's a good idea for most people to be able to hide some embarrassing stuff about them,

      [citation needed]

      People already have too little motivation to do the right thing. Their misdeeds must be recorded for posterity. As well, too many people take stupid shit too seriously. The fact that it's just stupid shit must also be recorded for posterity, so that we can get over the stupid shit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. how are they hiding the names? by mlush · · Score: 2

    I've been doing a bit of digging on the page, apparently the takedown was because of one of the comments so I did google searches for the page and each commentors name and they all came up ... though the searches were very slow and occasionally died with a 500 error.

  7. Justin Deed by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Funny

    Justin Deed was a Streisand fan,
    Doo dah, doo dah,
    Saw her Effect and had a plan,
    Oh da doo dah day,
    Scrapin' screens all day
    Scrapin' screens all night
    Tried purge the whole Internet
    'Cause he won't too bright.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  8. The "right to be forgotten" by bmo · · Score: 2

    Does not exist.

    It didn't exist before the Internet, and it doesn't exist now. It's a complete fiction. I don't even know why we're discussing this as if it exists. It doesn't. I can't go back and tell people to forget things or destroy newspaper clippings about what I did any more than I can stop the tide from coming in.

    --
    BMO