BBC Takes a Stand For the Public's Right To Remember Redacted Links

Martin Spamer writes with word that the BBC is to publish a continually updated list of its articles removed from Google under the controversial 'right to be forgotten' notices." The BBC will begin - in the "next few weeks" - publishing the list of removed URLs it has been notified about by Google. [Editorial policy head David] Jordan said the BBC had so far been notified of 46 links to articles that had been removed. They included a link to a blog post by Economics Editor Robert Peston. The request was believed to have been made by a person who had left a comment underneath the article. An EU spokesman later said the removal was "not a good judgement" by Google.

Comments

As expected from google

[aepervius]

" "not a good judgement" by Google. "

I expect nothing else from google, the notification to publication, the semi random removal and lack of judgement is exactly what I would do if I was google and wanted to protest against the law without showing my middle finger to the authority : simply do a very poor job out of it. In a way In understand it, I support the right to be forgotten out of many reason (before search engine we all enjoyed that right, and it is stupid that a small error without much consequence ruin your life. Big stuff like murder, rape, corruption, yes leave it in. But small fish ? Remove it don't be evil don't ruibn the life of people with small stuff which would have been forgotten if only a search engine did not exists). But the court should have been the one to decide case by case who should be removed and who should be not.

Re:As expected from google

[markus_baertschi]

Yes to the right to be forgotten. But do it right.

Currently the search engines must remove the link to the article, but the article stays. This is bullshit. If the article contains something to be forgotten it should be removed or redacted. This is the only correct way to do it. Also, there should be an open procedure, with appeals, to decide if the article must be redacted / deleted.

Markus

Re:As expected from google

[Anonymous Coward]

But Markus the point is that Google doesn't own the article. They were simply providing an index link to it. That's why the whole EU Court ruling was so stupid. Google can't remove "the article", that's somebody else's writing on some other server. The only thing Google can remove is what's on their server, which is simply a pointer. Apparently the EU Court didn't understand this when they ordered Google to remove links to content. Fine. Link gone. Of course I can still find it with Bing, or any other search engine for that matter. If BBC puts search engine up on it's site to search BBC content internally, it will all be there, just a little harder to find.
As for it being a "not good judgement" implementation, well the court didn't exactly give them much choice did they, and now everybody and their brother wants anything ever written about them that's in anyway negative to be hidden so it can't be found. And they threaten to sue Google if the link isn't gone by like yesterday. So Google is simply burning through the requests as fast as they can. They'll worry about the appeals when they can, but they have an order they must comply with first. Look they warned the courts this was a bad idea, they tried to explain what they do, and how the web works, but nobody listened because they were all just in it to punish the big bad American company, how dare they flout our European rules. and nobody cared what the reality is. From the article"The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said links that were "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" should not appear when a specific search - usually a person's name - was made." Do you really think that Google actually KNOWS the content of all the sites it's indexed? Of course not. They don't know what the content is, they simply download a page, search for additional links on the page and put them into a list then they index the page they're on by all keywords (anything that isn't or, an, the, a, and, etc.) then index the link under those keys. They have no idea what the actual page is about. No human is reading these things, its just words and links in a computer database. Once the page is indexed they follow all the hyperlinks they found and index those pages as well. Repeat ad infinitum.
So when someone says "Hey there's irrelevant information about me that comes up on this link when you search my name. I want it pulled! The court told you to so you have to!" Google pulls the link. At least there nice enough to tell the link publisher about it so the publisher can appeal, but Google doesn't have time, or the relevant knowledge to decide what should or shouldn't be pulled. So they let the publishers appeal it if they want to. And by the way the court gave them bugger all guidance on how to interpret what is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" just stern warnings about what would happen if they didn't comply. So they pull link first and argue later, Got it yet? This isn't Google's fault.

Re:As expected from google

[Cederic]

No, it was stupid.

If the material shouldn't be available, then remove it.
If it should be available, allow it to be found.

Right now Google are in a no-win situation and the rest of us have artificial barriers in the way of what should be pretty simplistic research.

Re:As expected from google

[IIH]

Currently the search engines must remove the link to the article, but the article stays. This is bullshit. If the article contains something to be forgotten it should be removed or redacted. This is the only correct way to do it. Also, there should be an open procedure, with appeals, to decide if the article must be redacted / deleted.

One of the problems with this law is that it's badly named, which creates a lot of misunderstanding. For example, I do not believe search engines must remove the link to the article completely, just not return it for specific search queries. So it's not the article itself that is at fault, but the connection created by the search engine between the article and the search subject

Basically, when you search Google (or any other search engine) for the name of a person, you are implicitly (or explicitly) asking "What are the most relevant things about this person?" If the answers to this query chosen by the search engine are out of date or irrelevant, then the search engine itself is at fault, as it is the one doing the judgment of "most relevant". When these inaccurate results/connections cause damage to a person, and the search engine won't change its practices, then it is only right that the court stepped in.

Would there be as much of a backlash if this law was called "Requirement for search engines to stop returning inaccurate and harmful results about people?" Maybe not, there might still be people saying "But, the article is correct". But this misses the point that the inaccuracy is in the search-engine-generated and ranked connections between articles and people - not in the article itself.

M.

Re:Article or link

[AthanasiusKircher]

Google is blatantly trying to manipulate public opinion through journalists. They are deliberately misinterpreting the law to create an impression of draconian consequences.

Could be, I suppose.

Or this could just be a result of the massive number of requests they are dealing with. Earlier this month, they mentioned they had received about 150,000 requests in the past 5 months, dealing with roughly 500,000 links. That's roughly 1000 requests and 3500 links to evaluate PER DAY.

Even if they have legal experts reviewing every case, there are bound to be a few questionable calls with such volume.

"not a good judgement"

[physicsphairy]

An EU spokesman later said the removal was "not a good judgement" by Google.

Clearly google should have a team of philosophers, ethicists, social activists, and legal theorists evaluate each of the 1000 requests per day to ensure that each link removed is a "good judgment."

Re:Court's judgement, not Google's.

[gl4ss]

court? what fucking court? it doesn't work that way... unfortunately.

so kthxbai go here https://support.google.com/leg...

the law as it is is stupid.

also it's about 50% that google removes, it's ENTIRELY up to google to decide... so it's googles judgement. it would be better imho if they just offloaded it all to /dev/null . like, you can make the request but they could just default everything to denied.. good for bbc to provide the list.

and if you were wondering, yeah, you can request sites from bbc or whatever fucking site to be removed from search results. don't like something? post some info about you in the comments or make a stupid comment and then ask for the result to be removed! brilliant, eh?