Slashdot Mirror
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.
The problem is they only know the URLs being removed, not the search terms associated with the removal. The removal only affects results for a search of the individual's name, and other searches will still show those articles. Without knowing who requested the removal (in the first case they were notified of it was someone who wrote a comment, not the subject of the article) the list isn't that helpful.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
it is stupid that a small error without much consequence ruin your life
That's not google's fault. It's not the fault of anyone publishing the information. And society won't unfuck itself in this regard while some people can hide their deeds, and some cannot, because they do not understand how the system works. All this will do is create further inequities in society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, it was Google's judgement because the articles Google opted to censor here clearly fell into the public interest category. I agree there are fringe cases where it's going to be hard for Google to judge, but these examples were not them.
Google is really pissed at the fact that a court has ruled, that like every other company in the world, it has to adhere to the EU member state's data protection acts.
It's spending a lot of capital spreading FUD against it as a result. This example being the censoring of news articles to create the self-fulfilling prophecy that it claimed it would result in censorship of public interest news articles when the only reason that's happened is that Google has opted to censor them, rather than because there's any law at all that said it had to.
Another example of Google's FUD is the "public" panels it has been creating to get thoughts on "privacy" where Google has opted to control not just the panel, not just the questions asked and answered, but the audience too to try and pretend there's some great anti-privacy debate going on when it's actually just a whole Google orchestrated bunch of bullshit.
I'm nearly always pro-Google, I've always been a fan of Android, I've always agreed the EU investigations over it's search business and the whole "not favouring competitors" thing is complete fucking nonsense, and I've always sided with Google in the patent wars, but on this issue? Google's underhandedness on the issue wreaks of the same sort of political meddling as Microsoft's subversion of the ISO standards process to get it's document format certified.
So to make it clear again - there is no law in the EU that said that these articles had to be censored by Google - EU lawmakers themselves have been very clear that these articles would not fall foul of the law if they were not removed from search links. The only reason they have been censored therefore is wholly because Google has opted to the censor them, and therefore this is a firm case of Google choosing by itself to carry out censorship and then shifting the blame to try and force it's political goals of not having to give the slightest shit about privacy and data protection.
Of course, it doesn't help that the summary here is incredibly biased. The summary gives the impression that the law is the problem, but the article is much more clear about the fact that Google's decision to carry out censorship unnecessarily is what the BBC is really taking a stand against.
Google is often unfairly used as a punchbag because there's so many wealthy vested interests that are scared shitless of it and lobby the shit out of people to attack it from Microsoft, to News Corp, to Oracle, to Facebook and so on. But not this time, in this particular case, this is a clear example of Google actually doing evil.