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.
Court's judgement, not Google's.
Quit offloading the responsibility for your censorship onto a third party. KTHXBAI.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
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.
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.'"
We have two options. One is to censor and hide information. The second is to learn to be more tolerant and just accept everybody makes mistakes and says stupid things at times. If you're religious, you can't hide stuff from your god. If you're not religious your only judgement is by others and perhaps you deserve it.
With the internet what is unfair is how by and large people were fooled into thinking they were anonymous, I think allowing that belief and taking it away without peoples knowledge is a form of entrapment (or perhaps not educating the populace on the consequences of actions when they were always there). While anonymous people say things for reaction that they do not necessarily believe or mean. Perhaps that is a mark on their character. I was taught to believe that sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. This goes in two directions.
We are each individuals who have our own path to forge. I pity those who try to control others. I pity those who act without thinking. Don't live in the past, the key is to move on and learn from your mistakes, better yet learn from others. That is wisdom. Hakuna matata.
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.
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."
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
The whole article is de-indexed. That is the only way it can work - the required form of complaint is that the information is inaccurate / irrelevant / etc., i.e. the complaint is that the information should be "forgotten", not that any particular search term should not lead to it.
and it is stupid that a small error without much consequence ruin your life.
If it's indeed a small error, surely you'd still find acceptance from some people, if not forgiven by all. It's for others to decide, not you.
What will EU do next? Wipe out memory of criminals from their victims?
While I agree that this would be the best way to deal with it, you seem to forget what most politicians also conveniently ignore: Their laws don't mean jack in Generistan. Slander isn't really a crime in some countries. At least countries that have real problems instead of first world problems are usually a wee bit, let's say, sluggish when it comes to your request to take down some article you don't like.
For a time I was busy trying to fight malware. Part of that fight included trying to take down command&control servers. You have NO idea how much trouble it can be to convince the executive in some far east countries to cooperate in something like shutting down such a C&C server. Even if said country does actually have laws against computer crime. Now take a wild guess how easy it may be to convince a provider in said country to do something against an article the content of which is possibly not even violating their local law (but is violating EU laws).
The EU can only policy the territory it controls. Some countries may think they own the world and can enforce their laws anywhere, I'm kinda glad the EU doesn't follow that train of thought. And I am DAMN glad they try to control it that way instead of the "Chinese firewall" approach!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you can't see the difference between banning new creation and altering the historic record, I don't know what to tell you.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
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.
This law does not ban indexing by libraries, by the legal system, and by a multitude of other means which have legitimate societal uses where there is a legitimate need for the information. The law does not advocate removal of information, only how and when it is indexed and presented.
This guy I replied to, who proposing the source be deleted does not understand the scope of the law. He proposes deletion of material, when that would countervene the intention of the law which is to allow proper and needed accees to historical record, not just up and deleting history.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
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.
No, you've misunderstood the goal. It isn't about deleting the information, it is about increasing the barrier to finding the information. The goal of the court is to turn the clock back, just a little tiny bit back, towards pre-internet status. It used to be that various records of our activities were spread around different "data silos" - newspaper articles were at the library, property records were at the tax assessor's office, arrest records at the court house, etc. You could still find the information but you had to care enough about it to do a little legwork. We had a sort of privacy by default - the information was public but not easily public.
Rarely is anything in life black-and-white, all-or-nothing. The EU court ruling is about acknowleding that reality and trying to bring back the gradients of privacy. Complaining that about google delistings is kind of like complaining that you can't easily search facebook timelines from google or that google obeys what is in a robots.txt file.
You'll note that the articles are not even delisted from google, it is only certain specific search terms that no longer pull up the articles. For example, in the economics article, if you search for any of the keywords in the article, it still comes up in google. But if you search for the name of the guy who wrote that one comment, then the article does not come up. That's all - they've just broken the direct link between one person's name and a public record about that person. The information is still there, you can still find it in other ways, it just takes a little more legwork so that there is a little more privacy.
"Slashdot take down this article (Score 0)"
You must wait until you have a -1 rating, otherwise you have had no damage to your feelings.
That's not how data protection laws work in the EU. They apply to businesses that provide access to information about people, even if they didn't create the information themselves. The classic example is the credit reference agency, which merely catalogues credit information provided by third parties and publicly available information like bankruptcies. Even so, data protection laws require them to "forget" certain things, such as bankruptcies after a certain period of time.
Data protection laws are very important in Europe. They are what allow criminals to rehabilitate. The prevent companies selling or allowing access to private health or financial data for their own benefit. It allows you to have incorrect information corrected, or get a complete record of the data they have relating to you.
You are also factually incorrect about what Google is doing. They are not removing articles from their search results entirely. They are only removing those search results for a specific individual's name. Other search terms will still find those pages. Your approach, which I note seems to be the US approach, is to never forget or forgive any mistake or anything uttered by anyone in a public forum, for the rest of their lives. It's like the permanent record some schools keep, only a mistake made when young and blight your entire life and the only way to recover is to start a new identity. Europe doesn't do that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I didn't espouse data retention or destruction. I merely highlighted that the EU courts have demanded that Google engage in neither.
That's just fucking stupid.
Google is blatantly trying to manipulate public opinion through journalists. They are deliberately misinterpreting the law to create an impression of draconian consequences.
Who cares? It's a corrupt law. Public opinion was manipulated to get it passed. If they can lie, and it works, then so can we. So fuck the censors and all other authoritarians. Let's fight fire with fire, and do what we can to end this, whatever it takes. Google is doing right. If they have some kind of "nuclear weapon" to wipe out censorship by what ever means at hand (make it impossible to enforce), I sure hope they use it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
> What a load of cock you're writing here. Google doesn't discriminate between what is relevant and what isn't.
The topic we're discussing is that a European court ordered Google to hide information which is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant". Note two of the three things Google is ordered to decide are relevance - Google must decide if the information is irrelevant or no longer relevant, the court ordered.
The case was a guy who didn't pay his bills and eventually his property was auctioned off to pay the bills. If you're considering hiring the guy to drive an ice cream truck, that information may be irrelevant. If you're considering partnering with him to open a restaurant which will require a $200,000 investment, that information may be very relevant indeed. Google can't possibly decide if the information is relevant since it doesn't know the reader's purpose for seeking information about the guy, but the court ordered them to make that determination.
In the end we will just get private search engines which companies use to check out hires ... so the rich/frauds will be able to make their deeds invisible to the peons but the peons won't be able to hide their misspent youth from the rich/frauds.
It is.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.