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France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Globally
Lauren Weinstein writes: I've been waiting for this, much the way one waits for a violent case of food poisoning. France is now officially demanding that Google expand the hideous EU 'Right To Be Forgotten' (RTBF) to Google.com worldwide, instead of just applying it to the appropriate localized (e.g. France) version of Google. And here's my official response as a concerned individual:
To hell with this ... Weinstein's page links to the paywalled WSJ coverage; you might prefer The New York Times or Politico. Related: a court in Canada, according to TechDirt, would like to do something similar, when it comes to expanding its effect on Google results for everyone, not just those who happen to live within its jurisdiction.
To hell with this ... Weinstein's page links to the paywalled WSJ coverage; you might prefer The New York Times or Politico. Related: a court in Canada, according to TechDirt, would like to do something similar, when it comes to expanding its effect on Google results for everyone, not just those who happen to live within its jurisdiction.
Well, another interesting case of "US laws apply worldwide" is the BNP-Paribas Case, where the bank was fined several billions of dollars for not following a US boycott on Iran. The interesting part is that the bank is a french bank, it was acting from Swiss, and France was not supporting the boycott. No US citizen and no US company was involved. But USD was used, and somehow US judges found they were entitled to act... (of course the bank had to pay).
So you are saying that we should screw the Internet because our legal system is already screwed up? I have a better idea: what about getting rid of plea bargains?
In any case, this doesn't apply in much of Europe, because there, often, the press is not allowed to name defendants until they have been found guilty.
From the NYT
The authorities want the ruling to apply to all of Google’s domains, including Google.com, although the company contends that Europe’s privacy legislation should apply only to regional domains like Google.de in Germany.
In effect they want it removed World Wide, if it's "all of Google's domains".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I find it very interesting that you are siding with France on this when on Microsoft you had precisely the opposite stance. There the USA was demanding that Microsoft's USA employees follow USA law and in that case your feeling was the the EU / Ireland had an obligation to be involved and regulate because of where the servers were physically located regardless of the status of the data.
It's really simple. It's down to where the company is based.
Google has a subsidiary in France. That subsidiary is responsible for handling the French version of Google services, like search and the Play store. Even google.com is served from within France for performance reasons, and it gives location based results using language settings and geolocation of IP addresses. Google France needs to comply with French laws, including the version of google.com it serves up.
Microsoft's subsidiary is based in Ireland. It needs to comply with Irish law. US law enforcement doesn't have jurisdiction over it. Just like French courts don't have jurisdiction over Google's US operation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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