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.

Comments

Hideous?

[Anonymous Coward]

France is now officially demanding that Google expand the hideous EU 'Right To Be Forgotten' (RTBF) to Google.com worldwide, ...

Hideous? Speak for yourself.

Remember the Duke LaCrosse player scandal years ago? To make a long story short, on 60 Minutes one of he geezers yasked the parents why they were fighting so hard to clear all the charges and not cut a deal.

One responded, "The Internet." They didn't want their kids coming up on Google searches over false charges. And they were false. The prosecutor got fired and disbarred..

And considering how employers these days demand to know every little dipshit thing about you, and considering how the smallest thing can be blown out of proportion (people ALWAYS assume the worst), you bet your ass I want this. And Google, Bing and every other advertising/search company can STFU.

Re:hum

[plopez]

"Governments, corporations, and religious ideologies destroy the right to self preservation, to think for oneself, to make your own choices in life, basically destroys individuality."

You missed one. I fixed it for you. Corporations are also about centralized command and control and have a rigid power hierarchy that benefits the few and devalues human beings.

Too young

[kheldan]

Based on more than just this news story: I've been thinking lately that we're just too young of a race yet for the the world to have become as small as it is, and what's worse is the world is getting smaller all the time. The world's shrinkage started with things like the ability to communicate almost instantaneously over long distances (telephone, radio) and later the ability to physically get from almost any point on the planet to any other relatively quickly. These things began to make national borders less and less relevant, and the advent of the Internet has just made that effect more highly pronounced. The problem is essentially the same as with any other technology we've developed: it's evolving orders of magnitude more quickly than humans themselves are evolving, physically and socio-politically. We (humans) are not anywhere near ready to live in a world without borders (look at how we treat each other still!) but the Internet especially is working to erase all borders. Meanwhile, as we're not anywhere near ready for that, one nation or another is always jockeying for the ability to claim the Internet as it's national property, and thus control over Internet policy. Then there's organizations like the United Nations, which would like nothing better than to have ultimate control over the Internet itself -- because, I believe, they think that being able to control the Internet would, ultimately, be a path towards having control over all nations. Which brings me to this point: Will there, eventually, have to be one global governing body? In my opinion, yes, that's going to have to happen one day, as the world is continuing to shrink -- but as previously posited, the human race is not anywhere near the point in it's evolution where that's going to happen. Trying to force it would probably start the War to End All Wars.

Re:Good for the Goose....

[alci63]

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).

Re:Good Luck

[buchner.johannes]

I bet this is misreported and what they demand is that all searches originating from France be censored, regardless of whether a Frenchman goes to google.fr or google.com -- this easy Google to implement. This does not affect anyone outside of France.
" France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Globally " -- rubbish
" France Claims Right To Censor Search Results Locally " -- corrected

Also, even if true, US-Americans are not really allowed to cry about it because "US Claims Right To Wiretap Globally".

Re:Good Luck

[AmiMoJo]

Correct, that is exactly what it is. They are simply saying that Google should obey French law when serving French citizens, which isn't particularly unreasonable considering how much effort Google themselves put in to geofencing French users. For example, French users can't get in to the US Play store or install apps that have been set to "only available in the US". More over, Google serves google.com to European users from servers located in the EU anyway.