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BBC Curates The "Right To Be Forgotten" Links That Google Can't
An anonymous reader writes, quoting the BBC's Internet Blog: "Since a European Court of Justice ruling last year, individuals have the right to request that search engines remove certain web pages from their search results. Those pages usually contain personal information about individuals."
The BBC, however, is not obligated to completely censor the results, and so has taken an approach that other media outlets would do well to emulate: they're keeping a list of those pages delisted by the search engines, and making them easy to find through the BBC itself. Why?
The BBC has decided to make clear to licence fee payers which pages have been removed from Google's search results by publishing this list of links. Each month, we'll republish this list with new removals added at the top.
We are doing this primarily as a contribution to public policy. We think it is important that those with an interest in the “right to be forgotten” can ascertain which articles have been affected by the ruling. We hope it will contribute to the debate about this issue. We also think the integrity of the BBC's online archive is important and, although the pages concerned remain published on BBC Online, removal from Google searches makes parts of that archive harder to find.
There are some very nasty pieces of work on that list, rapists and murderers who presumably managed to get a removal order from within prison
No. Criminals are not able to get removals under EU law until their convictions are spent, and for serious crimes convictions are never spent.
The removals will have been for other people mentioned in those articles, and only for searches of their names. If you search for the murder on Google the article will still come up. The articles have not been removed from Google entirely, just as results when searching for the specific person who made the request.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How does this affect the freedom of the press? Keep in mind that the article is still on the site and findable with Google, just not for the one specific name that requested the removal. The person making the request will have to have reasonable grounds, e.g. criminals with unspent convictions can't cover up their past this way.
How exactly does this affect the freedom of the press to publish what they like on their own web sites?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Flip side. What if someone who had the history of crime obtained de-listing from search results.
The rules state that such people could not obtain a de-listing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC