Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Rejects French Order For 'Right To Be Forgotten'

Posted by Soulskill on from the will-not-surrender dept.

Last month, French data protection agency CNIL ordered Google to comply with the European "right to be forgotten" order by delisting certain search results not just on the European versions of Google's search engine, but on all versions. Google has now publicly rejected that demand. CNIL has promised a response, and it's likely the case will go before local courts. Google says, This is a troubling development that risks serious chilling effects on the web. While the right to be forgotten may now be the law in Europe, it is not the law globally. Moreover, there are innumerable examples around the world where content that is declared illegal under the laws of one country, would be deemed legal in others: Thailand criminalizes some speech that is critical of its King, Turkey criminalizes some speech that is critical of Ataturk, and Russia outlaws some speech that is deemed to be "gay propaganda." If the CNIL's proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for Internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom. In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world's least free place.

42 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. May you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    never be falsely be accused of rape.

    1. Re:May you by Sloppy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And let's also hope that nobody ever actually commits rape and gets caught and convicted.

      Censorship is always a two-edged sword. I have never heard of any form of censorship where you couldn't rightly cite some examples where it's a good idea, but freedom-lovers can play the examples game too.

      Loose lips sink ships, but the king is taxing us unfairly. Which side are you on?

      --
      As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    2. Re:May you by kthreadd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      never be falsely be accused of rape.

      So what? You WERE accused of rape. That's not going away, it's part of history. Any sensible person and most insensible people know the difference between being accused of something and actually being convicted for it. And if you actually were convicted for it, then deal with it.

    3. Re:May you by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ain't necessary. In France, Google does actually filter the results.

      Implementing such a thing would not accomplish anything.

      France wishes to enforce its laws outside of France. And that's something they lack the aircraft carriers for.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:May you by nblender · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's the theory... I see a number of local headlines of the form "Joe Shmoe has been arrested on suspicion of child molestation and trafficking of a person under the age of 18" ... Well, I don't know if I've ever seen a headline that says "Joe Shmoe was cleared of all charges relating to his arrest for child molestation and trafficking" ... So when Joe Shmoe wants to continue his career as a youth swimming instructor, I predict he's largely fucked even though, technically, everything should be ok. I think most insensible people know the difference between being accused and actually being convicted but I also think most parents are going to say "well, he probably got off on a technicality and where there's smoke there's fire so i'm not going to trust him with my 14 year old daughter"...

      The theoretical world is a nice place to live in, if you can find a way to do it... But here in the real world, things aren't always ideal.

    5. Re:May you by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      it's part of history. Any sensible person and most insensible people know the difference between being accused of something and actually being convicted for it.

      Maybe "sensible" people recognize that distinction.

      But, be honest here -- if you were a young woman, and you searched for a guy you were considering dating and saw he had been "accused of" rape, would you go out with him? Would you even bother asking for his story? Or would just say, "Uh... no thanks"?

      If you were in charge of hiring someone for a position, and you did a search and saw a guy was "accused of" rape, would you think twice about hiring the guy? If you had 50 applicants for the job, wouldn't you just skip to the next guy? Even if you'd be okay hiring him, if you were at a prominent company, would you be concerned that people looking up your employees might come upon such a record about this guy? Maybe you'd be okay working with him, but would your customers be? Is the risk worth it?

      Is it legal to discriminate on this basis? Probably not. But if you have 50 other candidates for a job, you'll probably just move onto the next candidate... and no one will know why you passed this guy over.

      And if your response is to say, "Well, you should find out the whole story" -- well, most "sensible" people probably have other things they need to do with their lives other than researching someone else's past in detail. They look for the most prominent stuff that comes up in a search engine hit -- "ooh, he was a suspected rapist." Boom. Why go further? And it might not even be easy to go further, since news media sources are much more likely to report prominently when someone is arrested for some heinous crime... when the charges are dropped a few weeks later, you're lucky to see a few sentences on page 10, if that.

      I do NOT think the current implementation of "right to be forgotten" laws work right, but just acting like there is no problem and "it's all part of history that sensible people should understand" is just ridiculous... particularly if it comes to inaccurate or misleading accusations of something particularly egregious. Facts taken out of context are often misleading. Most of those facts just would disappear from the public eye a couple decades ago (unless you specifically went digging in an archive), but now they can be instantly available for many years. Our public morality and ethics have not caught up with this.

    6. Re:May you by ADRA · · Score: 2

      In all likelihood, the convicted rapist couldn't get their names removed anyways since its in the public's best interest to know, but hell slashdot thinks the whole law is a rubber stamp, so whatev's. Well, it really depends on the laws of the land, because sometimes countries allow for long-ago rapists' records to be expunged, so maybe right-to-be-forgotten would eventually kick in for 'reformed' rapists.

      --
      Bye!
    7. Re:May you by lgw · · Score: 2

      Let Paris implement its own Grand mur de la France, behind which it can spend what it takes on a search engine with a Forget Me feature.

      France did try building a Grand mur de la France once, of course, but then the Germans just went around it. Google search results are already filtered in France as needed to comply with French law, but France seems to be upset here that the Germans (or French with a VPN) are getting around it. Somehow, I don't think they'll learn this time, either.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. Didn't realize Ms Streisand was French by disposable60 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Once upon a time, when most of us lived in smallish villages, ALL your neighbors knew your business - the only way to have anonymity was to leave town, which was difficult and dangerous. Now everyone's village spans the globe, and leaving is even more difficult and dangerous. I value anonymity, which I maintain by seeming as average as possible.

    --
    You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
    1. Re:Didn't realize Ms Streisand was French by qubex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Incidentally, this was also why people were so wary of outsiders: because they lacked a known history attesting to their character, and because one always wondered what incentive had caused them to favour the uncertainties of leaving their town to venture elsewhere. It is also the root origin of patronymics.

      In several credited (*cough*) theories it is also the origin of money: allowing people deemed to be “credit risks” (which is to say, without a known history nor a certainty of future reciprocation) to engage in transactions.

      Just sayin’.

      --
      "Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
  3. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Right to be forgotten" is just a cover-up tool used by elites to wipe their messes off then net. Censorship is censorship, whatever euphemism you invent to rationalize it. Just another terrible idea that I hope stays isolated to Europe.

  4. Push comes to shove sooner or later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google already has no presence China (and arguably for noble reasons -- they didn't feel like giving up lists of dissidents).

    I wonder if the same thing will happen in France, if not the entire EU. They can shut down Google's presence there and jail all employees, but the data can be replicated offshore, making all the right to be forgotten laws a moot point.

    Wonder who will win. Ultimately, can Google lose the EU for a market as they did China?

  5. Correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world's least free place."

    No, it would be even less free than that. It would be the intersection of the freedoms in all places, which is a subset of the freedoms in the least free place.

  6. Re:Red Herring by nnet · · Score: 2

    When accessed via ipv4, sure. Since there's no reliable geolocation for ipv6, EU people could still see "forgotten" data.

  7. Re:Red Herring by halivar · · Score: 2

    That's not what the French are asking for.

  8. Missing the big picture by Himmy32 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    False accusations suck, but that's not even it's primary use. But it would be naive to not consider the ramifications beyond. It could mean that search results for Tienanmen Square or Falun Gong could be missing world wide because Chinese law bans results for those pages in their jurisdiction. Every country wants their laws to apply to everyone else, but doesn't think of the consequences then of having to apply everyone else's laws to themselves.

    Even more so, seems silly that the remedy to a false accusation is to delist a page from a search result. Seems that libel statues would apply that you should direct at the content publisher not the search engine.

    The world will be a much scarier place if we don't have freedom of speech because some people could tell lies.

    1. Re:Missing the big picture by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 5, Informative

      They are complying with the law; the Google pages run by their subsidiaries in European countries affected by the law de-list things as they are required to do. The Japanese Google subsidiary is not required to follow European laws, so they don't have to de-list anything that the EU (or anybody in Europe) tells them to.

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
    2. Re:Missing the big picture by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      From a US perspective, perhaps. But truth is not a defense in Europe, even for public figures (who thus use censorship to protect their power by preventing criticism.)

      The legal power to silence criticism is at the core of the absolutist nature of the First Amendment. Government doesn't get to decide what kinds of criticism are permitted, by them, the people in power with police behind them.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  9. And yet, Google does censor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google already censors the web according to US laws and preferences. They're constantly taking down links to child pornography. They take down links to copyrighted content. They're even taking down links to revenge porn now. This isn't a principled stand. Google doesn't want to comply with the European law.

  10. Does this law also apply to traditional media? by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I played baseball as a kid and I made the local paper a few times in my youth. My local library can get, pretty much, a copy of any newspaper that's ever been printed and archived.

    I assume other countries like France have similar archives. Would this "right to be forgotten" also apply to paper archives? What about public records such as financial transactions?

    It seems irresponsible of us to deprive future generations of these potential historical records.

  11. Re:That's how the law usually works. by bickerdyke · · Score: 3, Informative

    If a Scotsman commits rape in France, he may be tried in England.

    That's probably because the Scots are still under English occupation.

    If a Scotsman commits rape in France, he MAY NOT be tried in Turkey. See?

    --
    bickerdyke
  12. There is no right to be forgotten by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everything everyone does is part of history. The "right to be forgotten" is just the 1984 memory hole with a friendly face. It starts with misunderstandings and people saying "they were a kid when they did that" and ends with inconvenient facts about what people did before their "views evolved" being forcibly erased for the convenience of the one wanting their past hidden.

    1. Re:There is no right to be forgotten by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      Everything everyone does is part of history.

      Actually, that's not at all true, at least in the meaning of "history" before the internet. History is traditionally a narrative created about the past, usually derived from reliable sources (or at least what were considered reliable by the author of the narrative). A random recollection of some dude about some other dude was not "history" -- it was "gossip" at best. It only became "history" if someone wrote down the account and gave it credibility.

      In the past, reliable records about the vast majority of events and people were scant. There are major figures of medieval Europe, for example, where we have almost no actual records from their lifetime -- maybe a baptismal record, or a record that they were paid once by some guy at some point, but that might be it.

      The fact that little Jimmy went pee in his pants during gym class in 3rd grade didn't used to be "history." Maybe a few of the kids in his class might remember that incident a couple decades later, but it was generally forgotten by everyone else. Nowadays, one of those kids might take out a cell phone and take a picture of little Jimmy's wet pants, text it to some other kids, and the picture might end up on the internet if it's sufficiently entertaining to some stupid kid.

      Now Jimmy's pee-filled pants are an official durable record that might persist on the internet for decades, available to anyone with sufficient skills at searching.

      We used to have a historical "filter" that would get rid of the random quotidian minutiae of our lives, simply because it wasn't recorded in durable form. "History" would only record "important" stuff.

      Now just about any event can be photographed, videotaped, or otherwise documented to become a "meme" or at least passed around among hoards of people (and thereby become a somewhat permanent record).

      The problem here is that we ALL do crap in everyday life that would look bad out of context. And once that crap "bubbles up" somewhere on the internet, it really does become a part of "history" in the old sense, because search engines are our new machines that curate historical records... rather than historians digging in archives and collecting records which would be turned into a narrative.

      I'm NOT saying any of this is "bad," only that is VERY different from what "history" was even just a couple decades ago.

      It starts with misunderstandings and people saying "they were a kid when they did that" and ends with inconvenient facts about what people did before their "views evolved" being forcibly erased for the convenience of the one wanting their past hidden.

      You have a good point, though I doubt that anyone can succeed these days in having something "forcibly erased" from the entire internet AND all public databases AND all paper records.

      What some people are proposing -- and what people are asking for in the "right to be forgotten" -- is to consider that some information be removed from prominent locations in major search engines, which (as I said) have become our default curators of "history." Note that it is "curating," not merely keeping records -- search engines need to decide what the top links are. And the algorithms they use may bring undue weight to random events that would largely have been forgotten a couple decades ago.

      To be clear: I think the "right to be forgotten" actions against Google are NOT a good solution to this problem. I don't have a better solution myself either. But we do need to recognize that we live in a different world, where "history" is very different than it was just a few years ago. How we deal with that is yet to be determined, but our social mores and standards certainly haven't caught up yet in how to evaluate the new kind of "history" available to us.

      And making some rant and slippery slope argument that making search engine hits less prominent will necessarily lead to the "forcible erasure" of history is just ridiculous, especially in the age where anyone can duplicate and store information in multitudes of places on the internet.

  13. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So you agree that you should be able to be charged under Thai laws for criticizing their king? Or Saudi laws for blasphemy?

    Or do you understand there are such things as jurisdiction, and Google is saying "we reject your assertion of extra-territorial jurisdiction"?

    Unless you think your posts on the internet should be under the jurisdiction of every piss-pot dictator on the planet, what the hell do you expect from Google?

    Google is doing the right thing here. French courts have the right to make decisions on what happens in France. They sure as fuck don't have the right to tell Google what to do in every other country. The world doesn't work that way.

    If that was true, we'd all be under Sharia law or whatever country mostly loudly decided its laws applied globally.

    You enjoy the same protections as Google ... if in your home country France sends you a letter telling you that you must comply with French law ... you too can tell them to fuck off. Unless of course you live in France.

    Do you really think that France has the right to dictate the behavior of the entire internet? If so, you're a fool.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  14. This isn't about anonimity by poisonborz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actions you committed under whatever name you currently used at that time (if in the real world, real name) should be accessible, if crawled or backed up. There is no "forced forgetfulness" in the real world: if you walk a street drunk and naked, you can't force bypassers to forgot your sorry face. Forced erasure of fairly recorded content in the name of "fair image" is just censorship in disguise.

  15. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What Google is essentially saying is "When a user in the US goes to Google.com, he shouldn't get filtered results because a French court said 'Don't include these listings.'" I completely agree with Google here. If you go to Google.fr and the court said "listings for X should be filtered", then Google has no choice but to filter those rulings. (Either that, or get out of France.) The courts of one country, however, shouldn't be allowed to decide what can and can't be shown in other countries, though. If that were the case, then Slashdot would need to take down any comment that mentioned Tiananmen Square because China disapproved and any website talking about gay rights would be nixed because Russia doesn't like that. As the Google statement said, you'd quickly limit what anyone could say online because some country somewhere has probably declared such speech illegal.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  16. Why is it always Gogle? by CaptainDork · · Score: 2

    Where are the other search engines, and why aren't they subjected to the same laws and stuff?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  17. Re:Red Herring by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's absolutely unreasonable to demand that Google, or any other search engine, take down these listings... or any listing at all... whether it's in .fr .com .uk.co or anywhere else.

    If the content is libelous, defamatory, or otherwise illegal, the proper legal steps should be followed to have said content taken down at the source. And the next time the Google runs its spider, it will vanish from the index. What France is trying to do is shuffle the responsibilities of its own courts off onto Google and demanding that they perform those services for free an ineffectively (Since the banned content is still there.) And that's aside from the fact that in many cases, they're demanding that Google delist content that is not, in fact, libel or defamation.

    --
    Imagine all the people...
  18. Less Free Than Stated by Mr_Blank · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the CNIL's proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for Internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom. In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world's least free place.

    Correction: The Internet would only be as free as the intersection of all least free places. Anything that is forbidden anywhere would be forbidden everywhere.

  19. Companies are made of people with rights by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is a worry that there is a fight between a company and the people of several countries and that it is even contemplated that the company and not the people, has some rights.

    If companies have no rights there is no reason for them to exist at all. Since companies are almost entirely responsible for the economic well being of the world, you should seriously consider the practicality of your position. Just because some country comes up with some loony irrational law doesn't mean that the rest of us living in other countries should have to live with it. Should I have to respect the Chinese government's position on Tienanmen Square when I live in the US? Because that is EXACTLY what you are arguing for.

    In this instance Google is right. There is no way they could respect ridiculous laws like this one globally. If the people of France are uncomfortable with that then that is their problem and they have no right to make it the problem of the rest of the world.

    If it is between the people and anybody else, some countries even pretend to talk about "We, the people ..." and they should ALWAYS be priority number one. If it is inconvinient for a company, fuck that.

    Those very same people work in the companies you are so quick to dismiss. Companies are nothing more than a collection of people working together. So because people work in a company their rights no longer matter? Thank goodness you aren't in charge of anything if that is what you really think.

  20. Re:That's how the law usually works. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    "If a Scotsman commits rape in France, he may be tried in England."

    No true Scotsman would commit rape in France.

  21. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by bohmt · · Score: 2

    But somehow it's ok for a german user to go to google.de and have the results filtered due to the DMCA, a thing google does. ( http://i.imgur.com/VX9fy8n.png... )

  22. Google is right by sjbe · · Score: 2

    Wow. And techies thought Microsoft was arrogant when dealing with Europe in the 2000s.

    The arrogance is entirely on the part of the French government. Google is right. Google cannot possible afford to let each country dictate their business practices (and by extension my use of their services) globally. The French government is making an unreasonable demand to have their particular viewpoint be enforced worldwide by Google. Google is 100% right in telling them to fuck off. That may cost them business in France but if they actually did what France asked they would be effectively unable to function outside of a single country.

  23. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    Unless you think your posts on the internet should be under the jurisdiction of every piss-pot dictator on the planet, what the hell do you expect from Google?

    No, I certainly don't, but while google wants to do business in those countries, it's going to be subject to their laws whether it likes it or not. If google wasn't going business with those pisspot dictators and had no representation in their country, they'd be unable to do anything to google.

    The only reason in this case that google is subject to the laws is becaus they're operating where the laws apply. That gives the jurisdiction in question power because they can ultimately seize assets, arrest people and so on.

    You enjoy the same protections as Google ... if in your home country France sends you a letter telling you that you must comply with French law ... you too can tell them to fuck off. Unless of course you live in France.

    And therein lies the problem. A decent sized chunk of google does in fact reside in France.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  24. Let's just go to the bottom now by rickb928 · · Score: 2

    This ends up with the Internet being challenged by the least free nation ON ANY GIVEN SITUATION to restrict data or access based on that nation's restrictions.

    And that would force less restrictive nations to comply.

    Or not.

    I vote not. Let nations that cannot tolerate the freedom of others to deal with the problem at their borders.

    And leave the rest alone.

    This is worth fighting for.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  25. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, Google has a presence in France. The French Google subsidiary does de-list things in accordance with local laws. Google subsidiaries in countries that don't have those laws - Japan, the US, Canada, etc. don't have to follow those laws, but that's what the French are asking for.

    --
    Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
  26. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by phayes · · Score: 2

    OK then, lets assume that France gets what it wants from Google & establishes precedent. How do you think France is going to react when Turkey uses it force Google to remove all information on the Armenian Genocide that the French National assembly commemorated a few months ago? Not just on google.tk but also on google.fr?

    Hint: French politicians would start claiming that Brussels & the EU forced the precedent upon them just as they have done every time they impose regulations without thinking about the consequences.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  27. Re:That's how the law usually works. by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

    If a Scotsman commits rape in France, he may be tried in England.

    No true Scotsman would commit rape in France!

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  28. Re:Red Herring by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 2

    they did for .fr, a year ago. CLIN is demanding removal from all directories, planet-wide. Go read Google's reply.

  29. Re: French cowards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    put an airtight dome over austin and leave the rest of us alone

    damn wannabe californians.

  30. Re:Red Herring by david_thornley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The original complaint was a Spaniard who had filed bankruptcy quite a few years earlier. By Spanish law, that information could not be used any more in financial decisions about him, but a Google search brought it up. The court ordered Google to not associate the Spaniard's name with the information. Removing the notice of bankruptcy would have caused worse problems.

    In many cases in many European countries, information about certain things is considered no longer usable for decisions. This allows people to have solid second chances at putting their lives together, an idea that seems foreign to the US. It doesn't work if the information in question comes up in a Google search of the person's name.

    There is good reasoning behind the "right to be forgotten" requests (although the system is abusable).

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  31. Re:When do I get to be a multinational corp? by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 2

    The only reason in this case that google is subject to the laws is becaus they're operating where the laws apply. That gives the jurisdiction in question power because they can ultimately seize assets, arrest people and so on.

    Google has a French subsidiary, and they are complying with French laws.

    The US version of Google is not subject to French jurisdiction. Trying to make it subject to French jurisdiction would be highly problematic for France, because it would imply that if you own anything in France at all, everything you do worldwide becomes subject to French law.

    France might take that position, but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot (and then in the head) with that view.