Slashdot Mirror
Google Rejects French Order For 'Right To Be Forgotten'
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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