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France Tells Google To Remove "Right To Be Forgotten" Search Results Worldwide
An anonymous reader writes: France's data protection authority rejected Google's appeal to limit how a European privacy ruling may be applied worldwide. Since the European Court ruling last year Google has handled close to 320,000 requests, but only de-lists the links on European versions of its sites. "Contrary to what Google has stated, this decision does not show any willingness on the part of the C.N.I.L. to apply French law extraterritorially," the agency said in a statement.
With China being a MUCH bigger market and all, I could see Google just outright leaving France if it came down to it. Maybe Jacques Chirac would finally get his wish of a French owned search engine.
France is irrational and broke. Pull out, because you should never squabble with fools; they'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Google: *leaves world's fastest growing market*
Good luck France.
The U.S. and Google have something in common: leverage.
Hate all you want, but the world needs the U.S. more than we need the world... And France needs Google more than Google needs France.
France doesn't have the cahonas, the will or the power to enforce their will outside their borders.
Pass me some freedom fries and let your old grandpappy tell you all about those surrender monkeys the googles want you to forget about.
Hello,
The US is getting some of their basic moral views imposed globally (copyright jumps to mind, sex and children associations...)
Why would other countries NOT be allowed the same? In France, they see individual privacy as a basic moral issue (ranked higher than free speech). So, why would US morals be obey but not French ones?
The difference in cultures leads to 3 possibilities:
- Companies choose the "Greatest Common Divisor", ie allows only what is allowed in ALL countries. At which point no-one is happy
- Companies choose the "Least Common Factor", ie, allows anything that is allowed in at least one country, At which point everyone is unhappy/screaming at them.
- Companies impose 1 culture to the rest of the world, at which point we all become Americans. Which will piss the French off, so be prepared for a war fought with stinky cheese baguettes!
Why is it that DMCA takedowns have a global effect while privacy only have a local effect?
DMCA is based on US copyright law. I know that the US is trying to promote US copyright law via TPP and TTIP, but so far US copyright law only applies to the US.
Google has, for tax purposes decided to move all its financial activities to Ireland. In effect making big parts of Google a European company. If and when Google decides to cease all operations in Europe, it is free to ignore European law.
The French request is based on EU data protection laws. Those laws ultimately originate from the European Human Rights. Those human rights include a right to privacy, and those rights form a foundation much like the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. In effect, Google is putting greater weight on an ordinary law regulating intellectual property to - the European version - of the Bill of Rights.
It's a good thing you Americans aren't arrogant imperialist bastards, cause if you were, some people might take your sentiment the wrong way.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Google should just shut down for a few days, the french would beg to bring it back. Who can't survive a day at work without checking gmail a few times?
'France needs Google more than Google needs France'.
Google makes around a billion dollars a year from French users.
This is only a percent or so or US profits.
The question is not if france needs google more than google needs france.
It's if google needs a billion dollars more than the slight reduction in profit elsewhere due to users boycotting google.
If removing the results worldwide isn't apply French Law extraterritorially, what is it?
Google just removed the results from some local domains (fr, co.uk etc), but left it working for com domain. Basically it means they failed at delisting since EU citizen can still easily avoid it. Instead they should comply by doing some kind of geoip delisting as then they would be really compliant within EU jurisdiction.
The very moment I had a European based alternative to Google I would jump ship. So in a way you are correct.
Whether Google is willing to give up a market of 650 million customers and a tax haven in Ireland is, and should be, a choice made by Google. In that respect I assume - military power not withstanding - that France, and by implication the EU, does have some leverage until Google decides to cease all operations in Europe.
You are definitely entitled to believe that the US should protect Google's defiance of European law by military means.
The story is wrong. The court did not instruct Google to delist worldwide. Rather, the court instructed Google to delist from all Google domains, but Google only needs to delist when the query comes from a European IP address.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Do they even know, what they are asking for? If they are absolutely insisting on enforcing the ludicrous "right to be forgotten" a Great Firewall of Europe it needs to be then, as only that will enable the invention of history, which at its core it is.
...please leave some of the Internet for the rest of us when they're done?
So, France demands everyone in the world to comply with *their* law, and you are calling the US "arrogant"?
What if the US passed a law requiring, say, routine showers and mandatory deodorant use? Would France have to comply?
What if the US invaded other countries thousands of miles away and occupied them?
What if the US sort to extradite people from countries thousands of miles away for allowing people to upload digital files?
What if the US....
France are being cocks here, but the US is even worse and you know it.
Many of the EU member states had aspirations of world domination at various times in history, sadly ,for them, none of them worked out. NEWS FLASH: France /EU you DO NOT own or rule the world no matter how much you may wish. So just fuck off and go have a smoke. You need to decide if you do or do-not want Google available in your neighborhood and quit acting like a self entitled asshole. Make a choice, we in the rest of the world don't give a shit which one.
If they let France push them around then every nation will come up with some new way to try to push them around. And someday someone might even sue to have an offense against them remembered. How do you deal with things when one country says that recorded history must be erased world-wide and another says it must be preserved world-wide?
Alternately, this would be a great test for how much the people of France want their government interfering with their use of the Internet. There just might be some feedback when French academics some day go to Google and are told "Your country no longer has access to Google. Contact your political representatives."
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
France is welcome to try and emulate the US. If it can (snicker). Why, the whole of the EU might wasn't enough to take on Serbia! (laugh) You eurosluts are so funny. How is it going with Russia, by the way? Keep up the heat, President Obama demands it. Too bad for your precious economy but you can't have it all, can you?
China can outright block sites they don't like. France doesn't have the infrastructure to do that, and probably not the laws either. So while Google could have no corporate presence in France, they could still be a usable site in France by virtue of being accessible on the web.
I think that you should learn a little bit about the foreign policy of your country. Try to do business with a country under US embargo, the US will go after you wherever you are (and will try to deny you to trade with US dollar, even if you have no ties to the USA). In my country, I have to sign a fucking paper stating that I'm not a US citizen to open a bank account because your country tries to enforce its laws all over the world. Your country is the only one in the world who tries to tax its citizen wherever they are, disregarding the local tax system, and I'm not talking about any subject related to IP as the number of example will just skyrocket (Megaupload for instance) Seeing a US citizen complaining that another country is trying to enforce its laws all over the world is just a sick joke. That's how you behave every single day!
If we were imperialists we would have done what anyone else would have when they stood astride the world at the end off WWII. We didn't. The fact of the matter is that the US has been the most benevolent in the use of power of any nation that has made it to the top of the pile.
The French Statement is malarkey. "Finally, contrary to what Google has stated, this decision does not show any willingness on the part of the CNIL to apply French law extraterritorially. It simply requests full observance of European legislation by non European players offering their services in Europe." So we're not applying our laws extraterritorially, we're requiring the company to do so if they want to do business here.
To be fair, a lot of other countries have some form of that. But it's still ridiculous.
If they had said you had to geofence the results so they're not accessible in France, it would be more believable.
The French do not try to apply them worldwide.
They want Google to apply them to all searched from France regardless of the domain name. Today you can just type in google.com or any other national domain and bypass the law.
Complying with your request in this manner is rather hard due to other laws of other countries we do business in that we actually do have to comply with (unlike, say, yours). Instead we did the next best thing and removed all French results worldwide. We hope this satisfies you.
--signed, Google.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Care to inform us what we need you for? To destabilize countries politically or economically, I'm unsure which function you serve is more important.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'd go limp: "We'll comply with your request. Please send us the contact information for the service that you'll accept as authoritative for whether or not a request from a particular IP address originates in France or not. We'll also require a binding agreement that the determination of this service cannot be contested by either Google or the French government, and that if any third party demonstrates that the service made an incorrect determination use of that service will be discontinued and the French government shall not demand compliance from Google until the French government has selected a new authority. Until we are in receipt of this information and agreement, Google will unfortunately be unable to operate the French-localized Google site and will be unable to serve search results for France or any French entity or person. Have a nice day.".
With China being a MUCH bigger market and all, I could see Google just outright leaving France if it came down to it. Maybe Jacques Chirac would finally get his wish of a French owned search engine.
Yes, Google should just close up Google Ireland and forget about the European Union altogether.
The IRS would love that.
I'm pretty sure the IRS would not give a damn.
Google is in full compliance with the U.S. law, and the laws of other countries.
While U.S. politicians would like to get their grubby hands on, and spend some of that tasty, tasty money, the IRS merely enforces the U.S. tax code, up to and including the Criminal Investigation division sending special agents out to interview and conduct searches under search warrant, and to participate in arrests with federal law enforcement, should the U.S. Attorney determine that the evidence supports a federal arrest warrant.
Generally, you'd have to have a lot of criminal wrong-doing, not just tax evasion, and it's a teensy bit hard to arrest a corporation, even if they are technically "people". Typically, they'd seize all assets and shutter the business. However, if you thought some corrupt bankers (who received no jail time) were "too big to fail", you have not seen what "too big to fail" actually means.
In any case, Google is in compliance with all laws, and even should the money be taxed, it won't be double taxed by the U.S. (nor should it be); they will just open up a real estate business, or start "Google Fiber Europe" or something with the funds, since as long as the funds are earned outside the U.S., they can be spent outside the U.S. without incurring a U.S. tax burden; they only become U.S. income when they are brought back.
In other words, even if they shuttered their search business entirely within Europe, and used the money to pay back Greece's debt (or buy all of Greece, like Kim Bassinger bought Braselton, Georgia, and then run the country better; or build ghost cities in Latvia and the Czech Republic, etc.), the money would never be realized as U.S. income.
Also...
Pulling out of France entirely (by blocking all access to Google properties from within France) would put the Righteous Fear Of God into the rest of the E.U., and the decision would be quickly reversed.
... why is it that France doesn't just step up to the plate and create a GFW around their own border routers to prevent their citizens from accessing undesirable Google pages?
I think you mean GMF. To be correctly French requires a name in French... "Grande Muraille de Feu".
It's Official!
France is Retarded!
How about you look at it this in another way. You communicate for years on a certain medium and now someone has managed to make billions from your communications. You never wanted it to be viewed globally and certainly not with an advertisement next to it.
That was before google entered the marketplace. They took what we wrote and sold it as if it was theirs to sell.
Why do you think I am posting as anonymous coward?
To explicitly disclaim ownership, so that anyone who wants to can grab and make billions from your communications by putting an ad next to it? And so that you won't have legal recourse when they take your copyrighted material and sell it as if it's theirs to sell, since you've explicitly disclaimed any non-repudiable ownership on said content by posting as an AC?
Tell me if I'm at all warm with either of those reasons you're posting as an AC... because I don't see how Google would go about indexing password protected forums, and they uniformly respect robots.txt files as a means of your forum opting out being indexed.
Unless, you know, you're a dumbass for using a forum that wasn't password protected, and expect that to keep your communications private in the same way that closing but not locking your door keeps your TV set in your living room? Or maybe the person running the form is an asshole, and doesn't want to put up a robots.txt file for the site? Or maybe you're an asshole for posting on sites where your postings are not welcome, and the site owner hasn't put up a robots.txt file, or put up one that explicitly allows people to view your postings, just to spite you?
Tell me if I'm warm with the three of those, too...
If "slight reduction" is more than 1%, then it's cheaper to pull out of France.
How Hidden From Google started.
.. has not proceeded with delisting on other geographical extensions or on google.com, which any internet user may alternatively visit .. this decision does not show any willingness on the part of the CNIL to apply French law extraterritorially. It simply requests full observance of European legislation by non European players offering their services in Europe." ref
List of BBC web pages which have been removed from Google's search results
"Google
France is irrational and broke. Pull out, because you should never squabble with fools; they'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
France is not broke.
It sells a lot of electricity to other countries that were stupid, and dismantled, or are in the process of dismantling, their civil nuclear power infrastructure, without the replacements already being online. France gets a lot of money from other countries for the electricity it provides them.
The very moment I had a European based alternative to Google I would jump ship.
I suspect you are a unique, special flower.
If you disagree, and believe other Europeans feel the same, and are right, you have your startup idea.
If you are wrong, you are a unique, special flower with a failed startup.
I say "Go for it!"...
https://duckduckgo.com
Not European but they could use the traffic.
I just think to myself oh the hypocrisy of these privacy issues with the internet. Its funny to see these things play out because frankly there is so little privacy to the internet anyway and you can single out Google as the worst offender but grant Facebook, or other social sites a pass? What about Microsoft's Cortana or
Apple's own system Siri. Any kind of directed and personalized search or social service will obviously use some information to make results better. Then of course you have AVG announcing using some data mining for selling to third party advertisers. I have no doubt you want free your going to almost guarantee to loose some privacy and allow some data mining of information. The internet is anti privacy and I am not sure this should surprise anyone.
Certainly. And do you really think 1% of users care that much?
What other services? La Guglée de France? (Snicker)
You're confusing the issue. If Google gets tossed out, it goes completely. Not just the search for news articles, but everything that means web search. That gap will be instantly (read minutes) filled by it's competitors with Bing in the lead.
Google provides a service, not a product, as such, they have zero leverage.
Sorry, but IP-adresses and the web protocol don't contain any information about which country someone is from.
Flag as Inappropriate
You're very wrong about this. It is largely possible to geolocate IP addresses with frightening accuracy down to the city level. Country coding an IP address is absolutely no problem.
How do you suppose you get those localized search results that keep you in your little bubble? Don't you ever wonder why you don;t ever see a result from an African country, India, Australia... Do you think that they don;t have any websites with information relevant to your search criteria? Have you ever gone to another country and tried to get the same results that you always get at home? Talk about frustrating. Widgets is always the top result at home, but on the beach I can't find widgets anywhere, even 10 results pages down!
In fact, Google already has mechanisms in use that will make it very possible to do exactly what France is demanding. It is already somewhat difficult to break out of Google's localization bubble. It will be no problem for Google to redirect all French IPs to Google.fr despite what they type.
P.S. Google's search bubble sucks!
Imagine... Germany won. Ugh.
Imagine... Russia won. All of Europe would be taking a bread and vodka snack.
Imagine... Japan won. We'd all be eating squid and muttering Gahzilla under our breath.
Imagine... Italy won. Nah, that's a joke!
The US happened to be the country that lost the least during that war and had the most production capacity immediately available at the end. Even if the US hadn't been a member of the allies, but rather just stuck to their battle with Japan, they'd have likely been in the same economical position, and Germany probably would have suffered much more in defeat.
The tax structure also helped significantly at the time, because although people making butt loads of money couldn't "use it to invest and build businesses", it forced them to keep their money in their own businesses, helping workers get paid more and businesses grow with such cash flow. It really may have been that tax structure that helped the US stay dominant through the 70s more than anything else. And yes, I say this as a general conservative.
> Your country is the only one in the world who tries to tax its citizen wherever they are, disregarding the local tax system, and I'm not talking about any subject related to IP as the number of example will just skyrocket (Megaupload for instance)
Boo hoo. US citizens are subject to US law outside the US. That must be sooooooo hard for non US citizens to bear. I weep for you.
>Megaupload
Blame New Zealand. They were the ones who actually did the grunt work. In NZ. You can also blame your own Governments for signing the Berne Convention as well as other copyright treaties. Your governments apparently want something from the US, badly enough to sell you out. Stop buying what they sell and you'll be free of their hooks.
The guy you are replying to is an actual Google employee. He usually states as much but not today apparently.
Nope. I know tlambert personally (from college). I am a Google employee, and he is not.
Sean is correct. I am a *former* Google employee. When I make statements that come anywhere near my NDA, I *specifically* go out of the way to disclaim *current* employment with Google, and specifically state *former* employment with Google as a head's up. I also generally make sure that I state when I can not go further because I believe it would violate the spirit of the NDA.
In general, under California law, there's not a lot Google could do to me, but I would be committing career suicide if I were to violate an NDA, and (even more important to me) it would show me as dishonorable in my own eyes. I gone to work for companies after I've agreed to work for them, but subsequently received a MUCH better offer, *because we had an agreement that I would do so*.
I personally wouldn't hire a person who had knowingly violated an NDA, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to either.
That said, I didn't not identify my past relationship in any of those postings because I didn't come anywhere close to the edges of the NDS, so it didn't matter.
If my stating my former relationship -- or if someone was under the impression that the relationship was current because of a posting *while* it was current, please let this stand as a correction.
I'm pretty sure Sean can verify that I *was* in fact a Google employee at one point in time, without violating *his* NDA. :)
What if the US invaded other countries thousands of miles away and occupied them?
What if the US sort to extradite people from countries thousands of miles away for allowing people to upload digital files?
What if the US....
France are being cocks here, but the US is even worse and you know it.
Expect none of what you mentioned is relevant to the conversation. And which country has not invaded another country? The distance is just another distraction.
Try to do business with a country under US embargo, the US will go after you wherever you are
I can't recall us invading or going after Canada for ignoring the Cuban embargo.
blabla bla
Am I warm now? Guess you are since you are full of shit.
And yet, they've successfully pulled out before... and only in News. And saying Google can be replaced by Bing is stretching it a bit... That's like saying MS Word can be replaced by Google Docs. Sure, they both have some of the same core features - but it's the whole package that matters. There is a reason Office has remained King. I've tried Bing and it sucks. Same for other search engines. Google is king for a reason and people will be pissed if they loose their service.
We need to step back and observe that search engines have become so important that governments wan to control them. This is fascinating, and also frightening. Perhaps the EU needs to create its own search engine, and simply outlaw all other search engines. They can call it "Ministry of Truth." Or perhaps the EU needs to setup a "Great Firewall" like what China has. Each country could have their own set of rules: So no Nazi results on the German proxy, no California wines on the French one, and the whole EU can share a "right to be forgotten" blacklist too.
This approach of suing each search engine that doesn't comply with the blacklist is not a real great solution. If the EU citizens really support this, they need to find another way.
They are saying that Google is to not dish it up anywhere. That is worldwide.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Right, because taxing your citizens or refusing to business with you is the same as trying to enforce your laws in some far away country. That make sense.
America thinks it can push its laws on everyone else.
> What if the US invaded other countries thousands of miles away and occupied them?
I think we invaded France on June 6, 1944. Sorry bout that.
They are actually not trying to apply the law world wide. They are saying that it applies to all the search results Google serve to EU users, regardless of the URL used to access that search result (google.fr, google.com, google.xx).
Is this actually true? I can't seem to find a straight answer on this. Some people are saying that the EU wants the "right" to be forgotten to apply worldwide. Others are saying it should only apply to searches coming from Europe. Does anyone have a reputable citation with a definitive answer? (Preferably in English, but I realize that may not be possible.) My guess is that the answer is undefined; these regulators already seem pretty clueless about how the internet works.
"when offering their services in Europe" is still too vague. It clarifies nothing. It could mean: as long as you offer your services in Europe, our rules apply to you everywhere. Or it could mean: our ruling only applies to services offered in Europe.
Which one is it? Everyone seems to be trying to read between the lines to figure it out, but that merely means that everyone confirms their preexisting beliefs. Does anyone have a reputable citation with a definitive answer? (Preferably in English, but I realize that may not be possible.) My guess is that the answer is undefined; these regulators already seem pretty clueless about how the internet works.
there's no other option. You can't have a search engine show only the least common denominator of information permitted by any country. Some country always wants something blocked. Add them all up and the internet will be sanitized and thus google itself will be a useless search engine with other engines being superior.
However merely blocking france isn't enough. This needs to be taken a step farther. We need a catalog of everything france wants blocked... and then that needs to be separately hosted such that JUST the blocked or proposed blocked content is highlighted.
Do this and the effort to memory hole information in this method will backfire because attention will be drawn to censored information.
Thus france and any other like minded power will be educated that attempting to censor content means that that content gets megaphoned.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Canadians have continuously thumbed our noses at the Cuban embargo. It's a nice vacation spot to escape from the long winters, prices are good, and it's the morally right thing to ignore an embargo that was stupid. And Canadian businesses trade with Cuba. And Canadians who vacation in Cuba have no problems entering the USA.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Canadian companies must choose either Cuba or the USA, they can't have both.
You also fined a French bank with a multi-billion dollar fine for having done business with Iran.
That's pretty much the same as what every nation at the top of the pile ever said.
Meanwhile: Exterminating Native Americans, scouring Africa for slaves, fortifying the Middle East for oil, etc.
What Google needs is for someone in the US to sue them for damage/harm because they missed information that had been "forgotten" - ideally before an activist judge who will issue a US decision requiring that google.com never comply with the EU right to be forgotten...
-Jeremy
I'm pretty sure Sean can verify that I *was* in fact a Google employee at one point in time, without violating *his* NDA. :)
Yep. Terry used to work for Google.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No .fr links,no links to sites with french punctuation or vocabulary.
Keep Canada, Vietnam, etc.
Google is bigger than France.
> France doesn't have the cahonas, the will or the power to enforce their will outside their borders.
Then what the french Foreign Legion, trademarked assorted scum of the Earth, is doing here, there and everywhere throughout Africa? They replace dictators with other dictators more to their liking, turn negro tribes on each other, help mining megacorps steal the riches of african lands and assists arab muslims in invading the christian / animist negro domain. The french are still as bad a colonial power as they ever had been. It is only lucky they have been largely purged from South-East Asia.
What Google needs to do is forget France and the EU in general. Let these totalitarian countries wake up to the reality that they can't do censorship. Their ways are past.
Fuck France. Google is no saint, but they can't tell me what I can and can not search for in the United States.
"The right to be forgotten" is not necessarily an unreasonable concept. However it seems completely unreasonable the this is Googles problem, the only reasonable solution is to have the original content removed from the web servers hosting the information in the first place. After all all Google is doing is indexing the web. If France want to remove information from the WWW then maybe France could politely request that Google help them locating offending content.
The US needs the world a heck of a lot more than the world needs the US. The US doesn't need any particular country as much as that country needs the US. If, for example, the countries that normally use the metric system were to band into a politically tight Metric Users' League, the US would have relatively little bargaining power. As long as countries don't band together too much, the US keeps the upper hand.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It might actually be a good idea for Google to comply (at least in some cases), because the search results would be more relevant in many (most) cases. Taking the one of the examples given by others, most people really aren't going to care if somebody declared bankruptcy 40 years ago; so, showing that in a search result would just be adding noise (which Google search results already have too much of). In other words, as long as they have to filter the right to be forgotten requests, they might as well use that labor to improve search results everywhere.
In making this a worldwide feature, they could add an option to the advanced search that would enable returning "right to be forgotten" results but make the searcher agree to a legal notice swearing they were not in the EU before the option could be enabled. At that point the searcher would be the one violating EU law the data protection law and also probably committing fraud.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Common practice in USA is for every little fiefdom to publish ALL arrests without conviction forever. This is a lever to control via the Internet citizen behavior. With 800,000 law enforcers , thousand of prosecutors
S and mass media this is a gross invasion of privacy. Anyone, anywhere, any time can be arrested USA and reputations ruined......many are political and have nothing to do with crime in the traditional sense. Support France and boycott Google.