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Google Appeals French Order For Global 'Right To Be Forgotten' (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet Inc's Google appealed on Thursday an order from the French data protection authority to remove certain web search results globally in response to a European privacy ruling, escalating a fight on the extra-territorial reach of EU law. In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that people could ask search engines, such as Google and Microsoft's Bing, to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results appearing under searches for people's names -- dubbed the "right to be forgotten." Google complied, but it only scrubbed results across its European websites such as Google.de in Germany and Google.fr in France, arguing that to do otherwise would set a dangerous precedent on the territorial reach of national laws. The French regulator, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), fined Google 100,000 euros ($112,150.00) in March for not delisting more widely, arguing that was the only way to uphold Europeans' right to privacy. The company filed its appeal of the CNIL's order with France's supreme administrative court, the Council of State. "One nation does not make laws for another," said Dave Price, senior product counsel, Google. "Data protection law, in France and around Europe, is explicitly territorial, that is limited to the territory of the country whose law is being applied." Google's Transparency Report indicates the company accepts around 40 percent of requests for the removal of links appearing under search results for people's names.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws. Otherwise there wouldn't need to be a special law about it,
Uhm.. laws are laws, some are not more "special" than others, and this most definitely is a data protection law.
and also the original web pages would have to be censored, not just the search results.
Not at all, because this is not the purpose of the law. It is not to remove the information from being available in original sources or for people who for some reason actively want to investigate deeply. It is to avoid that casual searches on your name, that people do all the time, constantly resurfaces old stories that can ruin your life. When applying for a job as a 30-year old your pot possession conviction from when you were 19 shouldn't matter anymore. It is over and done with, but with the extreme information gateway role Google plays in today's society, it won't die.
You can agree or disagree and think it is stupid (as you are free to discuss any law), but that is the purpose of this law, so what you say do not at all follow
TFA contradicts you in that it speaks of information that is "inadequate or irrelevant", not of personal data that would fall under data protection.
If you agree with the EU's cynical interpretation of "Libertés", what about other jurisdictions? Shouldn't Iran's and China's rules about what is deemed inadequate or irrelevant also be respected worldwide? If not why not?
France and EU are not requiring that their law is implemented globally, that is just hyperbole reporting and Google PR spin (both of which we used to dislike on this site). They are requiring that the Google.com domain follow the law within the EU law domain. This is clear if you are going to the sources, and they use this specific example in their complaint to Google: Users in France searching on Google.com instead of Google.fr get a search result today where right to be forgotten in EU is not implemented.
Google is trying to call .com a global only search result, but that is disingenuous and appealing to tech illiterate users -- both they and all others already do geo-fencing and geo-tailoring on what is served through a "global" .com domain.
The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws.
I am not a lawyer and I don't understand all the nuances around this but actually, in Europe, this is (apparently) mandated.
*Any* collection of personal information into a database is covered by data protection laws. *Any* european citizen can request a report of all the information held on them (subject to some exclusions that probably wouldn't apply to google) for a capped fee. *Any* citizen can request that incorrect information is corrected (again there are some exceptions where it's only necessary to note that the citizen disputes the item) and *any* citizen can request that any information held on them should be deleted unless it's continuing holding is necessary (for example, billing information for a continuing subscription, necessary regulatory regulations regarding data retention etc)
This is complicated by the fact that the highest European court did give a ruling that some of these regulations don't apply to search engines (a ruling that I approve of). Prior to that ruling it could have been argued that google was breaking the law just by building its search database as it should have obtained explicit permission from each person to collect any information on them at all.
Eventually this will get pushed up to the highest courts in Europe and they will clarify what the current law actually means with regards to search engines.
After that there will probably still be arguments about what is right and wrong but pretty much the only way it will change is if the EU states can get together and agree a European wide change to the law (For this particular type of treaty I don't know if it would be majority or unanimity that would be required.)
It should also be noted that many of the requirements of data protection laws in Europe come from treaty but the individual laws are set at a national level - i.e. the treaty says what must be allowed or prohibited but the individual nations are responsible for writing laws into their books that enforce the treaty. So sometimes a national law might gold plate a european treaty - so the EU courts might find that the French law is legal in EU land but not required or they might find that the French law is illegally overbroad and will have to change or, indeed, they might find that French law is deficient in failing to protect some right.
The British government (of all persuasions) is a great fan of gold plating EU regulations, either in rhetoric when they want to beat on Europe or in law when they want an excuse to pass some new draconian legislation. "Europe made us do it" when what they mean is "Europe required us to change the law but didn't require this law which is a superset of what Europe required"
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Google doesn't claim "ownership" over information about you; they simply provide a link to information that is already on the web. The search results will disappear as soon as the original pages disappear. If you have a problem with that, you need to take it up with the people who put the information on the web in the first place, not Google.
Secondly, the information that is at issue in "right to be forgotten" cases usually isn't "personal" information, it's public information: legal judgments against you, articles others have written about you, etc. You don't own that information and you shouldn't be able to control it, even according to the EU and proponents of the "right to be forgotten", because they don't force the original publishers of that information to take it down.