Slashdot Mirror
EU Court to Rule On 'Right to Be Forgotten' Outside Europe (wsj.com)
The European Union's top court is set to decide whether the bloc's "right to be forgotten" policy stretches beyond Europe's borders, a test of how far national laws can -- or should -- stretch when regulating cyberspace. From a report: The case stems from France, where the highest administrative court on Wednesday asked the EU's Court of Justice to weigh in on a dispute between Alphabet's Google and France's privacy regulator over how broadly to apply the right (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), which allows EU residents to ask search engines to remove some links from searches for their own names. At issue: Can France force Google to apply it not just to searches in Europe, but anywhere in the world? The case will set a precedent for how far EU regulators can go in enforcing the bloc's strict new privacy law. It will also help define Europe's position on clashes between governments over how to regulate everything that happens on the internet -- from political debate to online commerce. France's regulator says enforcement of some fundamental rights -- like personal privacy -- is too easily circumvented on the borderless internet, and so must be implemented everywhere. Google argues that allowing any one country to apply its rules globally risks upsetting international law and, when it comes to content, creates a global censorship race among autocrats.
How can the EU court rule on anything outside of Europe?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If this goes through, it'll be a precedent for everybody.
All complaints about U.S. websites must be sent in English, with no arrogant condescension, to complaints@usa.gov. Please allow 4 - never weeks for processing of your bullshit whiny complaint.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
To me Google and others are incorrectly using the TLDs to skirt local laws and it has the potential of biting them and us collectively in the ass. I don't think we'd even have this court case if Google were to follow EU law for queries coming from the EU regardless of TLD.
It would be interesting to know what the court is actually being asked to decide on but the page the link goes to actually says far less than the Slashdot summary. Are they literally saying that a search by an American in the US using an American search service should be restricted by EU laws? Or something else? Is there a link to the details anywhere?
While I will agree that you can find some examples of people who have a legitimate reason to remove information from the Internet, it is mostly criminals, perverts and politicians who need it. So someone who likes to touch kids can whitewash their history so you hire them to watch your children. Or a politician who has shady dealings in the past can hide them.
While it sounds like a right wing idea, how many left wing people would like someone like Donald Trump to be able to purge his less honorable history from the Internet. Remember the settlements that his father made for not renting to black people. That would be gone. While he was elected through the electoral college, it was appropriate for the populace to know his past. The same with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The politicians want to hide their dirty past.
Shouldn't this sort of thing be decided by an international treaty? I'm pretty sure that Europeans hate it when the US puts together laws which have a global impact.
The whole right to be forgotten thing is asinine to begin with.
It doesn't remove any of the source information - it just makes it harder to find - and makes the net less useful.
No it's not.
This is starting to become common. EU to rule on stuff they have no jurisdiction over. Canada rules on stuff it has no jurisdiction over. US has a handful of cases looking to do the same thing. Crazy stuff.
Canada's Supreme Court has already ruled that Canadian Constitutional Rights apply worldwide.
Only slackers would do something less. Like the US, who can't even make their own stuff.
Expect the EU court to rule that the EU Right to be forgotten applies worldwide, including in China, Russia, and other third world countries like the USA.
(p.s. how's toddler Don doing today?)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Will the right to be forgotten include the ability to erase other people's literal memories of whatever it was that you did?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The right to be forgotten violates my cultural beliefs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
He had a busy day but lots of fun playing in a fire truck and wearing a cowboy hat.
What is this "right to be forgotten"? I don't think, it exists — or ever existed — nor should exists. My memories, what I have seen, heard, and otherwise experienced are mine, however and wherever I recorded it.
Suppose, technology allowed (wait, it already does!) to carefully erase human memories — would it suddenly become your right to demand, for example, your ex submits to wiping out his memories of your time together?
Would it be Ok for employers to wipe out the memories employees may have associated with the employment upon its termination?
There is no such "right", we all better stop pretending it exists.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How is it going to be enforced? Court ruling is useless wihout instruments to make it work.
I can only see things going one way: ultimately, it's just the same as China's governmental firewall and other countries that demands companies to have special filters and special rules put in place to operate inside the country. And that only affects Internet access inside the country, it cannot and will not be enforced anywhere else by some sheer will and bravado.
If the data that is supposed to be erased is lying outside France or the EU, they won't be able to do anything without international agreements and a huge ammount of diplomacy.
This is actually worse than what China demands.
And if neither the company nor the country's government it's located at decides to comply, then it goes towards sanctions and whatnot...
which is something I highly doubt any country government would be willing to do for something as controversial as rights of people to demand that content about themselves be erased from servers, or access to it be unlisted from search engines.
And don't get me wrong, I'm all for a privacy pushback, and privacy protection, but this isn't how it's gonna happen. This is bravado. Politicians and judges all around the world are behaving like spoiled brats these days, and it's starting to look really bad.
Just think about it. France is telling us to go after Google because it didn't erase information that our citizens requested from servers located in our country. Fuck that shit. What government is going to comply with something like that without asking something in return? Forget US that obviously has a ton of lobbyists there to dissuade politicians from taking any action, imagine other countries that are far more corrupt, that have more important priorities, and/or don't give a shit about what France or EU wants.
It's quickly becoming too apparent how much inside a magical bubble some politicians and judges seem to live in. Time to wake up, stop wasting time, and put up laws and rulings that have real effects, not just this stream of bullshit that is never going to catch.
The EU sees itself as the world's leader on privacy matters. Their view is that the US simply doesn't care, and no one else is big enough.
From this standpoint, it would make perfect sense for them to enforce their rules outside of their physical territory.
Google Should call their bluff on this.
Create a new company, give class A (voting) ownership shares to current stockholders which breaks all financial links with Google.
Give/sell (with a loan) the new company the sole right to sell advertising in Europe, with the cost that they must remit X% of the sales revenue to Google for this exclusive right. This would include a contract clause that Google can terminate the relationship at any time (in the event the independent company does something Google doesn't like).
End all Google parent company operation in Europe.
Any future business in the EU should be setup the same way, no direct control by Google licensed out to Google created independent entities. Google's profits are no longer profits, the payments could be structured as loan payments or dividends to reduce the taxes.
The Courts couldn't fine these new companies because they are independent business unconnected to Google and the independent company would have no access to change Google listings.
Honestly I've always wondered why they didn't do this from the start for all their advertising sales as it would insulate the main company from attacks on the revenue stream. And in the end Google USA would be immune from attacks by foreign court systems looking to pollute it's listings. In one simple stroke the power of the EU to regulate Google listings goes up in smoke.
Everytime these over-reaching verdicts come up, I refer to the Bokki-Wokki Supreme Court ruling, whereas in compliance with Bokki-Wokki accessability and inclusion laws, every world-wide web page reachable from Bokki-Wokki needs to be presented in the Wokki language. Starting January 1st of 2015, non-compliance carries a B 10,000 penalty (USD 25,000) per day, up to a maximum of 999 trillion Bok.
Ridiculous? Of course. But so is European courts deciding what a Canadian website operator using Canadian infrastructure can do. Or vice-versa... oh wait.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
But I had an ex do exactly this with a camera we'd taken photos of our vacation together with before we broke up.
As a result of this (I only brought a laptop and since it required going through US airports, I had it wiped and just reloaded via the internet when I got where we were going.) I lost out on all photographed memories of our trip since I didn't get a copy of them before we broke up and she wiped it when I asked for them. Sadly I only remember glimpses of the trip as a result.
Why the fuck should scum bag con merchants be able to erase information on them.
They just want to make it hard for people to find out if they are dealing with a fucking conman.
Politicians want it because they know if voters had an easy way to find out they are a cunt then they wont get any votes.
It's a really fucked up ruling..
Suppose they say it does extend beyond. Then a US citizen takes Google to court in the US, and gets a judgement contrary to this. The servers are in the US, the user is in the US, the network link between them is in the US, and the US court says google must ignore the EU court ruling in this instance. Then similar happens in other non-EU countries. What then?
Look, nutbag, the "United States of America" is anything but "united" - you're all at each others' throats all the fucking time. ...
It's what the word is supposed to mean in the context that is important, not whatever strawman you can conjure up by twisting ambiguities in language.
The right to be "forgotten" means only that the "internet" will "forget" the item in question.
Not you, personally, you over-sensitive egocentric dipshit.
You should stop pretending too - pretending that you're engaging in an honest and intelligent discussion.
Fucking trolls are everywhere