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Google Seeks To Limit 'Right To Be Forgotten' By Claiming It's Journalistic (cjr.org)
"In the first 'right to be forgotten' case to reach England's High Court, two men are fighting to keep their past crimes out of Google's search results, and the tech giant is fighting back by claiming it's 'journalistic.'" Chava Gourarie reports via Columbia Journalism Review: The case, which is actually two nearly identical cases, involves two businessmen who were both convicted of white-collar crimes in the '90s, and requested that Google delist several URLs referencing their convictions, including news articles. When Google denied their requests, they sued under a 2014 European Union ruling which established the right of individuals to have information delisted from search indexes under certain conditions. In its defense, Google has argued that it should be protected under an exception for journalism because it provides access to journalistic content. Even as a legal sleight of hand, the argument is quite a departure from Google's customary efforts to present itself as a disinterested arbiter of information, a position that has become more untenable with time.
Gareth Corfield, a reporter for The Register who covered the cases from the courtroom, said it's disingenuous of Google to put on the mantle of journalism only when it suits them. "They've gone through great lengths to say they don't make any editorial judgement in processing results," Corfield said, but "it now wants you to believe it is on a par with journalism." As the first case to test the "right to be forgotten" in England's High Court, its outcome will likely set some ground rules in the roiling debate between personal privacy and freedom of expression on the internet. Google's sudden identification with journalism may be a legal gambit, but it could have far-reaching effects across the landscape of data protection laws.
Gareth Corfield, a reporter for The Register who covered the cases from the courtroom, said it's disingenuous of Google to put on the mantle of journalism only when it suits them. "They've gone through great lengths to say they don't make any editorial judgement in processing results," Corfield said, but "it now wants you to believe it is on a par with journalism." As the first case to test the "right to be forgotten" in England's High Court, its outcome will likely set some ground rules in the roiling debate between personal privacy and freedom of expression on the internet. Google's sudden identification with journalism may be a legal gambit, but it could have far-reaching effects across the landscape of data protection laws.
Let's show them the Streisand effect!
Gareth Corfield, a reporter for The Register who covered the cases from the courtroom, said it's disingenuous of Google to put on the mantle of journalism only when it suits them.
I guess Corfield never heard of "Pleading the Alternative".
Hint: This is a legal proceeding. "Disingenuosity" has nothing to do with it.
Once the billyclubs, handcuffs, writs, bailiffs, and judges are in play It's all about applying the law and interpretations of it in an internally consistent manner that makes you fit into a "within the law" category - no matter how round the hole and square the peg.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The thing I really don't like about "The right to be forgotten" is that it potentially serves to erase history that would be really valuable or informative many years hence. I kind of feel like "Right to be Forgotten" should be paired with some kind of time-sealed government run vault (hey, I'm rolling my own eyes here, just can't think of a better way to express this idea), into which all of the "forgotten" data would go and be kept more permanently until tit did not matter what was inside.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hate whenever a term is considered a "right". You right to be forgotten has to be balanced with my right to know what criminal shit you did. And if you were convicted of a crime you better have a very good reason why your right is more important than mine. Excluding criminal acts this whole exercise of being forgotten sickens me. We all do stupid things and say even worse, at least those of us who have ever actually done something in our lives. Most people who want to punish people for what they find online are punishing them for it being public not for what they have done. I honestly don't care if there happen to be pictures of my girlfriend naked on the internet, or something a coworker has posted in a comment section and later regretted.
However, by putting so much emphasis on deleting these things we add to the shame of the original act. Everyone should say what you are thinking, post a picture of yourself naked, then when it is so common then no one will actually care. If you want my opinion on something, ask me and have a civilized conversation about it.
Right. Given that there's an explicit exception for journalism in the "Right to be Forgotten" law, I would think it to be completely reasonable for links to journalistic content to also not fall under this law. Apparently an EU court ruled that this wasn't the case some years prior, so we'll see. But I have no understanding why it makes sense for links to journalistic content to be considered different from the content itself.
To assert the "right to be forgotten" is to assert power over other people's memories. There is no such thing — and there should not be.
If you insist on creating one — for the "evil KKKorporations" — one day your ex will have the power to insist, your memories of the time together be wiped out. It is already possible.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It should be noted that the position of not making any editorial judgement is not incompatible with a desire to protect journalism. Using the metaphor of a book store, Google is acting like a book store, who does not make any editorial judgement on the books being sold. However, if the book store is disallowed to sell certain books, then the journalism produced by the authors of these books are certainly harmed, since it would be impossible to access these books via this book store.
The fact that Google claims it doesn't make editorial judgments is irrelevant.
The news source has already done that. Google is just a link in the chain of that news source's own journalistic rights.
And this is why the court case is not against the news site itself. Just a loophole to try to get around that.
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Once the billyclubs, handcuffs, writs, bailiffs, and judges are in play It's all about applying the law and interpretations of it in an internally consistent manner that makes you fit into a "within the law" category - no matter how round the hole and square the peg.
If they are claiming protection when providing journalistic content, then for the sake of the consistency shouldn't they also be open to libel charges when they provide defamatory content?
The thing is in EU we are big on rehabilitation, and having your past crime come splat right into a new hiring would fly in the face of rehabilitation. That journalistic exception (there are other one for public figure and politician which have no right to be forgotten if i recall correctly and there are some crime which are excluded) means that you have a right to be forgotten from SEARCH ENGINE, but not from journal. e.g. CNN report you stole a dildo, then google link it. You do your time and want to work in a dildo factory, you invoke the right to be forgotten and have the link in google removed, but CNN is NOT affected and can still display the article if you search in cnn.com , or if you have the direct link. Google is claiming they are "journal" more or less for the search engine which fly in the face of that law, and of all precedent on what is considered journalism by court. I hope they get stamped out. There is a good reason the right to be forgotten was required : without it, rehabilitation is nigh impossible as google do not forget anything. So unless you were called joe smith, in all practicality rehabilitation cannot work if googling your name list your past crime. And before somebody invoke some excuse to need to be informed bullshit : in past society as far as 1990 (LOL) you HAD that right to be forgotten de facto as baring somebody doing a research on microfiche there was no easy way to look up for news like that, and that'S how rehabilitation can only work. Otherwise if you do anything, it get hanged around your neck like a dead albatross and makes not only rehabilitation impossible and thus far far more probable for you to recommit (compare recommit crime in Sweden with US....) but that dead albatross almost certainly makes you a pariah for other part of society for the rest of your life.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Search engines are there to find journalistic content. Censoring them is the same as censoring the content because that's literally how the internet works! In this context, the author at the Reg is a moron arguing to have his own content become unsearchable at the whim of anyone he decides to write about. Google is correct to take the stance they should be protected under exemptions for journalism when the links requested to be delisted are news articles.
I don't like this lazy way of getting forgotten.
Ask the state to get your conviction stricken from the public records.
Get newspapers to respect your privacy by hiding newspaper articles about it.
Get those "forgotten" records hidden from spiders if you still want explicit searches to work.
THEN, go to Google to clean up what's left.
If the state believe in the "right to be forgotten" enough to handle the first steps, there should only be low ranking stuff left behind.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
So you get blackballed for life for some shoplifting. It doesn't matter that you were penniless, on the streets and starving when you did it, you're a disgusting felon who should just go die somewhere else and never think you could be part of society ever again. Yeah, that means you don't get that job as a roadsweeper. Get your punk ass out before I have you arrested for trespassing.
That is the attitude you portray. And fuck you for it, along with anybody else that espouses it.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Rehabilitation isn't good enough reason to censor any mentions of the past. This will always be a thing that happened and any any censoring of it goes against the truth. No harm from having it available can come that can't be rectified by other laws already. If they're denied employment due to convictions that are not active anymore then they can sue for discrimination. If other people keep badgering them about their past crimes then they can sue for harassment. Rewriting the past is not needed. You can't build your life based on a lie of omission anyway. People will always find out eventually even if google doesn't index it.
It won't work anyway. the press is regulated, and expected to consider things like the public interest value vs. privacy. Unless Google starts doing that somehow or wants to be regulated that way they won't get far with this argument.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In Britain, it is a matter of law that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, what we're really saying is that you're not competent to know what has merit by merit of bringing up Nazis rather than respecting other cultures, so you can bog off.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Again, you're not reading what was written. Nothing is being censored and search engines aren't journalists. That's all there is to it.
At this point, anyone who doesn't grasp the importance of privacy clearly works for Facebook or Cambridge Analytics.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You are not permitted to use the irrelevant in hiring decisions. And society is prohibited from inventing punishments outside of law or indefinite punishments of any kind. That's not revisionism, that's called decency.
It's also why recidivism in Europe is about a quarter that in the U.S.
Also, none of the historic record is changed. Unlike in America, where the south firmly believes slavery had nothing to do with the civil war and that the statues removed were from that era.
Americans should also start with home, where their President (after a cup of covfefe) is pressing for political opponents to be arrested and locked up without trial and for opposing news sources to be shut down as illegal lobbyists.
Get him impeached and THEN you get to talk about freedom of the press, and not a moment before.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Where such a request exists, Google should replace the search results with a banner that says "These results from [specific URL address] are blocked due to legal requirements to hide the criminal activities of [complainant's name here] under EU law. Please look up the information in police records instead." That should satisfy everyone.
Excuse me, but what time period are you talking about. Before there was Google, there was Alta Vista. Before there was Alta Vista there was WebSpider. Before there was WebSpider there were lots of people rolling their own search engines. I think that .... it's been too long, but search engines didn't originate on Web, they predated it. I suppose if you go back before DNS you find a time without search engines... I remember a brief period where I kept an extensive list of entries in my hosts file, but saying "the internet existed just fine without search engines" is also saying it existed just fine with only a few hundred sites, possibly a few thousand. And it's true, if you scale things back that far, search engines are just a useful utility. (That hosts file quickly became a pain to maintain.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In a way it should. The request should be for the pages linked to to be delisted. Google is just being an index, it's not providing the story.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The right of being forgotten is erasing our History.
We have here someone that has been a candidate for Presidential runs, and that has been in the future, that has been a desertor and a traitor in our old colonial wars.
Most seriously yet, he has in the hands, metaphorically speaking the blood of many of his countrymen, due to be running a radio station that denounced to our enemies our positions.
He used the right from Google to be forgotten, and obliterated with that part of the History from our colonial wars from the Internet.
Are you ok with foreigners telling you what rights you have to get rid of on their say so? I seem to recall Americans getting upset and that's without the other side profiteering.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, the data is there, so there is no censorship.
This is just a bunch of busybodies interfering with the fundamental and ancient rights of Europeans on the grounds that making money is more important than a fundamental right.
Wonder where they stand when it comes to their own fundamental rights. Ahhhh. I see.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is Europe.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You _should_ be able to explain it, yes. But how many get the opportunity? Employer looks at resume or does a bit of due diligence and discovers the conviction. Your application is immediately round filed. Thus you are branded for life when a 1 minute conversation on how you were a dumb kid would sort this out.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I got caught shoplifting as a kid and I can't get a job in fintech nearly thirty years later because I was an idiot. So fuck you right back, asshole.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Idiot, that's by design. The first amendment specifically says that freedom of the press will not be abridged. So guess what? There basically is no regulation, nor has there ever been much to that end, especially after the incorporation doctrine. The one and only exception is public broadcasts (and no, cable TV doesn't fall under that umbrella) and that, IMO, is going too far, though it's kind of difficult to say that it's unconstitutional since they are leasing spectrum from the FCC. But I still think that it should be unconstitutional anyways since the FCC has a monopoly, and it is a direct part of the federal government, which is what the first amendment has always applied to, even before incorporation. And who gives a fuck if Timberlake and Jackson flash a titty? Besides, sponsors don't like it when they break a common set of decency rules, which is why basic cable channels shy away from this, and the premium channels don't.
Vague terms like "public interest value" are exactly why the EU has no freedom of speech. There is plenty of language like that which governs free speech, and it's already being abused by allowing the police to interpret it however they'd like. This means nobody can really know what type of speech is banned, and the police can (and do) pick which type of speech they want to prosecute, all they have to do is relate it to any one of these vague terms. I'm sure you'll probably be thinking "but...fake news!" true, that is a problem, but if you start censoring rumors, then you become the Chinese government, who uses that as a justification to censor anything, no matter how true it is.
In the US, you've got protection from anything unless you're a broadcaster, or your speech fails the clear and present danger litmus test (i.e. credible threats of violence, conspiracy to murder, etc.) Nothing else will see you get prosecuted.
I'm sure there are also problems in Somalia, Brazil and China.
Topic here however talks about EU.
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It's funny how you open with a suggestion of a disagreement, followed by a complete agreement with my point.
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Like many in the mass media who censor, edit, or spin news for political reasons, Google will be able to do the same. Indeed they have already begin this crusade of censoring conservative and/or libertarian content that conflicts with their political viewpoints. This is absolutely necessary as the internet has been a major force in spreading the truth about the establishment, the US Intel agencies, both political parties, 911, and the media!!!!
And it is journalistic.
Facts should not be suppressed because they inconvenience or offend someone, nor because they cause someone unwanted attention or discomfort. BUT, of course, some people think they should have a history that is of limited scope.
This is a problem similar to that of court records in a digital age. Now that we have the technology to actually access those 'public' records, suddenly there are some efforts to limit that newly-realized access. Poo. No.
Similar problem in the US with people taking advantage of available information and technology to manufacture their own firearms, which are both unregistered and untraceable. This is fundamental to the right to possess firearms, for if you can't make it, you can be denied the opportunity to acquire it, and denied the right to posses it. And there you are.
'Right to be forgotten' belongs to the rememberers, not to the data. If we choose to remember, we do. Too bad you are ashamed or afraid of your history.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No, the right to do and the right to be free are the same thing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)