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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.
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
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.
In this case, these are people who served their time, and in the past would have been allowed to try to rebuild their lives and become productive members of society.
In today's world, they're forever branded by a private enterprise, that is universally used for looking up names. The right to be forgotten is a very important thing to maintain society's ability to let private citizens actually do the time they owe to the society, and then be able to reintegrate.
Let me make this really simple. Google's actions increase recidivism risk and increase criminality on societal level in this particular instance.
They shouldn't have it hang over them for the rest of their lives.
If we are going give up the principle of free speech and censor the truth for their benefit, then we will soon find plenty of other excuses for censorship as well.
Their "right" to force others to erase their past should not trump the right of prospective employers to know the truth that they were once embezzlers. "Serving their time" doesn't always change their character.
You seem to be confused. In Europe, they only pretend to give you free speech, but in reality, it doesn't exist. Not only for this, but for the way they also define hate speech: Basically if somebody considers something you say to be offensive, then you go to jail. Police are given their own discretion to decide if what you say is hate speech, mainly because there is no actual definition of what qualifies as hate speech, just a list of protected categories.
You last sentence basically underlines the problem with your thought model, which assumes guilt. This medieval model of justice causes widespread societal damage well documented in modern criminology. Which is why states that value things like low recidivism rates, individual rights and presumption of innocence do not allow it.
Reminder: after person has served his/her time, they are innocent of any thought crime you may think they're guilty of "based on their character". There are some exceptions generally accepted to this rule (crimes of sexual nature driven by specific incurable pathologies). This is definitely not in this category by any reasonable definition.
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.
Your freedom of expression doesn't include limitless monetizing of the information you possess.
Yes it does, Freedom of the press is not freedom for only non-profit publishers and unpaid journalists.
It should never be illegal to speak or publish the truth.
You seem to be confused. In Europe, they only pretend to give you free speech, but in reality, it doesn't exist.
Freedom of expression is a human right. Governments may stop you from exercising that right, but it is still an intrinsic right of every human.
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)
You seem to be confused. You talk as if state known as "Europe" with its own legislation exists.
Ok butt-hair splitter, let me be more specific: The EU. But actually this applies in even non-EU countries in Europe, like Norway, and furthermore, the root of all of this in the EU is written in a document that has the word "European" in its title.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Section 2 basically says "we were just kidding about section 1, you don't have any rights", especially with vague terms like "necessary in a democratic society" (aside from this having no specific meaning, the best way to do that is to permit free speech, not limit it) and "protecting morals" (usually fundamentalists use terms like that.)
Happy? But it gets worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Reminder: after person has served his/her time, they are innocent of any thought crime you may think they're guilty of "based on their character". There are some exceptions generally accepted to this rule (crimes of sexual nature driven by specific incurable pathologies).
First of all that's not even true in a legal sense, convicted felons for example can't own guns and kiss your chance to work in law enforcement goodbye. Repeat offenders are punished harder. Visas to foreign countries may be denied. None of that would be true if serving time reset you to an innocent snowflake, the sex offender registries are just the icing on the cake. More importantly, judgement of character is something we do all the time without any legal standard of proof or what may be inferred or assumed from that. If you say "I love Trump" I'm going to start believing a ton of things about your character, until there's some better evidence to the contrary.
If I know an eBay seller is a convicted fraudster then hell yeah, I'm going to think he's done it before he's likely to do it again. I know there's such a thing as miscarriage of justice and that it's not absolute proof, but I don't need that. I don't have to give anyone a fair trial and presumption of innocence, I can use any lack of evidence, suspicion or statistic to conclude you're not really a Nigerian prince looking for help transferring money. It doesn't mean it's a black mark forever but it's up to you to convince me that whatever debt / drinking / drug / gambling problem drove you to do it is it in the past and/or that you've had some kind of moral epiphany and is trying to turn a new leaf. I'm not going to assume that by default.
Of course I do know that "no smoke without fire" and overzealous use of statistics is likely to fuck over a lot of innocent people who have simply been caught up in ambiguous circumstances, are the victims of false accusations, guilt by association or simply share visible and measurable characteristics and demographics with groups that actually commit crime. But, what are you going to do about it? Is there some way to do it "right" given that you will always have uncertainty and will always have both positive and negative errors? I don't think so. For those of you who aren't basement virgins and have reproduced, answer the following questions:
1) If you were to translate "beyond a reasonable doubt" to a percentage, what degree of certainty would you demand before throwing someone in jail for child molestation?
2) If you were to hire a babysitter, what risk in percent would you tolerate of that person being a child molester? If you say flat zero you're lying to yourself, female molesters exist.
3) Assuming there's a gap between the answers to 1) and 2), how would you treat everybody in between? Like, his crazy ex made some 5% probability accusations in a bitter divorce.
The truth is that the real world is much more like guilty until proven innocent, sure the court wouldn't convict but we can't risk that there's some truth to it so let's drop you like a hot potato. Or we have like 100 candidates for the job, lets just drop any candidate that raises any flags because we'll have plenty left. We're risk adverse, not just. If you're a 2% risk and the other people a 1% risk it doesn't mean you get half the offers they do, it means they float to the top every time while you're struggling to find someone willing to give you a chance. It's why smear campaign works, even if it just leaves a smudge you tumble down the list of candidates real quick.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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)
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!"