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Google Loses 'Right To Be Forgotten' Case (bbc.com)
A businessman fighting for the "right to be forgotten" has won a High Court action against Google. BBC reports: The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine. The judge, Mr Justice Mark Warby, ruled in his favour on Friday. But he rejected a separate claim made by another businessman who had committed a more serious crime. The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications. He spent six months in jail.
The other businessman, who lost his case, was convicted more than 10 years ago of conspiring to account falsely. He spent four years in jail.
So the public records from the case shall be purged from the microfiche archives of all public libraries.
The guy committed a crime. He served time, repaid his debt to society. Shouldn't he have, then, the right not to be marked as a criminal forever, in front of the world eyes?
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The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case
Thanks, I was utterly unable to sort through that logic ...
"The court declared that JOHN JONES must be forgotten ... "
I can understand the intent that the court would like to have, but search engines are still completely idiotic. Does this person just get completed erased from the internet so that you can't even find their Linkdin page or something like that? I don't know if there's enough fine grained control to forget about only this person's crime instead of the person entirely or rather anyone bearing that person's name without a great deal of manual effort. Even that doesn't work as there's nothing to stop someone from creating a website that details the sordid past of anyone who requests to be forgotten. Perhaps that site's pages don't show up in a Google search if everything is done correctly (good luck with that) but it doesn't stop anyone from going to that site.
Even the eventual leaking or inadvertent release of the list of things that Google must forget about is going to draw more eyes to it than would otherwise be cast on that information. The best way to make sure everyone wants to know something or talk about it is to forbid doing just that. Perhaps it could work in Soviet Russia where there was at least a long history of repression and dire consequences for such an act, but it can't hope to succeed in the Western democracies of today or even a world where an unfiltered internet exists.
The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications.
The businessman was convicting of conspiring to intercept communications? Isn't that Google's whole business model?
Well, Google are playing too nicely here. They absolutely should return results to a search for this individual's name with "The UK High Court has ruled that we must not provide you with a result to your search query. Click here to execute this search on Bing"
Poor sumbitch did time for intercepting communications, yet I don't see anybody from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Doubleclick or CloudFlare in the slammer...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The problem with public records is that their effect was far more localized before the internet. Now you don't have to go down to the courthouse and ask to review the records; you can find out everything about everyone with a browser. This is an excellent read that discusses the problems with public records and the internet explosion far better than I can do in a single Slashdot comment.
Posting as AC because I'm technically a felon. No, really. Now get off my lawn.
or better say, there is a marked advantage in the business world to being willing to lie, cheat, and manipulate. It's a godsend for psychopaths.
That said, I would much rather deal with a honest businessman.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
....is an Orwellian "Right to Erase History" cloaked (barely) in a postmodern "protect my feelings" camouflage.
it is one of the most pernicious and evil pieces of government legislation in human history - to assert that people have a RIGHT to employ the forces of law to rewrite what are known facts in favor of (empty set).
Unbelievable. The philosophers of the Enlightenment are spinning in their graves.
-Styopa
Judge's typically don't like it when companies try to buck court orders in this way. I think a big "no results" would be just as telling. I suspect that defendant would be back in court complaining that no one can find him were that the case.
Just the search results. Two different matters.
Of course, those same records might also be indexed for other person involved.
Now, I'm not familiar with the details of UK law. But on this side of the pond, that sort of court decision creates a public record. Are the UK courts now saying that this guy can order Google to remove a pointer to the record, but one can still go down to the courthouse and locate the original record in a filing cabinet somewhere?
Have gnu, will travel.
yeah, putting this into practice would mean tracking and burning every single copy of every single newspaper that happened to report on the case, etc.
not gonna happen.
the guy should learn to deal with the fact that his name can be associated with the case forever (just maybe not on google).
but potential future employer/business partners/etc need also to learn that it stupid to count on such old information, the gus havinv served their time and paid your due to society.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If you don't have to declare it in the rules, you shouldn't be able to search for it online
Does this person just get completed erased from the internet
This is actually a brilliant idea. You want to be forgotten, fine, society doesn't know anything about you, you don't exist. Now, you've been forgotten.
Unintended consequences are a great way to learn stupid lessons.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Once something appears on the web you can bet it is stored in numerous places on numerous devices. There is simply no way to erase it everywhere. Yes, a large site might be able to get rid of their copy but it can keep popping up forever. Next we come to another problem. Can any nation regulate the content of the web all over the world? Should we give a fig over what content is illegal in Turkey or France or Nepal? In a free speech nation can we be muzzled by some other nations laws?
They would be back in court under Contempt of Court charges pretty quickly.
If Google fight in a court of law each time someone wants to be forgotten, and, say, they lose 50% of the lawsuits, the bill is going to be expensive...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
execute this search on Bing"
Bing bashing. Again!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Possible. If they omitted the link to another search engine then the court would itself be on dodgy grounds - you'd be entering super injunction territory and parliament really don't like those.
... that in the UK, there is a law on the Statute, the "Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, 1974", which allows for past crimes to be "forgotten" when the convicted criminal has both served time adjudged and shown - through a period of time in which no relapses have taken place - that they have put their criminal past behind them.
Although I don't know the specifics of the case in question, the argument offered by the former convict seems quite compelling: they have served their time, paid their debt to society, and even have a law of the land there to back them up... only to have this undermined by a web search engine.
This doesn't in any way suggest that Google or Bing or Duck Duck Go would be deliberately flouting such laws, merely that the internet has a long memory.
However, there are some interesting aspects to this. For example, Google is just an indexing system; it's possible that a search will merely find references to old newspaper articles covering the story of a conviction and sentencing for a crime long past. This takes us back on to the circular treadmill of the argument used when discussing things like bittorrent and P2P file sharing sites - is a search engine breaking the law for pointing at pirated content? Is a search engine breaking the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for pointing to articles covering long-paid-for crimes?
One of the most difficult adjustments that we're having to make as an "internet society" is the fact that the internet never forgets. As aspects of the digital realm form such embedded parts of our lives, the way that the internet functions [with things like data retention] is going to become only more important, only more sensitive.
In this particular case I wonder if the plaintiff - the former criminal - was interested merely in removing the conviction from search engines, or in reminding content publishers of their obligations under the same law? It's obvious why the plaintiff would target Google - the engine acts like a gateway and aggregator to the content, but Google will only spider and index what is already there. What about the ultimate publishers?
No easy answers here...
(Yes, I know, this case was in London, where there is no Constitution, much less the Bill of Rights. That's irrelevant to my point.)
If, as we've held for decades, the First Amendment protects the right to publish even state secrets — however illegal their divulging by the original sources may have been — it certainly covers the right to publish everything and anything else one knows and has not promised not to divulge.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Got news for ya: these "Western democracies" already filter the internet. An unfiltered internet is harmful and leads to negative outcomes. The Wise in the government know better than you and can make better decisions than you can. Best to let them decide.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The guideline are simple enough, they can fight it case by case stupidly, or they can simply accept the request en masse and let the local deal with the consequences. It is only because they dont want to respect that law that they fight it at every turn. Losing money for naught. If i were a shareholder i would call bloody crime fir lost money.
When I read about the "right to be forgotten", I always think about "Mark David Chapman". Should be forgot about him too, should we delete his wikipedia page and just say "someone" shot John Lennon ?
Google is pleased and accepts the ruling. Yea, right.
Am I entitled to forget what a money grabbing lot of pirates the EU is?
Or do I need incessant reminders like this?
So tell us Spike Lee, what is the "right thing" when society has collective amnesia and cant say what is or is not true history?
The guy committed a crime. He served time, repaid his debt to society. Shouldn't he have, then, the right not to be marked as a criminal forever, in front of the world eyes?
It's one thing to forgive someone's mistakes in the past and look at who they are today. That's not at all the same as hiding those past mistakes and pretending that they do not exist.
No wonder they want the past forgotten.. they've already reformed the evilest nation state in history.
The Blanks like Blank Reg were the only free people, but they were powerless to do anything in the connected society. Even opening a door was impossible for a Blank because they had no fb profile so no reason for the door to acknowledge what doesnt exist.
If you increase expenses, this will make it LESS profitable. Increasing the minimum price at which a profit can be made will also drive away customers, thus reducing profit.
When it comes to boycotting Israel, the US strictly enforces anti-boycott laws on American companies. When we accepted a civil works contract in Dubai, these laws affected us: the UAE ministry bidding the job demanded a "no Israeli parts" clause in the contract, and we had to decline, as would any other American company.
We need a similar law protecting the first amendment. When a European court orders Google to remove a result from Google Search world-wide or face sanctions in Europe, they are depriving Americans of their first amendment rights, and it's unacceptable that we would allow a foreign power to infringe upon rights our own government may not touch, and do so on our own soil. It is as if we were still their colony. I don't care if it's France, China, or Myanmar, it's completely unacceptable to the level I would go to war to stop it. The least we can do is pass a law shutting this Eurocrat bullshit down. If they want to censor Europe, and Google wants to continue engaging, perhaps that's fine, but if it affects Americans it's unacceptable to me as a citizen.