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.

Comments

Do we trust the legal system?

[hcs_$reboot]

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?

Re: Do we trust the legal system?

[WindBourne]

Are the records public elsewhere? If he is public in legal system, then no. Google should not be forced to do this.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[EndlessNameless]

That's not the real problem. This is the real problem:

"But he rejected a separate claim made by another businessman who had committed a more serious crime."

Google doesn't know what it needs to purge. That means a case-by-case review on every request, a potential law suit if the requester doesn't like their response, and potentially legal penalties on top of that when they're wrong.

The EU needs to make this simpler. They need to create a clear set of guidelines for what types of information must be "forgotten" and how a person can invoke their right.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[mark-t]

Of course, but that shouldn't give him the right to effectively remove any remaining evidence that the event ever happened in the first place.

The fundamental problem with the "right to be forgotten" bullshit is that it is an attempt to legislate what people are allowed to think about by censoring their access to information that will enable them to think about those things. It certainly isn't fair that society might judge a person who has adequately repaid his debt to society, but I would argue that it is far *LESS* fair to try and dictate what other people are allowed to believe or think about somebody else, even if those thoughts happen to be themselves, unfair.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[Major Blud]

The Judge has some pretty unconstitutional (liberal) logic applied here.

Considering that it's a UK court, I'd say it being unconstitutional is spot on, being that it's not covered by the U.S. Constitution.

This is 9th circuit crap.

I don't think this is in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[Archangel Michael]

brand someone as a criminal forever has its origins in Jim Crow laws.

This is patently false and borderline racist bullshit. NOT every thing is tied to "Jim Crow". Branding (literally, and figuratively) criminals goes WAY back further than 200 years, and isn't a particularly western phenomena either, as cultures around the world did it.

Read a book or two outside your own worldview, and expand your insight and stop listening to the stupid professors who haven't taught you how to think.

Different justices for different people

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications. He spent six months in jail.

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...

"Right to be forgotten"

[argStyopa]

....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.

news paper

[DrYak]

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.

Might Be Worth Remembering...

[ytene]

... 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...

The First Amendment, again

[mi]

(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.