But now people in these countries have the right to ask people to forget about things about them which are true
Incorrect. If the court was saying to remove the page in question, then that would be forgetting things which are true.
However, the court action is directed at the association created by Google between a particular person and a page. By maintaining this association, Google are basically stating "this is one of the most relevant thing about person X", and if what it points to is irrelevant/out of date (even if true) then the result is false.
The right to be forgotten is not about making the world a better place. It is about permitting people to behave badly without consequences.
No, it's about requiring search engines to stop returning irrelevant items about a person when asked for relevant items, and as a result causing harm. Without this law, search engines could report results which are false and do harm with impunity.
If we are going to have some kind of right to be forgotten then it should be judged by independent specialists, pages that should be 'forgotten' should be added to a public blacklist used by ISPs so that it can be checked for abuses
You misunderstand, it's not the page that should be forgotten, but the association created by google between that page and a particular person. Basically, you are effectively asking google "What is the most relevant thing about person X?", and google are returning irrelevant/out of date information. The result due to that association is within Google's control, and that association is what the court is addressing, not the existence of the page itself.
Currently the search engines must remove the link to the article, but the article stays. This is bullshit. If the article contains something to be forgotten it should be removed or redacted. This is the only correct way to do it. Also, there should be an open procedure, with appeals, to decide if the article must be redacted / deleted.
One of the problems with this law is that it's badly named, which creates a lot of misunderstanding. For example, I do not believe search engines must remove the link to the article completely, just not return it for specific search queries. So it's not the article itself that is at fault, but the connection created by the search engine between the article and the search subject
Basically, when you search Google (or any other search engine) for the name of a person, you are implicitly (or explicitly) asking "What are the most relevant things about this person?" If the answers to this query chosen by the search engine are out of date or irrelevant, then the search engine itself is at fault, as it is the one doing the judgment of "most relevant". When these inaccurate results/connections cause damage to a person, and the search engine won't change its practices, then it is only right that the court stepped in.
Would there be as much of a backlash if this law was called "Requirement for search engines to stop returning inaccurate and harmful results about people?" Maybe not, there might still be people saying "But, the article is correct". But this misses the point that the inaccuracy is in the search-engine-generated and ranked connections between articles and people - not in the article itself.
Nobody's being forced to buy anything they don't want. A guy voluntarily purchased a laptop with Windows installed on it, and wanted to return part of what he bought.
Actually what he bought was a laptop with a refundable copy of windows. If - after the sale - the vendor is claiming that what he bought is something different, i.e. a laptop with a non-refundable copy of windows, then it is the vendor that is in the wrong.
It's not about forcing or not forcing people to buy something they don't want, but requiring vendors to be honest on what they sell, and if they sell an item which has conditions, they are not allowed to unilaterally change those conditions to the detriment of the buyer after the event, especially if the buyer relied on those conditions before making the purchase.
Another great way to protest this is to have a team putting up warning signs with some cool 1984/orwellian illustrations all around the shopping center.
Or how about having a large number of people walk around with phones on, with their path describing the word "N O" or similar?
Which is a wonderful 'free' software perspective. But from a legal perspective, the GPL IS a EULA, because rather than "does not limit your rights etc." legally it "grants limited rights" (that is, unlimited rights for private use, specific conditions to distribute.) Those rights have to be granted unless the work is in the public domain, which GPLed works very specifically are not.
It may be a licence agreement, but as it the licence is for distribution, not use, it would be a LA, not a EULA.
OW, not only do you have to convince a court of the unprecedented concept of a debt in the form of a privacy obligation, you have to convince the court that you should be paid in front of other, secured, creditors. The former is already far-fetched, the combination is patently absurd.
From my understanding of the OP, you wouldn't have to expect to be paid at all for this work, just to reduce the "value" of the asset containing the personal information, and/or link the obligations of the usage of the date to the ownership thereof.
Currently the personal information is just seen as an asset worth X, with the liabilities of the same asset (the obligations of how it's used) seen as completely separate (and not taken over). If you could get them linked officially, then the people buying the personal information would be required to buy both the data and the obligations.
For a very rough comparison, if you bought a property lease from a company, I wouldn't expect to be to choose to just take over the "right to occupy for the next X years" and not accept the "obligation to pay rent for the next X years" as they are inextricably linked. If the same could be done with the personal information, then the privacy obligation would have to transfer across, as it woudl turn from selling just "a database with personal information" to "a database with personal information with the following liabilities/obligations"
And I think that should be the responsibility of the used-game sellers, not the publisher. They're the ones who know that copy's used, after all.
Surely it should be the responsibility of the publisher, as they would be the ones that know what doesn't work a second time? So long as the seller marks it as "used", what else reasonably could they do?
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
Unfortunately you missed out the [vital] first part of the faq which is:
If you choose to provide source through a written offer, then anybody who requests the source from you is entitled to receive it.
So, you are only required to make the source code available if your original distribution was in the form of binary+source offer. (3b of GPL)
If you made the source available with the binary (as per 3a) you would not have to include that offer, and the offer would not be there to pass on to any third party.
Remember, there's nothing stopping Oracle from charging for GPL source code, and they only have to provide access to the source code to the people they distribute the binaries to.
Wrong. GPLv2 section 3 specifically requires the source code to be made available to any third party, regardless of where they got the binaries:
Actually, it is not wrong. If Oracle chose to distribute the source at the same time as the binaries to those they sell to, then they would _not_ be required by the GPL to supply the source to any third party, and they would still be adhering to the GPL.
This is because there are three options in section 3 for source code access. 3a is to distribute source with the same time as the binary. 3b is to distribute the binary with an offer (valid to any third party) and 3c is to distribute the binary including the original offer (if you yourself received this as per 3b, and are distributing non-commercially.)
Thus, if the software was distributed as per 3a (binary+source) to someone who purchased it, then third parties would have no right to request the source per 3b from oracle, and the infringement would by the purchaser for not including the source as per 3a (as they cannot pass on an offer as per 3c, as they didn't get it by 3b themselves)
Which brings up a good point - why doesn't IBM buy them up (or at least a controlling interest) and finally drop the curtain on SCO's last act? It's got to cost less than any additional litigation.
At a guess:
a) Precedent. They don't want anyone getting the idea that suing them for the "right" amount (i.e. low enough) will result in a payoff
b) Cost. is probably not a large factor, as they're ibm lawyers anyway, I believe, and even if costs are incurred, I'm sure they're prefer to pay this money to their legal team than to the shareholders of the company on the other side of the litigation.
c) Logistics/legality, I'm not sure if it would be as straightforward as you suggest, as unless you have 100% of the shares, there are laws that protect minority shareholders, so it might be difficult to drop the case from the sco side without opening a can of worms from any remaining shareholders. (and there would doubtless be a few that refuse to sell if the above happened, hoping (somewhat logically) that if they were prepared to buy out the whole company to avoid litigation costs, that they would do the same for the last few shares for the same reason.
Wrong, the correct answer is: "We will discontinue the sale, but we can not remove existing copies from a users' devices." Then raise a stink if the publisher tries to coerce them to do otherwise
Since they have proven that they can remove the copy from the user's device (by doing so) if they said they could not, that would not be the "correct answer", it would be a lie. And, if the failure to remove the infringing data was a "will not", not a "can not", it would seem to be trivial to prove that any further infringement (by keeping it on the device) was wilful. (if they could remove it but _chose_ not to)
If you don't like the manufacturers' policies, buy from someone else.
The policies are fine, the problem is that it is the _manufacturers_ are not sticking to it. The Eula for XP clearly states that it's refundable, so unless the manufacturers are able to change the licensing on a MS product, what they are (and must) be selling is the hardware with a refundable copy of XP installed.
Did anyone really expect that the back end database would be checked for all use, no matter how trivial? No, of course not, so saying this is simply a statement of fact, and, if anything, an attempt to convince people that they are backing down, when it is nothing of the sort.
The most worrying aspect of the id system is the creation of the biometric database, not the card itself. The card itself may be the most visible, but it's almost a red herring, so you will see more ploys like this to show the government "giving in" on the card aspect, without any budge on the crucial part of the database itself, which is scariest part.
In short, this "watering down" claim is a decoy, and means less than nothing.
Or what about if I post on an Iran website that I hate Islam that that's against their laws. Do they get to come over here and arrest me? Get real, your logic sucks.
If the "they" is the US, then yes. Do something on a US web/site that's against their laws and they come over and arrest you, even if you've not ever been in their country. Check Gary McKinnon for one recent example. The logic may suck, but real life sucks worse.
The more fundamental question is, where should the line be drawn? Without a "great firewall of X" acting like customs, there's no way of stopping information crossing boundary's. If something posted by a citizen by county A is uploaded by an ISP of country B, to a server located in country C, which is owned by someone in country D, breaks a law in country E, what exactly should happen?
"Cannot delete filename: there is not enough disk space
Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again
This happens when you try and delete (as in move to the recycle bin) a file on a disk that's almost full, probably due to the extra space needed to store where the file was deleted from
If you're charged with a crime, you get a DNA sample taken. If it doesn't go to court for whatever reason, or you are not found guilty, the sample is destroyed (unless you've got a prior criminal record)
Completely incorrect. If you are even arrested for a "recordable offence" (which most are) your DNA can be taken, and kept even if you aren't charged, (or even if the arrest was completely baseless). The only place where it is automatically destroyed is in Scotland, which is may be what you are thinking of.
Wouldn't that show quite well, how baseless RIAA's "evidence" is?
Possibly. But you'd first have to find someone who's willing to put that file up, *and* pay up to defend the case, *and* risk that a judge/jury would be convinced of the above. Any volenteers?
You have to consider, which would people think more likely - that someone created a belch/fart single, made it the same size and name of a popular song, and distributed it, *or* someone who was caught infringing copyright created a file to match its characteristics in order to get off on a technicality.
Or, in an more obscure idea, what's to stop a person making different belching/farting sound that matches the md5/sha/length/etc/etc of a popular track, non of which infringe individually, but if you combine them all, you can get the original infringing track back?
If your job pays good money, be a man and provider and sacrifice your happiness so your child can have a better life. Having 8 hours of boring yet high paying work is better than having 8 hours of fun yet low paying work, because the boring life is better for your wife and kids welfare.
I would think most children would have a better life with happy parents, than with parents who "sacrificed" their happiness on the altar of materialism.
If I say no, or you didn't ask me, you are not authorized. My router is a stupid piece of hardware, totally unable to give or deny authorization.
A pen and piece of paper is even dumber, but if there are words written on it "come in and look around" or "stay out" most people would see that as permission, would they not? You write the sign, you set up the router, and the difference is what, exactly? Same with the bouncer comparison, if you ask the bouncer and he says okay, could the owner come back and say "you should have asked _me_?" How are you to know?
And in any case, a router can give/deny access, so if you instruct the router as to whom you want to give access and you select "anyone", how can you say you didn't want anyone to have access?
If someone has a wireless connection and is broadcasting it with no any password or any other access control, can you really say accessing is unauthorized? In that setup, it is your computer seeing the wireless signal and asking, "Can I connect?" and the wireless network replying "Sure!"
How is that different to a property owner having a bouncer, and someone asking the bouncer "Can I come in?". If the bouncer says yes, would you be trespassing? However, if the owner had given the bouncer a list of people allowed, and you forged ID to get in, then you could be, even if you got a yes, but that's comparable to hacking a wep password.
Any legal bod want to hazard a guess whether estoppel could be used as a defence for cases where open networks are used validly? i.e. your advertised network settings gave me explicit permission to connect, which was relied on, so you cannot in person retroactively make the previous access unauthorised (but you can request not to connect in future)
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect. If the court was saying to remove the page in question, then that would be forgetting things which are true.
However, the court action is directed at the association created by Google between a particular person and a page. By maintaining this association, Google are basically stating "this is one of the most relevant thing about person X", and if what it points to is irrelevant/out of date (even if true) then the result is false.
No, it's about requiring search engines to stop returning irrelevant items about a person when asked for relevant items, and as a result causing harm. Without this law, search engines could report results which are false and do harm with impunity.
You misunderstand, it's not the page that should be forgotten, but the association created by google between that page and a particular person. Basically, you are effectively asking google "What is the most relevant thing about person X?", and google are returning irrelevant/out of date information. The result due to that association is within Google's control, and that association is what the court is addressing, not the existence of the page itself.
One of the problems with this law is that it's badly named, which creates a lot of misunderstanding. For example, I do not believe search engines must remove the link to the article completely, just not return it for specific search queries. So it's not the article itself that is at fault, but the connection created by the search engine between the article and the search subject
Basically, when you search Google (or any other search engine) for the name of a person, you are implicitly (or explicitly) asking "What are the most relevant things about this person?" If the answers to this query chosen by the search engine are out of date or irrelevant, then the search engine itself is at fault, as it is the one doing the judgment of "most relevant". When these inaccurate results/connections cause damage to a person, and the search engine won't change its practices, then it is only right that the court stepped in.
Would there be as much of a backlash if this law was called "Requirement for search engines to stop returning inaccurate and harmful results about people?" Maybe not, there might still be people saying "But, the article is correct". But this misses the point that the inaccuracy is in the search-engine-generated and ranked connections between articles and people - not in the article itself.
M.
Nobody's being forced to buy anything they don't want. A guy voluntarily purchased a laptop with Windows installed on it, and wanted to return part of what he bought.
Actually what he bought was a laptop with a refundable copy of windows. If - after the sale - the vendor is claiming that what he bought is something different, i.e. a laptop with a non-refundable copy of windows, then it is the vendor that is in the wrong.
It's not about forcing or not forcing people to buy something they don't want, but requiring vendors to be honest on what they sell, and if they sell an item which has conditions, they are not allowed to unilaterally change those conditions to the detriment of the buyer after the event, especially if the buyer relied on those conditions before making the purchase.
Another great way to protest this is to have a team putting up warning signs with some cool 1984/orwellian illustrations all around the shopping center.
Or how about having a large number of people walk around with phones on, with their path describing the word "N O" or similar?
Which is a wonderful 'free' software perspective. But from a legal perspective, the GPL IS a EULA, because rather than "does not limit your rights etc." legally it "grants limited rights" (that is, unlimited rights for private use, specific conditions to distribute.) Those rights have to be granted unless the work is in the public domain, which GPLed works very specifically are not.
It may be a licence agreement, but as it the licence is for distribution, not use, it would be a LA, not a EULA.
OW, not only do you have to convince a court of the unprecedented concept of a debt in the form of a privacy obligation, you have to convince the court that you should be paid in front of other, secured, creditors. The former is already far-fetched, the combination is patently absurd.
From my understanding of the OP, you wouldn't have to expect to be paid at all for this work, just to reduce the "value" of the asset containing the personal information, and/or link the obligations of the usage of the date to the ownership thereof.
Currently the personal information is just seen as an asset worth X, with the liabilities of the same asset (the obligations of how it's used) seen as completely separate (and not taken over). If you could get them linked officially, then the people buying the personal information would be required to buy both the data and the obligations.
For a very rough comparison, if you bought a property lease from a company, I wouldn't expect to be to choose to just take over the "right to occupy for the next X years" and not accept the "obligation to pay rent for the next X years" as they are inextricably linked. If the same could be done with the personal information, then the privacy obligation would have to transfer across, as it woudl turn from selling just "a database with personal information" to "a database with personal information with the following liabilities/obligations"
And I think that should be the responsibility of the used-game sellers, not the publisher. They're the ones who know that copy's used, after all.
Surely it should be the responsibility of the publisher, as they would be the ones that know what doesn't work a second time? So long as the seller marks it as "used", what else reasonably could they do?
...and I quote (from gnu.org gpl-faq
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
Unfortunately you missed out the [vital] first part of the faq which is:
If you choose to provide source through a written offer, then anybody who requests the source from you is entitled to receive it.
So, you are only required to make the source code available if your original distribution was in the form of binary+source offer. (3b of GPL) If you made the source available with the binary (as per 3a) you would not have to include that offer, and the offer would not be there to pass on to any third party.
Remember, there's nothing stopping Oracle from charging for GPL source code, and they only have to provide access to the source code to the people they distribute the binaries to.
Wrong. GPLv2 section 3 specifically requires the source code to be made available to any third party, regardless of where they got the binaries:
Actually, it is not wrong. If Oracle chose to distribute the source at the same time as the binaries to those they sell to, then they would _not_ be required by the GPL to supply the source to any third party, and they would still be adhering to the GPL.
This is because there are three options in section 3 for source code access. 3a is to distribute source with the same time as the binary. 3b is to distribute the binary with an offer (valid to any third party) and 3c is to distribute the binary including the original offer (if you yourself received this as per 3b, and are distributing non-commercially.)
Thus, if the software was distributed as per 3a (binary+source) to someone who purchased it, then third parties would have no right to request the source per 3b from oracle, and the infringement would by the purchaser for not including the source as per 3a (as they cannot pass on an offer as per 3c, as they didn't get it by 3b themselves)
Which brings up a good point - why doesn't IBM buy them up (or at least a controlling interest) and finally drop the curtain on SCO's last act? It's got to cost less than any additional litigation.
At a guess:
a) Precedent. They don't want anyone getting the idea that suing them for the "right" amount (i.e. low enough) will result in a payoff
b) Cost. is probably not a large factor, as they're ibm lawyers anyway, I believe, and even if costs are incurred, I'm sure they're prefer to pay this money to their legal team than to the shareholders of the company on the other side of the litigation.
c) Logistics/legality, I'm not sure if it would be as straightforward as you suggest, as unless you have 100% of the shares, there are laws that protect minority shareholders, so it might be difficult to drop the case from the sco side without opening a can of worms from any remaining shareholders. (and there would doubtless be a few that refuse to sell if the above happened, hoping (somewhat logically) that if they were prepared to buy out the whole company to avoid litigation costs, that they would do the same for the last few shares for the same reason.
Firstly, this is the Daily Mail
It was also reported by the bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8293784.stm
Secondly, it would be entirely illegal to do this under UK law. We have things like the Data Protection Act.
How exactly would this be in breach of the DPA?
Wrong, the correct answer is: "We will discontinue the sale, but we can not remove existing copies from a users' devices." Then raise a stink if the publisher tries to coerce them to do otherwise
Since they have proven that they can remove the copy from the user's device (by doing so) if they said they could not, that would not be the "correct answer", it would be a lie. And, if the failure to remove the infringing data was a "will not", not a "can not", it would seem to be trivial to prove that any further infringement (by keeping it on the device) was wilful. (if they could remove it but _chose_ not to)
If you don't like the manufacturers' policies, buy from someone else.
The policies are fine, the problem is that it is the _manufacturers_ are not sticking to it. The Eula for XP clearly states that it's refundable, so unless the manufacturers are able to change the licensing on a MS product, what they are (and must) be selling is the hardware with a refundable copy of XP installed.
Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act same into force earlier this year: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7888301.stm
Did anyone really expect that the back end database would be checked for all use, no matter how trivial? No, of course not, so saying this is simply a statement of fact, and, if anything, an attempt to convince people that they are backing down, when it is nothing of the sort.
The most worrying aspect of the id system is the creation of the biometric database, not the card itself. The card itself may be the most visible, but it's almost a red herring, so you will see more ploys like this to show the government "giving in" on the card aspect, without any budge on the crucial part of the database itself, which is scariest part.
In short, this "watering down" claim is a decoy, and means less than nothing.
If the "they" is the US, then yes. Do something on a US web/site that's against their laws and they come over and arrest you, even if you've not ever been in their country. Check Gary McKinnon for one recent example. The logic may suck, but real life sucks worse. The more fundamental question is, where should the line be drawn? Without a "great firewall of X" acting like customs, there's no way of stopping information crossing boundary's. If something posted by a citizen by county A is uploaded by an ISP of country B, to a server located in country C, which is owned by someone in country D, breaks a law in country E, what exactly should happen?
"Cannot delete filename: there is not enough disk space
Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again
This happens when you try and delete (as in move to the recycle bin) a file on a disk that's almost full, probably due to the extra space needed to store where the file was deleted from
And that whole pizza delivery thing will be gone as soon as we start hearing someone answering the phone as
Thank you for calling Domino's Pizza. This is Agent Jentson speaking, how can I help you?"
Or maybe like this? http://www.aclu.org/pizza/
Completely incorrect. If you are even arrested for a "recordable offence" (which most are) your DNA can be taken, and kept even if you aren't charged, (or even if the arrest was completely baseless). The only place where it is automatically destroyed is in Scotland, which is may be what you are thinking of.
Possibly. But you'd first have to find someone who's willing to put that file up, *and* pay up to defend the case, *and* risk that a judge/jury would be convinced of the above. Any volenteers?
You have to consider, which would people think more likely - that someone created a belch/fart single, made it the same size and name of a popular song, and distributed it, *or* someone who was caught infringing copyright created a file to match its characteristics in order to get off on a technicality.
Or, in an more obscure idea, what's to stop a person making different belching/farting sound that matches the md5/sha/length/etc/etc of a popular track, non of which infringe individually, but if you combine them all, you can get the original infringing track back?
If your job pays good money, be a man and provider and sacrifice your happiness so your child can have a better life. Having 8 hours of boring yet high paying work is better than having 8 hours of fun yet low paying work, because the boring life is better for your wife and kids welfare.
I would think most children would have a better life with happy parents, than with parents who "sacrificed" their happiness on the altar of materialism.
Alas, you're only half right.
A pen and piece of paper is even dumber, but if there are words written on it "come in and look around" or "stay out" most people would see that as permission, would they not? You write the sign, you set up the router, and the difference is what, exactly? Same with the bouncer comparison, if you ask the bouncer and he says okay, could the owner come back and say "you should have asked _me_?" How are you to know?
And in any case, a router can give/deny access, so if you instruct the router as to whom you want to give access and you select "anyone", how can you say you didn't want anyone to have access?
If someone has a wireless connection and is broadcasting it with no any password or any other access control, can you really say accessing is unauthorized? In that setup, it is your computer seeing the wireless signal and asking, "Can I connect?" and the wireless network replying "Sure!"
How is that different to a property owner having a bouncer, and someone asking the bouncer "Can I come in?". If the bouncer says yes, would you be trespassing? However, if the owner had given the bouncer a list of people allowed, and you forged ID to get in, then you could be, even if you got a yes, but that's comparable to hacking a wep password.
Any legal bod want to hazard a guess whether estoppel could be used as a defence for cases where open networks are used validly? i.e. your advertised network settings gave me explicit permission to connect, which was relied on, so you cannot in person retroactively make the previous access unauthorised (but you can request not to connect in future)