Google Appeals French Order For Global 'Right To Be Forgotten' (reuters.com) 170
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet Inc's Google appealed on Thursday an order from the French data protection authority to remove certain web search results globally in response to a European privacy ruling, escalating a fight on the extra-territorial reach of EU law. In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that people could ask search engines, such as Google and Microsoft's Bing, to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results appearing under searches for people's names -- dubbed the "right to be forgotten." Google complied, but it only scrubbed results across its European websites such as Google.de in Germany and Google.fr in France, arguing that to do otherwise would set a dangerous precedent on the territorial reach of national laws. The French regulator, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), fined Google 100,000 euros ($112,150.00) in March for not delisting more widely, arguing that was the only way to uphold Europeans' right to privacy. The company filed its appeal of the CNIL's order with France's supreme administrative court, the Council of State. "One nation does not make laws for another," said Dave Price, senior product counsel, Google. "Data protection law, in France and around Europe, is explicitly territorial, that is limited to the territory of the country whose law is being applied." Google's Transparency Report indicates the company accepts around 40 percent of requests for the removal of links appearing under search results for people's names.
US disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
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interestingly the country google is from completely disagrees with googles stance as they regularly make laws and rulings around data beyond its borders
Cite?
From what I've seen, the US frequently throws its diplomatic weight around and expects other countries to comply with its wishes, but I've never seen any expectation that US law applies outside of its borders, with respect to data or anything else. I'd be very interested to see examples where that's not true.
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http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-themselves-targets-of-us-copyright-law/
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http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-themselves-targets-of-us-copyright-law/
Read the article. The application of US law was based on activities performed in the US. The people weren't in the US, but the servers were.
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Others have responded to this more eloquently than I. They've all been modded down to zero.
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The DMCA.
In what way does the US try to apply the DMCA in other countries? It definitely applies it to people in the US who are uploading/downloading to/from other countries, but I see no evidence that it expects the law to apply to people in other countries.
Note that much of US copyright law terms are derived from the Berne Convention terms, so it may appear that some aspects of US copyright law are applied around the world, but that's only because many countries have signed the treaty.
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Draconian copyright laws didn't originate in the US, they originated in Europe, with the Berne convention. The US resisted those laws for decades. Finally, in the 1970's, it gave in and implemented it. And US fair use provisions and copyrights are still more lenient than in most other places.
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interestingly the country google is from completely disagrees with googles stance as they regularly make laws and rulings around data beyond its borders
And in this case the US government is wrong, not Google.
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interestingly the country google is from completely disagrees with googles stance as they regularly make laws and rulings around data beyond its borders
Google is not the U.S. Government, and your statement is an irrelevant strawman. Google is correct (logically, morally, and practically) that a country's laws cannot extend beyond its territories.
Re: US disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws. Otherwise there wouldn't need to be a special law about it, and also the original web pages would have to be censored, not just the search results. TFA contradicts you in that it speaks of information that is "inadequate or irrelevant", not of personal data that would fall under data protection.
If you agree with the EU's cynical interpretation of "Libertés", what about other jurisdictions? Shouldn't Iran's and China's rules about what is deemed inadequate or irrelevant also be respected worldwide? If not why not?
Re: US disagrees (Score:1)
Why not simply use IP geolcation and refuse to display content from any of Google's domains if the IP is within an EU country? I don't see why that's any more difficult than Google's current approach.
Re: US disagrees (Score:1)
And lose Ad revenue? Are you crazy?
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That would work, until politicians learn the meaning of the three letters VPN.
Let's hope they never. So far it's created the equilibrium where they get to play in their own little world where they can make laws and we can play in ours where we can simply ignore them.
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I'm tempted to spin off a side business. "rule41.com"
It appears that we do have some constitutional protections from prosecutorial overreach, but that will be circumvented come December 1st. I have to agree with other posters that the technical prowess of the people writing our laws is juvenile at best, but it's the framework approach of our legislative system that allows 99.9% interpretation when things are enacted.
It's been raining here by the Beach
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VPNs are irrelevant. The law covers companies operating in the EU. If an employer uses a VPN to research job applicants in an illegal way, it's a crime even if such research is legal where the VPN terminates.
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And as soon as you can prove he broke the law this is even relevant.
Here's an important bit of information: Laws mean jack shit if they cannot be enforced. It's nice that you must not discriminate by gender, race or sexual preference, but it's incredibly difficult proving that someone did just that unless he is blatantly saying it in your face.
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It seems like it would be easier to enforce than things like discrimination laws that have been shown to be both enforceable and quite useful. At least with a VPN there will be some evidence produced. Billing, configurations, browser history etc.
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Billing: Between me and some foreign company. Good luck finding out about it, all I need is an account in the target country and you have a pretty hard time.
Configuration: On my computer, try to read it.
Browser history: Same.
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How about this: Everyone gets to do what he pleases as long as he doesn't cause damage to anyone else?
Not as a law, but as the foundation of it. It sure would be different, that much I give you.
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Damage would be defined as having a negative influence on the physical property or immediate physical well being of a person without that person's prior explicit consent.
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Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws. Otherwise there wouldn't need to be a special law about it,
Uhm.. laws are laws, some are not more "special" than others, and this most definitely is a data protection law.
and also the original web pages would have to be censored, not just the search results.
Not at all, because this is not the purpose of the law. It is not to remove the information from being available in original sources or for people who for some reason actively want to investigate deeply. It is to avoid that casual searches on your name, that people do all the time, constantly resurfaces old stories that can ruin your life. When applying for a job as a 30-year old your pot possess
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Google is trying to call .com a global only search result, but that is disingenuous and appealing to tech illiterate users
No, google is **correctly** claiming that google.com is a US based search result, and your EU laws can go pound sand.
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And?
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Then feel free to fine your local businesses for whatever law you dream up.
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It isn't just semantics, it means google.fr is subjected to French law, and google.com is subjected to US law (basically, where the respective legal entities have their respective servers).
In that sense, let's try your analogy again. "Walmart France" can't sell guns in France, if it's against the law there. "Walmart US" CAN sell guns to France (in the hypothetical case where US law would allow this, which it doesn't). In that case, if a French citizen ordered a gun by snailmail, it would be fully legal for
Re: US disagrees (Score:5, Informative)
The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws.
I am not a lawyer and I don't understand all the nuances around this but actually, in Europe, this is (apparently) mandated.
*Any* collection of personal information into a database is covered by data protection laws. *Any* european citizen can request a report of all the information held on them (subject to some exclusions that probably wouldn't apply to google) for a capped fee. *Any* citizen can request that incorrect information is corrected (again there are some exceptions where it's only necessary to note that the citizen disputes the item) and *any* citizen can request that any information held on them should be deleted unless it's continuing holding is necessary (for example, billing information for a continuing subscription, necessary regulatory regulations regarding data retention etc)
This is complicated by the fact that the highest European court did give a ruling that some of these regulations don't apply to search engines (a ruling that I approve of). Prior to that ruling it could have been argued that google was breaking the law just by building its search database as it should have obtained explicit permission from each person to collect any information on them at all.
Eventually this will get pushed up to the highest courts in Europe and they will clarify what the current law actually means with regards to search engines.
After that there will probably still be arguments about what is right and wrong but pretty much the only way it will change is if the EU states can get together and agree a European wide change to the law (For this particular type of treaty I don't know if it would be majority or unanimity that would be required.)
It should also be noted that many of the requirements of data protection laws in Europe come from treaty but the individual laws are set at a national level - i.e. the treaty says what must be allowed or prohibited but the individual nations are responsible for writing laws into their books that enforce the treaty. So sometimes a national law might gold plate a european treaty - so the EU courts might find that the French law is legal in EU land but not required or they might find that the French law is illegally overbroad and will have to change or, indeed, they might find that French law is deficient in failing to protect some right.
The British government (of all persuasions) is a great fan of gold plating EU regulations, either in rhetoric when they want to beat on Europe or in law when they want an excuse to pass some new draconian legislation. "Europe made us do it" when what they mean is "Europe required us to change the law but didn't require this law which is a superset of what Europe required"
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Sweden loves doing that as well.
The data retention act originated in Sweden after Tomas Bodström failed to make ground in applying it here.
Then it came from EU, and we implemented it (not that draconically, but still).
Then the EU court decided that it was unlawful.
And yet we still have it and the only party against it in reality is the pirate party (still well below 1%) and the most notable agent against it is Bahnhof, a private ISP with a flair for dramatic stances on personal privacy.
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The censorship practice that is commonly called "right to be forgotten" is not mandated by data protection laws.
This if factually incorrect. The EU issues directives on data protection in the mid 90s. The way the EU works is there is no "federal law", they just have directives that each member state must them implement in their own local laws. So in the UK we have the Data Protection Act which covers the right to be forgotten, and in France they will have their own specific data protection law implementing the directive.
You can think of it kinda like an API for law. The EU defines the API, and then member states writ
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Pretty sure it's a French brand of cigarettes.
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The Muslim theocracies have been pursuing the right to force their ideas of what is and what is not allowable on the Internet for quite some time at the UN. And damn near every country on the planet except for the US is demanding the US turn the governance over to the UN. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is moron. And can someone point out where the "right to be forgotten" is granted in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights? And Google should stop using data to fine tune their advertising and instead
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And Google should stop using data to fine tune their advertising and instead just start charging a nominal fee for each user search. They could stop all this advertising and marketing bother and start making some real money.
The day Google starts directly charging for user searches is the day Yahoo and Bing have wet dreams about. People are too used to not paying for their searches out of their pocket. They prefer to exchange their data, even if they're not aware of it.
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No, No, No! Bing and Yahoo would want their share of the per search revenue as well. The only losers in this scenario are the actual users.
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I disagree with it being censorship - and data protection does have clauses about being able to correct information that is wrong. (Removal being a bit severe but you can't really expect them to rewrite the pages...?)
That's not to say it's not being misused, though.
As a final note, I don't think Iran or China would have been as foolish to try and impose their views on other countries but fear that their opinions on that may have changed.
Censorship is people with guns threatening violence if you say something they don't permit.
Sounds like censorship to me.
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This is just Google breaking the law and trying to frame it as something it's not.
Filing an appeal in court and following legal procedure to challenge a law that you don't agree with does not break the law in any way shape or form. This is just you completely misinterpreting the story in order to justify your Google-hate hard-on.
Re:US disagrees (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it illegal for French people to call somebody abroad and find out the information? Or is it just this new fangled thing called the internet?
Re: US disagrees (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention, as I recall (and memory could be faulty) the original court case that led to this law in the first place - was brought by somebody who was entirely innocent of the bad behavior which was showing up in a google search from a defamation piece false written by a third party. If I recall he was also suing said aleged defamer but I don't know the outcome of that case.
The point is - not everything that is on the net about your is automatically relevant or useful information, much of it may not even have a shred of truth to it. Look at the many cases world wide of people having their credit records ruined because some credit agency confused them with somebody else who just happens to have the same name. We even had a case here in my country where it happened to an airforce intelligence officer. Those guys are literally legally prohibited from ever having bad debts - it would create too much of an incentive for things like bribery andyou seriously do not want high-level military personnel who handle classified data to be easily tempted people. But a credit agency confused him with somebody else, from the opposite end of the country who had the same name and a bunch of bad debts. Took years to clear his record. Cases like that happen all the time.
There are plenty of perfectly legitimate times when what information is available about you could be utterly false. The EU's laws in this regard are addressing a very real problem that seriously impacts on citizens liberty and lives - the only thing wrong about these laws is that they do not have equivalents in EVERY free country like the seriously ought to.
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There are plenty of perfectly legitimate times when what information is available about you could be utterly false. The EU's laws in this regard are addressing a very real problem that seriously impacts on citizens liberty and lives - the only thing wrong about these laws is that they do not have equivalents in EVERY free country like the seriously ought to.
Exactly: the problem being addressed here is very real.
Personally I think Google is going against its own motto (don't be Evil) by purposefully allowing wrong and damaging search results to exist. Knowingly and willingly displaying search results that are wrong (and damaging) *is being Evil*.
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I thought it was some Spanish bloke who'd had is home repossessed.
The test case privacy ruling by the European Union's court of justice against Google Spain was brought by a Spanish man, Mario Costeja González, after he failed to secure the deletion of an auction notice of his repossessed home dating from 1998 on the website of a mass circulation newspaper in Catalonia.
EU court backs 'right to be forgotten': Google must amend results on request [theguardian.com]
It's an incredibly popular thing in Europe at the moment - censoring factual information. See the ludicrous ruling yesterday in the UK upholding a certain famous individual and their paddling pool related sexual antics. Something that is allowed to be published in Scotland (and of course the rest of the world), but not England and Wales. I have no interest in what pe
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So we already have defamation laws, from which the defense is the information is true; and now we need a "I just don't like the information, even if it is true" law to protect from the same sort of defamation?
In before Remember.Me becomes the search engine and old-style directory of information Google has forgotten.
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Google index public information from sites that give it permission to do so, and then publishes a link to that site in response to searches. Your problem with publishing links to published information is... what?
Simple question (Score:1)
It seems like countries are increasingly demanding that corporations follow their laws globally. It's inevitable that we'll increasingly have laws in two countries that are mutually exclusive, but those countries will want their laws followed globally. A corporation doing business in those two countries has no choice but to either leave at least one country or break the law in at least one of the countries. What do you do in that situation?
The "right to be forgotten" involves the removal of personal informa
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
> However, what happens if a French citizen requests they be forgotten by Google while US investigators are looking into that same person on suspicion of terrorism and have a court order demanding preservation of the data?
No problem. There is nothing in the right to be forgotten that requires Google to delete data, it only needs to delete the data PUBLICLY. Remove it from search results, nobody will check if they deleted the entry from the database or just flagged it for "do not display".
It's a ridiculously easy problem to solve.
But it's interesting how your basic assumption begs the question: what the fuck makes you think US investigators have the right to investigate somebody in another country ? He is NOT subject to their authority. Unless he commits a crime IN the US they have no right to be doing that investigation in the first place. If he does, their right ends when he crosses the border and they are supposed to hand the investigation over to Interpol and work with the authorities in the country the person is in now through this interpol. If the person was planning a terrorist attack in another country, then the authority to investigate him lies EXCLUSIVELY with the law enforcement of that country. You bet your ass no sane court would grant a right-to-be-forgotten request if it's opposed by legitimate law enforcement. US investigators do not have the right to investigate non-US citizens who are not currently in the US. We didn't vote for the US government, we get no say in your laws and we are not required to comply with them and your investigators have no right to so much as know our names. We have our OWN investigators thank you very much and we will investigate and prosecute our own criminals.
No country has yet invited the FBI to come investigate their criminals for them and no country is likely to ever do so. Countries do sometimes invite highly successful investigators from other countries (the FBI is frequently one) to come TRAIN their local investigators and bring some of those skills across, but the authority to USE them belongs to the local government. The US government's authority to do anything ends at your own borders and it's high time Americans figure that out.
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But it's interesting how your basic assumption begs the question: what the fuck makes you think US investigators have the right to investigate somebody in another country ? He is NOT subject to their authority. Unless he commits a crime IN the US they have no right to be doing that investigation in the first place.
Of course they do. If they have reason to believe someone abroad has violated US law and did so with a nexus in the US then they are fair game. For example, if someone uses a bank in the US to wire money for illegal purposes then they are subject to US law; even if they never set foot in the US or their bank merely routed the money through a US branch. If a US company or branch of a foreign company based in the US has information of interest to law enforcement, even if the person is not in the US, they are
Re: Simple question (Score:3)
As trainers not active duty. If an FBI agent tries to arrest me in my home country I have every right to use deadly force against him because outside US jurisdiction it is not a legal arrest. It is kidnapping and shooting him is self defense. No sane judge would convict me.
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As trainers not active duty. If an FBI agent tries to arrest me in my home country I have every right to use deadly force against him because outside US jurisdiction it is not a legal arrest. It is kidnapping and shooting him is self defense. No sane judge would convict me.
Actually they take part in investigations as well. You are correct that local law enforcement makes the arrest, although technically a US citizen abroad would fall under their jurisdiction based on US law; but it is impractical to actually arrest them unless they stray onto US territory while abroad.
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I have three problems with this statement.
First of all, Google is complying with the French version of Google (Google.fr) but not the main Google.com. Google.fr serves up automatically if someone from France tries to load Google. So if someone from France goes to the Google.com website, they are purposefully going around the system - poss
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I have three problems with this statement.
All good points. Mine was, which may have not been clear, is countries attempt to apply their laws extra-territorially and the internet makes it a much more complicated scenario given the ability to easily cross borders without leaving physically.
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Ummm... no. Each people in France has the right to see its data DELETED from any company database. This is personal data regulation.
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Simple. You determine the more profitable market, and remove any and all of your assets from the other country. They can try fining your company, but what good is that if all of your assets are out of their legal reach?
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Publishing an algorithm doesn't imply publishing all possibline input to the algorithm. You can publish an algorithm that, say, contains functionality to scan an exclusion list, without ever needing to publish any exclusion list that might exist.
It is not about global - it is about .com (Score:1)
The letter from the authorities to Google that complained about Google not complying with the court order specifically used the example that users in France searching on Google.com instead of Google.fr get a result where the right to be forgotten is not implemented.
Google is trying to call .com a global only search result, but that is disingenuous, both they and all others already do geo-fencing and geo-tailoring on what is served through a "global" .com domain.
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I posted something similar on previous Slashdot stories, I'm not a believer forcing search engines to censor results but the way Google's done this is artificially structured by TLD. If they want to do business in the EU then they should follow their laws when someone in the EU is accessing Google services regardless of TLD.
Call me when the EU starts trying to censor results of people searching from Canada.
Radical idea: My data is NOT google's property (Score:1, Redundant)
The root of this problem is the death of privacy. Especially amusing as the chief killers of personal privacy are most prominently self-proclaimed "conservatives" trying to conserve the profits of large companies. They profit by treating us a mindless sheep following the carrots of our personal interests and even strengths.
If our personal information was OUR property, then we should be entitled to store it where WE want to keep it, even if that was a place that the google could not conveniently copy. The le
Re:Radical idea: My data is NOT google's property (Score:5, Insightful)
Google just links to the information, they don't remove it. Why does none of this responsibility to preserve privacy fall on the shoulders of people who host it in the first place? I'll tell you why, because it's too much of a hassle to go after each of the ones hosting the info, so they go after Google, mainly because it's easier. But the information does not go away, and if people really have an interest about searching about people, alternatives will become available. Especially because technology is constantly improving, how long until every newspaper ever written fits on a single hard disk? This law to censor Google will soon become obsolete but it won't be removed because that would be too much of a hassle as well.
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Google just links to the information, they don't remove it. Why does none of this responsibility to preserve privacy fall on the shoulders of people who host it in the first place? I'll tell you why, because it's too much of a hassle to go after each of the ones hosting the info, so they go after Google, mainly because it's easier. .
No this is not why, you haven't understood the purpose and intent of this law at all. It is specifically *not* to remove the original information, in any way or form. But to address the problem that casual searches on Google will forever re-surface old stories about you that should be left to the obscurity of the original stories and not continue to ruin your life when no longer relevant. You can agree or disagree if this is a good purpose, but at least try to understand the purpose before attacking it with
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"Casual" searches? Is it explicitly mentioned as such, and is a definition given of 'casual'? I highly doubt it. There is no clear line between 'casually' looking it up and 'non-casually' looking it up on google.
So that point doesn't matter, and thus, it amounts to: "to not show the original info". Period. And then we come to your primary assertion: that it's ok since it doesn't remove it, it only doesn't show it, so you can't find it, at least not with a search-engine.
Now... for me, and I think I can make
Re: Radical idea: My data is NOT google's property (Score:1)
Also, those places would include news outlets, which would me a much more obvious hit to freedom of the press. (With Google we can engage in the great doublethink that we aren't censoring the press, we're just making it impossible to find some of the content the press produces.)
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Why does none of this responsibility to preserve privacy fall on the shoulders of people who host it in the first place?
Actually it does. Any business handling personal data has to abide by data protection rules.
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Which tells you that the information covered by the "right to be forgotten" is, in fact, not personal data, because otherwise the original site would have to safeguard it.
Yes, you are.
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Google just links to the information, they don't remove it. Why does none of this responsibility to preserve privacy fall on the shoulders of people who host it in the first place? I'll tell you why, because it's too much of a hassle to go after each of the ones hosting the info, so they go after Google, mainly because it's easier. But the information does not go away, and if people really have an interest about searching about people, alternatives will become available. Especially because technology is constantly improving, how long until every newspaper ever written fits on a single hard disk? This law to censor Google will soon become obsolete but it won't be removed because that would be too much of a hassle as well.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you pointed out it's easier to go after Google. If they tried to force the sources of the information to remove it they would probably wind up in numerous court fights as well as run afoul of press freedom laws making it impractical to take that course. So the "right to be forgotten" becomes the "right to make it harder to find out."
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They also go after google because it's the main source of headaches for people with dated/inaccurate/slanderous information out there about them.
Consider: If you publish a web-site attacking me as the world's biggest jerk, it only really matters if people can find it. It's sort of the same way you can slander someone in the forest and never get sued. Slander is still actionable when spoken in a forest, but since nobody is around to hear it, witness it, and testify in court to the slander, you're pretty much
Re:Radical idea: My data is NOT google's property (Score:4, Informative)
Google doesn't claim "ownership" over information about you; they simply provide a link to information that is already on the web. The search results will disappear as soon as the original pages disappear. If you have a problem with that, you need to take it up with the people who put the information on the web in the first place, not Google.
Secondly, the information that is at issue in "right to be forgotten" cases usually isn't "personal" information, it's public information: legal judgments against you, articles others have written about you, etc. You don't own that information and you shouldn't be able to control it, even according to the EU and proponents of the "right to be forgotten", because they don't force the original publishers of that information to take it down.
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Apparently none of the direct replies to my comment were based on what what I wrote, so I'm ignoring them, but I feel like I should agree with the person who commented on targeting google as the publicity agent for bad information. My point was the bad information should be the target, not google, even though google is doing plenty of EVIL stuff these days.
As regards google not having direct 'ownership' of the personal data, that person apparently doesn't know how google works and also ignores the question
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Wrong question. The question is, will anyone know you have these logs. If the answer is "no", it doesn't matter.
That'll just lead to laws prohibiting data-export (Score:1)
The consequence of this will probably be that european countries will prohibit exporting data which might fall under its privacy laws, as it won't be able to enforce those laws on data outside its territory. I'd also be somewhat amused if they'd have the idea to "license" the data and revoke the license if the data is used in a way contradicting local laws (i.e. "you don't own the data you gather in this country, we just grant you a license to use it under certain conditions for a potentially limited amount
Open letter (Score:1)
Dear Google,
How about you stop hiding behind the laws and your highly paid lawyers and actually do something that's right for a change?
You know, 'Do no evil'. Yes it was always a bullshit slogan, and you've been doing evil ever since the beginning, but here's your chance to stop acting like a complete asshole and recognise when you've gone to far, whether or not the letter of the law in your favourite jurisdiction says otherwise.
So, Google, how about you clean up your act, and be the good guys for a change?
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It was never Google's slogan. They had "don't be evil" as an unofficial slogan, but that's subtly different.
Re:Open letter (Score:5, Insightful)
What are they doing wrong? They're obeying a local law. France wants its laws to apply outside of their borders. Imagine their reaction if Saudi Arabia demanded that they repeal their ban on face covering in public places.
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One can argue that the very fact that when you type google.com into the browser you're automagically redirected to google.fr is actually doing exactly what France wants it too. Otherwise it better start closing it's borders and locking down the grey market lines too. After all here's an example of a company doing everything possible to comply with local laws by producing a personalised product for that country.
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One can argue that the very fact that when you type google.com into the browser you're automagically redirected to google.fr is actually doing exactly what France wants it too. Otherwise it better start closing it's borders and locking down the grey market lines too. After all here's an example of a company doing everything possible to comply with local laws by producing a personalised product for that country.
It's a first visit soft redirect, if you go to Google.com anyway that will stay your new default, and is also serving results personalized for your country, with local ads sold by local Google office. It is a product Google is delivering and selling in France, and then has to follow French law too.
To follow the law Google would just have to geo-target the right to be forgotten on search results served within EU regardless of what domain the EU user is going to (as they already do with the search results
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Hardly. Why would we hold Google accountable but not any other physical business? There's nothing stopping someone buying something online that is illegal for sale in their home country, but not illegal in the sellers country, and no one breaks a law as a result. Oh wait there is something. It's called customs.
Google doesn't need to geofence. They've made a good faith effort to serve local content from local servers on local domains in the local language. The fact that people circumvent this is not Google's
So the moment a tech company has to obey EU laws (Score:3)
...it becomes an American company again?
I sure wish they took the same view come tax time.
EU is making laws for Google, not for other countries. If you want to keep operating there, play by their rules.
Re: (Score:2)
Play by who's rules where? Companies like Google dodge tax all over the world equally, that doesn't magically mean they need to obey only the laws of the country in which they pay tax.
EU is making laws for Google, not for other countries. If you want to keep operating there, play by their rules.
EU is making laws full stop. What laws the EU makes should have no effect on an American company doing business in Australia for example.
Google's reasoning makes no sense. (Score:3)
The law is NOT being enforced externally at all. Nobody on the ECJ is going to give Google any grief if they ignore a request by me to be forgotten - I'm not a European citizen and my country does not have such a right.
But Google has to comply with the laws of the countries it operates in, in so far as it concerns data about people from those countries. By Google's reasoning, if you kidnap somebody and take them to a country where kidnapping is legal - you cannot be prosecuted ? Their right not to be kidnapped dissappeared after you took them to a country that doesn't recognize it ? Of course not. They are still citizens from a country where that is a right - and their government still has a duty to protect that right, even if they are not currently within it's borders.
I see no reasonable reason why a person's data should be any different.
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The law is NOT being enforced externally at all.
Sure it does. The right to be forgotten is done and dusted in European countries. Anyone from Europe who goes to www.google.com will be redirected to their own site like www.google.fr and be given search results that comply with the local laws.
Now why should that same law apply to someone who gets redirected to www.google.com.au? It's not like the Australians have a right to be forgotten, or the country where Google is headquartered.
Incidentally your criminal example is part right. People are obliged to obe
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Anyone from Europe who goes to www.google.com will be redirected to their own site like www.google.fr and be given search results that comply with the local laws.
Now why should that same law apply to someone who gets redirected to www.google.com.au?
To play the devil's advocate:
A child walks into a bar somewhere in the U.S.A. The bartender refuses to sell her alcohol, because she's clearly underage. The child walks to the other end of the bar, which has an Australian flag and promotes Fosters. The bartender there is happy to serve her, because clearly she's no longer subject to the local laws? The kid is still in the same country. Everybody knows it, nobody is fooled because she's standing under a different flag.
So it is with internet traffic, unless y
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The Australian flag doesn't mean local laws don't apply, and your example breaks down because a domain name is not all that's separate. Google provides local hosting with local data, local results from local domains.
To help your contrived example:
A child walks into a bar to buy a beer but is refused because they are underage. So they go home and mail order a beer from a country where it's not illegal to sell alcohol to a minor. Now who's in trouble? The company which was complying with all it's local laws i
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You are completely correct.
Some people use any contrived analogy just to try to make a point, but it's obvious that backfires most of the times.
"A flag on the other side of the bar" does not mean you're in another country. It's implied that it is (otherwise the flag-mentioning has no value whatsoever), yet it is then as much implied that there is no different jurisdiction, since it's 'the same bar'.
But one can't have it both ways.
If the bar-side with the other flag *REALLY* fell under another jurisdiction w
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Whether it's trivial and easy or not is not the point. It's the principle of the matter that counts.
Take the parent posters' example of a country which had a stupid law that said women faces cant be shown online. Now imagine there is a program that can do that automatically, in a very, very cheap and easy way.
Would that change in anything the essence of the issue here?
It's not whether it's trivial or easy or not, it's whether another country has the right to demand that its laws are being followed by a comp
But America loves the EU? (Score:2)
Unfirst post (Score:4, Funny)
I demand that this failure to get first post be forgotten.
Re: (Score:3)
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http://imgur.com/3Gpey [imgur.com]
Wouldn't that undermine any IP or espionage laws (Score:1)
If Alphabet wins.. they are saying that "information" taken from one nation and stored in another deserves no protection once outside it's boarders.
Assange couldn't be prosecuted if this prevails (yes, I know that it's only a secret grand jury at the moment) because https://wikileaks.com/ [wikileaks.com] is physically outside of the US and US laws don't apply? In that case wikileaks would only need to install a region filter to demonstrate "token" compliance. Now, if he was somehow kidnapped and found himself on US s
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The protection information receives outside its borders is determined by jurisdiction and international agreements. There are agreements on copyrights and extradition. There is no general law or principle about "protection of information". Furthermore, Google search results don't "take information", they merely link to a source in whatever country the informatio
Slashdot Google (Score:2)
Almost half of the items in my /. feed are related to Google. That's a bit much.
Serious question (Score:1)
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Always claiming other opinions are equal to Trump-style-debating is a bit too easy, and a form of mental laziness of your part as well - as Trump would do it. ;-)
The *intent* of the law doesn't matter. Whether it is 'well-intended' or not does not matter. Why do you not get that? Apart from the fact that the highway to hell is paved with good intentions, the essence of the matter is, that one country can not demand compliance of its laws outside its jurisdiction.
Now, it might be, like you always claim, that
Right to be forgotten.... (Score:3)
The biggest problem with censorship is that at its fundamental level, it is an attempt to control what people will know or believe, (since what information they are being allowed to access in the first place is controlled), and is an attempt to try and legislate what kinds of things people are even allowed to *THINK* about.
Nobody, no agency, no authority, no government, absolutely no power absolutely anywhere has any right to decide what any other human being should be allowed to think. Period.
While it certainly may suck if somebody makes an unfair decision about you because you did something spectacularly stupid or wrong a long time ago when that person is too narrow minded to consider how much time has actually elapsed since it occurred, but in the end that decision is still on them. Unfair shit happens to everybody in this world... heck, half of the people in this world are starving to death, and somebody living in a privileged nation thinks its unfair that an employer won't hire them because of some stupid shit that went down over a decade ago? It doesn't fucking matter whose fault it is when bad stuff happens to any us, it is still that person's individual responsibility to deal with it... and to continue to be the best person that they know how to be, and blaming past mistakes or blaming the fact that other people might not forgive us for them to justify why we aren't being better is just acting like a fucking crybaby. People who do so need to grow the hell up, act like adults, and and take responsibility for their OWN lives in the here and the now, instead of letting what people might believe about them dictate what choices they make.
(huff, puff, huff, puff, huff, puff.. Well, that turned into more of a rant than I first thought it would).
Ummmm, no. (Score:2)
We didn't whip the ass of dictatorship to let anything but the first amendment set the rules of the digital high seas, any more than we let local thugs send out pirate ships to international waters to harass trade there.
From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Normandeeeeeeee
We will fight our country's battles
On the land or in the tubes!
Change the name! (Score:2)
"The right to be forgotten" desperately needs a name change, since what it technically means is so radically different from what it plainly says or describes through its words. Its advocates should start calling it the "right to not be mentioned" or something like that, so that people can clearly see that it's merely about limiting speech rather than thought.
French logic (Score:3)
France doesn't have jurisdiction over Google in the US; all they have jurisdiction over is Google's French subsidiary.
So, in effect, France is trying to fine Google France for actions committed by the owner of Google France outside of France. If France wants to set that precedent, they are welcome to it; I suspect it will strongly discourage future investment in France and French companies.
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That sort of belief in autarky used to be somewhat menacing when France was still a world power; these days, it's merely comical and pathetic.
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Nevertheless, France is in the wrong here, nd google is right to not abide by by it. As for the rational reasons why; I've placed them on my pots above.
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In European history, a belief in autarky isn't about "being left alone", it's about nationalism, expansionism, and militarism.
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But he ain't wrong. That's just the point.
Well, at least, he ain't wrong if his stance is google.com (which is a legal entity based in the US, with its servers on US-soil) does not have to abide by French law. Google.fr IS complying with French law.
Chauvinism aside, it's clear they do not have jurisdiction over google.com. So demanding it would comply to French law is nonsensical. Set that precedent, and other countries would follow, EVEN towards the EU. It would be crazy trying to abide by all laws of any
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Sigh. It's the fifth time I see you write this.
Why do you not understand that it being 'easy' to geotag it or not, is NOT the issue at all? Whether they do it with their adds or not has NOTHING to do with them being obliged to abide by another countries' law. Google...google.com, that is... should NOT just geo-target it. Not because it would be hard or easy, nor because they already voluntarily do this with ads or not, but because they DO NOT FALL under EU law. They aren't geo-tagging adds because they are
Re: "One nation does not make laws for another" ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. Italy routinely makes laws that are meant to be valid all throughout the universe. They just lack the firepower to enforce them.
Re: "One nation does not make laws for another" ?? (Score:1)
Screw you, troll. This doesn't involve US laws. It involves a multinational company headquartered in the US that's not following EU laws. Lots of countries try to extend their laws beyond their borders, and in some cases it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. The new EU data protection directive is much more aggressive in extending the rules beyond EU borders.
Let's say a US citizen travels to Canada and is injured from staying at a hotel in Canada. Because it's a multinational hotel chain with a presence in
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>Are corporations so big they can play off one jurisdiction against another to do whatever they want?
Yes. A great many of them are. Which effectively makes them entirely lawless organisations - and that's exactly why corporations can be far more dangerous than governments. Governments all have to answer to somebody, even the dictators end up answering to other governments (too much bad press and you end up with UN soldiers showing up to "relieve you of duty"). Corporations only answer to shareholders - n