Google Wins Fight To Restrict Right-To-Be-Forgotten Ruling To EU Search Engines (venturebeat.com) 66
Google has won a long-standing battle with the European Union (EU), after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled the company can limit the scope of the "right-to-be-forgotten" (RTBF) regulation to searches made within the EU. From a report: Today's announcement was largely expected, given that an adviser to the EU's top court backed Google's case in January. (ECJ judges typically follow the advice given by the advocate general.) But now it's official, meaning Google and others will only have to delist search results from search engines inside the EU's perimeters. "The Court concludes that, currently, there is no obligation under EU law for a search engine operator who grants a request for de-referencing made by a data subject, as the case may be, following an injunction from a supervisory or judicial authority of a Member State, to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine,â the ECJ said in a press release.
So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree. Forgetting means it's deleted from memory. But to be honest, GDPR should trump the RTBF law now anyway.
Re: So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:3)
They cover different pieces of data. GDPR covers data generated by you. RTBF covers data generated by others about you, such as a newspaper article.
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None of this tramples the US First Amendment, in the US, or in international cyberspace, the open seas that will have a Pax Americana there, too.
Trying to hurt US corporations because they won't censor outside your domain? Expect a major pushback with bone breaking levels of arm twisting.
Censorship is to be contained.
Re:So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:4, Interesting)
"In a typical European style this is a law converted to be the exact opposite of what it was meant to be."
This law is precisely what it was meant to be, but the people weren't told what it was meant to do.
It was always impossible to force everyone to forget things that happened. And the only people who have any hope of actually hiding their deeds are those who can spend the most money having results hidden, because you have to go to court if there is a dispute over compliance. So this law was absolutely, positively, certainly and in all other ways never meant to actually change the historical record, or to help average citizens to get past their mistakes. It has two purposes: to help government manipulate discourse in real time by reducing citizen access to useful information, and secondly as a club with which to beat Google. Europe doesn't like America having such a level of control over the internet which we invented and managed and built and fostered, and lacks the wherewithal to make their own internet, with or without blackjack and hookers.
Bunch of deceptive, dick-riding, do-nothing dimwits.
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What do you mean by "internet": intercomputer communication or "www"? Because the latter was invented in Europe.
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What do you mean by "internet": intercomputer communication or "www"? Because the latter was invented in Europe.
I mean the internet. You know, the internet. The internet? Yeah, the internet.
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... You know ...
they say speech is silver and silence is gold
google intentionally do it that way. Not EU. (Score:2)
Re: google intentionally do it that way. Not EU. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thumbing its nose? How about the EU is trying to impose international law in countries where it has no authority.
Re: google intentionally do it that way. Not EU. (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything should win in the international arena, it is the First Amendment.
Europe has living memory of living under tyrants -- from Hitler to the Soviet Union, to their own dictators in several cases. This is not ancient history.
The only safe policy is to blanket deny as many tools of tyranny to government as possible. History gives no succor to the idea it can be safely wielded in the long term by democracies.
Re: Keep EU Great. (Score:2)
Citation needed. I'm not aware of Donald Trump actually doing anything to circumvent the first amendment. It's other amendments he tries to ignore. The only first amendment related crap is trying to enforce NDAs which generally doesn't run afoul of the first amendment. It's possible that NDAs he's had his White House staffers sign are unenforceable because of the first amendment, but he hasn't really done anything about people breaking them.
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I'm not aware of Donald Trump actually doing anything to circumvent the first amendment.
Describing the news media as the "enemy of the state" (which actually means something) and having press passes revoked for reporters whose questions he doesn't like are attacks on free speech.
Re: Keep EU Great. (Score:2)
Speech is never really an attack on free speech. It takes action. Speech can at most demonstrate one's distaste for free speech. Which is your right when you have free speech.
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Meanwhile they're marching into a new form of tyranny under the rule of Brussels. Concentrated power has always been a bad idea and will always be a bad idea.
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The US stays as innovative as it was for decades.
EU nations can keep up with their internet laws, censorship and taxes.
Calling tax and censorship "privacy"
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I feel like that is literally what forgotten means, and that storing the data on servers outside the EU is yet another end-run around this law.
Re:So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like that is literally what forgotten means, and that storing the data on servers outside the EU is yet another end-run around this law.
Hardly. The EU ha no jurisdiction outside theEU, absent a treaty agreement, so preventing EU search engines from accessing the data is compliant and all that is to be expected. That someone can access it using a VPN and non-EU search engine is not an end run but simply how laws work. The EU would no more want the US to be able to force EU companies to comply with EU law outside the US ( although they certainly do try) or for that matter for any other country to dictate why an EU company can do outside of that country’s jurisdiction.
Re: So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:4, Funny)
France seems to believe that Google needs to somehow prevent every French citizen from being able to see content banned in France no matter where they are in the world. Perhaps France should just ban the internet and force itself and the rest of the EU to go back to minitel so that France can completely govern what all of the EU sees, restoring French pride in the process.
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I feel like that is literally what forgotten means, and that storing the data on servers outside the EU is yet another end-run around this law.
You could split hairs all day about what it literally means in this case. I forget stuff all the time that's theoretically in there somewhere. I could probably get it back out by thinking hard enough, or maybe with hypnosis or something (I've never tried that.) But if I can't remember it when I want it, I've effectively forgotten it.
The goal of the law is to make it easier to hide misdeeds from one's peers or other interested parties, and that goal is achieved pretty well by preventing it from coming up on
Re:So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
> They should delete the data about European citizens
> upon request, not stop telling they have it.
Well, then Google should have been left out this fight entirely. If some article or site's content is libelous or defamatory, it should be taken down at the SOURCE. Leave Google and any other search engine out of it. Once the data is removed at the source, the next time Google (or any other search engine) spiders the site, it will drop out of the index organically, problem solved. Attacking Google instead of the original publishers reeks of looking for the deepest pockets or simple-minded xenophobia.
And, as others have mentioned, nations (ALL nations... I know the US is fond of doing so. But the EU in general, and France in particular, are pretty egregious offenders too.) need to STOP exporting their laws outside their borders. Even if it is determined that the "right to be forgotten" legitimately applies to Google (and not the source articles/sites) in France, that should only ever affect what French people can see on google.fr. It should never have any effect whatsoever on what *I* can find on google.com.
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If some article or site's content is libelous or defamatory, it should be taken down at the SOURCE.
No, this isn't even about libelous or defamatory content, that's illegal. This is about content which is factual but inconvenient. This law is literally specifically to help people hide the things they actually have done.
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I think you misunderstood what happened.
The RTBF allows individuals to request that data relating to them that is no longer relevant or inaccurate be removed.
One common use case is where people are mentioned in relation to a crime and then cleared. They don't want prospective employers to see that link and then reject them before reading the follow-up article about them being cleared on page 8 of the search results.
It doesn't mean that the newspaper has to take that article off their web site, or that Googl
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think the way the law is implemented exactly how it was intended. The impetus behind the law was that people would do something they wish they hadn't and it would be documented, in some way, online. That thing would then come up as the top result in searches about those people and, as such, it could follow them around for the rest of their life. The intent of the law was to create a situation that was more similar to the world before the internet. Back then, you could do something stupid and the peopl
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It's only ever applied to searches. The right to be forgotten is misunderstood. The data is never deleted - just the pointers, and only just in certain cases.
Let's say you did something bad
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Yes.
And it would be unfair to the employer otherwise.
(And 10 years isn't ages ago)
Re: So you're not forgotten at all? (Score:1)
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In a typical European style this is a law converted to be the exact opposite of what it was meant to be.
In a typical outsider style you think European law is made up of soundbites and newspaper headlines. I bet you don't even know the actual name of the directive being discussed.
Also you seem to be confusing the right to erasure with what is being discussed in this article which are two completely different parts of the same directive. And yes you have the right for Google to erase your personal data, guess what, a search result is not personal data unless you are in fact hosting your own website that you no
Nationalism ruining the Internet. (Score:1)
Followed by corporatism/fascism, globalism/totalinarianism, religous fundamentalism/schizophrenia and SJW/p.c. terrorism. (Unordered list.)
They should be thrown out and go back to something like AOL, where they belong.
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Re:Can't have that (Score:4, Insightful)
You're argument doesn't make sense. That's not what they did. They are trying to limit the scope of judgements to the jurisdiction of that judgement.
Does the EU's right to be forgotten trump for instance Maryland's right to know (you can look up the criminal record of anyone, the property records, etc.), inside of Maryland?
Re:Can't have that (Score:4)
Does the EU's right to be forgotten trump for instance Maryland's right to know (you can look up the criminal record of anyone, the property records, etc.), inside of Maryland?
No, its fairly straightforward, even with your Maryland example. You are free to lookup the criminal record of anyone that is a citizen of Maryland when you are in Maryland. Maryland's law doesn't force the state of Alabama make its criminal records open to the residents of the state of Maryland. Even if you are a citizen of Maryland in the boarders of Alabama, it still doesn't force the state to open those records to you. The laws of Maryland apply within the boarders of Maryland.
The same applies to the EU. Data on EU citizens that is on Google servers that reside in EU are subject to EU laws. Of course this only works if EU data is not allowed to be taken outside of the EU. Google doesn't get the right to relocate EU data because it doesn't like the laws. The only exemption to this should be where a EU citizen has given data to a entity outside the EU. That citizen at a later time has no right to demand a foreign company remove that data simply because of a EU law.
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Of course this only works if EU data is not allowed to be taken outside of the EU. Google doesn't get the right to relocate EU data because it doesn't like the laws. The only exemption to this should be where a EU citizen has given data to a entity outside the EU.
I would think most kinds of information people want forgotten was written by third parties in the media or other legal sources; unless it was illegal to publish in the first place I doubt you got any recourse if an American on US hosting decides to quote it to make sure it stays remembered. US courts will just say first amendment, fair use so bug off. The GDPR may be pretty far reaching but it's doesn't generally stop non-EU citizens from writing about EU citizens.
Re:Can't have that (Score:4)
Well this very reason is pretty much why this law is useless for that purpose. Unless the EU wants to go to the effort to filter that data at the entry ports. Much like China does. Once the data gets outside or is generated outside, any country is free to tell the EU to go pound sand.
I actually like the right to be forgotten. I think we could use a better crafted version of that law in the US. But its not the USA job to enforce EU laws. And the EU doesn't get to enforce its laws in the USA.
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You know what's even worse than Google having to bend the knee here? Having Google able to run around the world going "lalalala fuck all y'all" when it comes to doing business in a country and not obeying its laws.
Google is obeying the laws. Google is just arguing that EU laws can't direct what Google does outside of the EU, which is entirely reasonable.
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I agree that that is a totally reasonable argument to make. The argument on the other side is that a multinational company that obeys the laws of a nation has to apply those laws across all its divisions. That is, it can't have a small stub in a nation that obeys its laws, while the rest of the company flouts those laws. I see the logic behind it, though I think it's an idea that would be particularly bad for companies that operate in multiple countries. We've long had the concern on the Internet of who cho
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Are you suggesting the EU should have the power to say how google should work in Japan or Australia?
"Right to be forgotten" supporters frame it as a human right, where that particular right is something everyone should have regardless of the location or laws of the country.
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Well at least we can know about medical errors now (Score:2)
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Fucking medical goons need to be exposed.
Jurisdiction (Score:2)
This seems to be a straightforward jurisdictional issue. The EU can regulate activity within its own borders, but can't regulate outside of there, nor can they reduce the global network to the lowest common denominator of their regulatory scheme. They are free to mandate filtering by their domestic ISPs such that services outside their borders are blocked, but can't directly regulate what happens in a server hosted, say, in the US or Canada.
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EU nations are free to tax, censor and make their demands to control the internet "international".
I don't like this (Score:2)
It opens a precedent for dumbing some people down in Europe. A tech-literate will make searches on the .com version, using a VPN, etc... while the common folk will not have access to the same directory of information, and thus not have access to the same information. It's not very different, from say, China, or NK.
While I understand Google's defence, I do not feel the consequences are worth it for a company that wants to "not be evil"
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It opens a precedent for dumbing some people down in Europe. A tech-literate will make searches on the .com version, using a VPN, etc... while the common folk will not have access to the same directory of information, and thus not have access to the same information. It's not very different, from say, China, or NK.
While I understand Google's defence, I do not feel the consequences are worth it for a company that wants to "not be evil"
They dropped the 'don't be evil' part from their code of conduct last year, now it's 'do the right thing'.
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It opens a precedent for dumbing some people down in Europe. ... It's not very different, from say, China, or NK.
Yes, stupidity is universal across cultures. Stupid people in one place do much of the same dumb shit as stupid people in another place.
While I understand Google's defence, I do not feel the consequences are worth it for a company that wants to "not be evil"
Their legislature needs to write laws that aren't broken. Basically what we learned today is that practically speaking, no single nation has the legal jurisdiction to control the Internet. The solution is to either accept that the Internet and tech giants will operate laissez-faire in a wild west of data privacy abuse, or we have to form a new world government.
Such a govern
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no need to be such a drama queen
google does business in the EU as do the other major search engines and can be brought to heel if will is there
one world government isn't happening, ever
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google does business in the EU as do the other major search engines and can be brought to heel if will is there
Did you even RTFA?
one world government isn't happening, ever
and I agree. the flip side is there will be no practical way to regulate cyberspace either.
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Any solution to try to solve this problem is ultim
Right to be forgotten = historical revisionism (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, it is trying to legislate what people are permitted to think, by censoring knowledge of specific historical facts, rather arbitrarily decided by some body to no longer be relevant to the current climate. Rather than allowing society the right to forgive a mistake, it creates an alternative history wherein society never knew that the mistake had happened.
Should how a factual account happens to perhaps make someone feel persecuted for their past really be an excuse to surpress it?
Hey EU, when can I... (Score:2)
Frankly I'm way more concerned about that than fucking google who just want to tailor ads to me
Headline is inverted (Score:2)
Government doesn't give you rights. Rights are something you inherently have. Government is allowed to encroach on some rights in certain cases, but it never gives you rights. Some of the authors of the U.S. Constitution didn't want to include the Bill of Rights for this reason - they were worried
Privacy is good, but RtbF goes a bit far (Score:4, Interesting)
The GDPR is a huge win for the individual. The "right to be forgotten" was stretched beyond all reason from its very conception. Factual data in the public record should be searchable.
The original case driving the RtbF was a businessman who once went bankrupt, iirc 15 years prior to the case. His bankruptcy was part of the public record of the time - it was in local newspapers, etc.. It still is, it's just not findable in Google. I have some sympathy for the guy, because it was long ago. OTOH almost anyone should have enough online activity to make 15 year old stuff drop off the first pages of search results. Otherwise, maybe that bankruptcy was still one of the important things to know about him. It certainly a potentially relevant fact, even tempered by time.
There are a couple of places where RtbF is important. Social media, for example, where facts are essentially irrelevant. People who have been exonerated of a crime - funny how the media will blast their names all over the place when they are accused, but list the exoneration as a footnote on some page no one ever reads.
Regardless, this decision allows people to (at least potentially) get around RtbF by using a VPN or a proxy. It takes that bit more effort, which will prevent 99% of people from doing it. We can hope that the remaining 1% are the ones savvy enough to understand the context of the information they find.
Great post! (Score:1)