EU Court: Facebook Can Be Forced To Remove Content Worldwide (apnews.com) 173
New submitter sysrammer writes: "The European Union's highest court ruled Thursday that individual member countries can force Facebook to remove what they regard as unlawful material from the social network all over the world -- a decision experts say could hinder free speech online and put a heavy burden on tech companies," reports The Associated Press. "The ruling essentially allows one country or region to decide what Internet users around the world can say and what information they can access," said CCIA Europe senior manager Victoria de Posson. "What might be considered defamatory comments about someone in one country will likely be considered constitutional free speech in another. Few hosting platforms, especially startups, will have the resources to implement elaborate monitoring systems." Another turn of the screw in the interaction between privacy and free speech.
Sweet! (Score:2)
Now Canada can do the same and FB can go the way of MySpace and Friendster!
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I know!
See, I think people in the States don't get that Canadians never bought into this whole "sell your privacy to multinational corporations to privatize it" thing.
Re: Sweet! (Score:2)
Do Canadians get that if you don't have a right to fail then you don't have a right to succeeded in any new ways?
I mean, surely some so, but why do so many top Canadians move to the US anyway?
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Do Canadians get that if you don't have a right to fail then you don't have a right to succeeded in any new ways?
I mean, surely some so, but why do so many top Canadians move to the US anyway?
So we can afford to buy houses in Vancouver when we retire in Canada and collect our CPP OAS, natch.
Re: Sweet! (Score:3)
Re: Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, surely some so, but why do so many top Canadians move to the US anyway?
That's easy to explain: if you are good enough to get a top job in a country with ten times the population the rewards are going to be significantly greater. The question you should be asking though is why are so many Canadians, instead of Americans, getting your top jobs?
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Because we don't discriminate on the basis of nationality, like so many countries
Are you going for +5 funny?
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Oh, come now!
Canada's pride and joy PM Justin Trudeau has never hesitated to dress up as and mock ANY other ethnic group or nationality!
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They're open to every legal resident.
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Now Canada can do the same and FB can go the way of MySpace and Friendster!
And anything else the EU decides shouldn't be on the internet. Your joy will be short lived.
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Now Canada can do the same and FB can go the way of MySpace and Friendster!
Sure. Btw, it was Austria that decided to ask for the deletion. Not the EU. Summary is wrong. Austria still need to figure out how to actually do it. All EU said was: No illegal under our rules.
Is it 1984 already? (Score:5, Insightful)
EU citizens' taste for erasure of the past is terrifying. And here you thought that Facebook was Big Brother.
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It's the same as US companies. If they decide something must be taken down then it goes down world wide, not just in the US.
Anyway, our right to privacy trumps your right to know. You can't come and open my curtains just because you want to see what's in my house.
Re:Is it 1984 already? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same EU court ruled last month that the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” rules do not apply outside the 28-nation bloc.
So censorship applies worldwide, while the right to be forgotten - a silly but arguably privacy-related law - does not. These judges have lost their minds. And indeed they seem to forget that if they get to censor the internet worldwide, so do the US. And China, and Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
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Even weirder
The devil is probably in the details specifically on the content, the company's handling of it, the company's storage of it.
e.g. Google openly already provides and stores different content in different geographical areas. If Facebook's argument was to the contrary then it stands to reason that the only option is left to delete from the only source.
The key part from last month's story that people didn't realise is that the EU data privacy law allows for demanding the deletion of the data source. The reason t
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This has absolutely nothing to do with privacy. This case is about a politician demanding the worldwide removal of an opinion piece. Even weirder:
The same EU court ruled last month that the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” rules do not apply outside the 28-nation bloc.
So censorship applies worldwide, while the right to be forgotten - a silly but arguably privacy-related law - does not. These judges have lost their minds. And indeed they seem to forget that if they get to censor the internet worldwide, so do the US. And China, and Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
The judges here only rules on whether local laws violate EU rules. The EU doesn't have that many rules that supercede local rules, so they will usually allow local laws to go ahead. The "right to be forgotten" was a Spanish law. This is an Austrian law. It still remains to be seen if Austria can actually force the deletion. They don't have the EU behind them on this, the EU only said: "This is not against the limited things the EU can override state laws on".
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This case is about a politician demanding the worldwide removal of an opinion piece. Even weirder:
Nope: it was insulting and a liebel case. Big difference.
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"Insulting" is a matter of opinion... not to mention that many true things are "insulting".
The Facebook post in question claimed that Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek was a "lousy traitor", a "corrupt bumpkin", and a member of a "fascist party". These are the specific claims that EGP is claiming are defamatory.
In rational country, these sorts of comments are recognized as opinions, and not removed from the protections of free speech. The EU charter specifically protects this sort of speech: "Everyone has the righ
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Re: Is it 1984 already? (Score:2)
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The things that the US is taking down via the courts are almost exclusively "stolen" items or links to "stolen" items protected by copyright law. I'd say exclusively instead of almost exclusively, but there are probably a few edge case examples. The reason other countries take these down is because they have agreed, via treaty or trade agreement, to do so. Frankly, I don't like those agreements and believe they were largely coerced via US economic hegemony, but it's those agreements that give the force o
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That would be more to do with their role as a hosting company by default.
Remove in the USA and the content is gone.
The EU wants its law to be enforced and taken seriously globally.
Thats the EU legal difference.
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Everybody is opening their own curtains. Then they complain when people look inside, like people moving next to the airport and complaining about the noise. Try using one way glass :-)
This is a good ruling in that another way of circumventing such idiocy will be developed more quickly. It's a boost for better P2P technology, and hopefully ad hoc networking.
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It's the same as US companies. If they decide something must be taken down then it goes down world wide, not just in the US.
Anyway, our right to privacy trumps your right to know. You can't come and open my curtains just because you want to see what's in my house.
There was always on person in the neiborhood that was a cranky old man, railing on and on because of those kids on his lawn, screaming and yelling because things just didn't suit.
And all the kids in the neighborhood had great fun doing exactly what he didn't want them to do - it was completely counterproductive - he caused his own problems, and he deserved it.
So anyhow - what are you planning on doing?
There will be plenty of folks who will be overjoyed at publishing forbidden things that the preciou
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Really? What US law says that everything that US companies want to be taken down must be taken down worldwide? None. You are a jerk.
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If it's a US company then it has to comply with US law and take it down.. If it's still hosting the content but only making it available to non-us viewers then its still hosting the content and therefore not complying with the law. Even if the servers on which its hosted are located outside the us, if they are owned/controlled by a us company then they are subject to us law.
Re: Is it 1984 already? (Score:2)
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You give up your right to privacy when you do or post things in public. You've made the agreement with Facebook, live by it.
The problem with GDPR and the EU as a whole is that nobody outside the EU gives a crap what the EU thinks, so they can go down in a blaze of glory while impoverishing their subjects.
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Not some EU laws on content and publication in the EU
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The laws regarding free speech and freedeom of the press are more or less the same in the EU as in the USA.
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> "The ruling essentially allows one country or region to decide what Internet users around the world can say and what information they can access,"
Funny how it's all fine and dandy when the US declares jurisdiction over the entire planet, but not when someone else does the same thing. You reap what you sow.
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Resurrecting 1930s book burnings ... (Score:2)
EU citizens' taste for erasure of the past is terrifying. And here you thought that Facebook was Big Brother.
They are not erasing all of the past. They are actually resurrecting some of the past. In particular the 1930s book burnings.
And here we thought the EU was only resurrecting the fascist dream of a single European economic zone, turns out they were also resurrecting the ideological purity of, and state control, of information, another dream of the fascists.
In the wonderfully historic and insightful books (very short), "D-Day Though German Eyes", former German soldiers who fought at Normandy were interv
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No good can come from complete government control of all information.
The government has no control over the information. The relevant citizens have, and they need to court and get a ruling supporting their view. There is no government agency running around and restricting what you can write or deleting it on their own.
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CCIA is an American association. I think it is disrespectful for US associations to mingle and talk down on EU affairs.
If you want to operate a service in the EU you have to comply with our laws.
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EU citizens' taste
Hmmm didn't realise the EU court was the will of citizens. Thanks for enlightening me.
Stupid American.
And China (Score:5, Insightful)
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Take it a step further: Saudi Arabia demanding that the depiction of unveiled women has to stop.
Who cares about Tibet or Tianamen, they're coming for your porn!
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The judgement only says that they have to globally take down anything which breaches internationally agreed law; so it's pretty limited in actual fact. China would not get anywhere with such a request.
Re:And China (Score:5, Insightful)
A big difference: all countries in the EU are full fledged democracies, who follow the rule of law and rank high on the human freedom index.
Correction, the EU government that did not attempt to delete content globally ranked high on the human freedom index. Also while the member states are full fledged democracies the EU government itself is not so much, hence the feared break up of the EU over discontent regarding an EU government out of touch with EU citizens.
China is neither.
And the EU government is moving towards that position, away from the democracy of various member states.
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The EU government is a democratgic elected gremium, just like the EU parliament.
Or just like the cabinet in your country is by proxy selected by the head of state,
We would not have so much trouble if they had picked more sane names for the EU commites, The "European Commission" is nothing else than a cabinet with ministers or secretaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"And so you know, the EU Parliament IS democratically elected and is the only body of law in the EU, all goes through the directly ELECTED parliament."
No. The EU parliament is a more or less powerless rubber-stamping group. The law comes from the commission, who are not elected. And when things get tough, the commission will happily replace the democratically elected governments of the countries in the EU.
The EU has no democratic legitimacy of any kind; it is actively anti-democratic, ousting governments, k
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The EU has no democratic legitimacy of any kind; You are wrong.
The parliament is elected by the citizens.
The citizens of each country elect theier own parliament.
The parliament or the citizens, depending on country, elect the ruler.
The ruler decides who goes into the EU comission, plain and simple.
Everything: democratic. Idiot.
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A big difference: all countries in the EU are full fledged democracies, who follow the rule of law and rank high on the human freedom index.
No country in the EU is a democracy. The European Commission rules all with an iron fist.
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Here's the thing though, the judicial and legislative histories in the EU demonstrate that the member countries have little regard for free speech. Frankly, when it comes to the topic, the EU is the child with the knife - not the adult.
Libel suits in the EU are used by the rich and powerful to have a chilling effect on free speech - eliminating opposition and "tidying up" otherwise bad reputations. This is because, in the EU, most countries side (overwhelmingly) for the plaintiff in libel suits. It has b
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Free speech is a contract between the governemnt and the citizens that the governemnt will not prosecute citizens for attacking the governemnt with words, speech etc.
It has nothing to do with I insulting you, idiot, and you going to court to "convict" me for liebel.
Free speech rules in the EU are more less the same as in the USA ... so get over it.
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Then disprove it ... https://www.bundestag.de/parla... [bundestag.de] ... pipe it through translate.google.com, idiot.
Article 5
Re:And China (Score:5, Insightful)
As you can plainly see, those human freedom indexes mean nothing and are highly biased toward socialist systems. Freedom does not mean to get 'free' healthcare or schooling or food or employees, the free in freedom means that you are responsible for your own actions with minimal interference from others (such as the government).
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True freedom can also never exist for very long... If you grant people full freedom with the absence of any controls, then the strongest will use that freedom to subjugate the rest and take away the freedom they very briefly had.
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True freedom can also never exist for very long... If you grant people full freedom with the absence of any controls, then the strongest will use that freedom to subjugate the rest and take away the freedom they very briefly had.
Exactly.
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On art, history, content and the role of a publisher?
Where's that (Score:2)
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EU loving guy from the previous article? Saying this is what makes EU special since it'd never pass a law for facial recognition. Yeah this is way worse.
It is an Austrian law, not an EU one. The summary is like with most EU stories is complete bullshit. It still remains to be seen if Austria actually has any way to force Facebook to delete the content, the EU court only said: "We don't have any super-national rules that stop soveign member states from having laws like this".
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It is not even a law.
It is a court ruling in a liebel case.
You are probably bad in reading?
Time To Play Hardball (Score:2)
And just shut down their services in the EU entirely. Let the scream from millions of users and companies reliant on FB fix this.
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Europe here.
Where do I sign?
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Great, so a european company will set up eurobook and european users will migrate there, and learn a valuable lesson.
Centralised services are a bad idea, the more decentralisation we have the better.
This is why we need decentralised web3, people (Score:2)
Re: This is why we need decentralised web3, people (Score:3)
Join the Fediverse (Hubzilla, Mastodon, GNUSocial). There's even a WordPress plugin for it now.
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Why should EU laws block publication in the USA that has freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
Hey EU? (Score:2)
Just one word: (Score:2, Informative)
Fuck you Europe.
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That's three words.
Blame the American educational system...
Distributed social media (Score:2)
This is why, rather than "breaking up" monopolies like Facebook, which would just create an oligarchy of monopolies, they need to be required to support an open api so distributed social media (e.g. diaspora) can interact meaningfully with them. This is the only way people will have a real choice, but unfortunately, the Powers That Be really *want* a few power players that they can control.
So how will the EU go about enforcing this? (Score:2)
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They sell ads in Europe, they have offices in Europe.
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C*R*A*P (Score:2)
I don't like Facebook,
but this is crap.
(Yes I believe in Pithy &Succinct)
hear the EU bell (Score:2)
Slashdot mates: this Internet thing cannot be just a business and many of us know it here.
Now with this ruling we are giving subjects the sovereignty on their digital self. I believe there are masses of young people hooked to instagramming their idiocy who need this sort of defense. Its also called "the right to be forgotten" and right in the USA there is a fantastic foundation fighting for it fo
Re:hear the EU bell (Score:4, Insightful)
Now with this ruling we are giving subjects the sovereignty on their digital self.
You mean you're giving them sovereignty over others, by determining what others are permitted to remember. Historical revisionism, it's not just for Nazis.
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Yes, a Facebook post is more likely to be read by more people, and have much more influence on behavior than a book.
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Now with this ruling we are giving subjects the sovereignty on their digital self.
It does nothing of the sort. With this ruling we assert that EU courts have the right to prevent American viewers to view content legal in the US, on an American platform. Of course any country already has that power, to a degree, by threatening to shut down the business in that country: play by our rules or you won’t be allowed to do business here. But even countries like China have been very careful to wield that power, and they have for the most part only demanded that their rules be applied to the
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If Erdogan (or his judges) demand that unfavourable articles about him are to be purged from EU publications, can we still tell him to go pound sand, and claim that we hold the moral high ground? What if China demands that we censor all Winnie the Pooh memes, ... dumpass.
Then they get a polite letter that we have no law that allows us - or the EU - to do that
wtf? (Score:2)
They'd might as well just declare FB illegal in the EU. Same effect. Some liberal European country is gonna legally declare Trump's statements to to be hate speech and order FB to mute him. Worldwide. And that will be that. Trump draws too many eyeballs (aka revenue) f
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from the continent that invented Fascism... (Score:2)
Segregate your operations, Facebook (Score:2)
That is my suggestion... Divide your company up into multiple legal entities, so that the Facebook-related company which a court in one country has jurisdiction over has no control over the content distributed by the other units operating in different countries.
this kind of rulings (Score:2)
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Just to remind you: Germany has had Merkel in power since 2005 and they are the de-facto leader of the EU.
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Comply or f*** right off. (Score:3)
Facebook et. al. needs Europe, we do not need you.
If you cannot comply with our laws against fake news, hate speech and scams then frankly goodbye we'll do better without you.
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If you cannot comply with our laws against fake news, hate speech and scams then frankly goodbye we'll do better without you.
That's not what this is. This is about your laws against real news. In the USA, the truth is an absolute defense against libel or slander, because we believe in the public's right to know. In the EU, you apparently don't believe in that, as you don't have that same standard. Ignorance is strength!
Bullshit (Score:3)
That is why we have the BBC, the most renowned news service in the world and you have Faux News, FFS take off your blinkers and see that corporatism is doing to your country. Raming unsafe food down your throats, denying people healthcare or bankrupting them for using it. American did use to be great, but the corporate cool-aid screwed you all.
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In the EU, you apparently don't believe in that, as you don't have that same standard. Ignorance is strength!
Yes we do, no idea why you think notherwise.
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Of course, Facebook does have a remedy here, though it's probably not one they'll take since it would likely hurt their profits. They can close up shop in Europe while still making their site available globally. If Facebook has n
Centralised content (Score:2)
This is a big problem with having centralised services like facebook etc... You can't have a single services that satisfies the rules in every country without making it extremely bland. There are plenty of countries which are extremely strict, and would prohibit significant amounts of content that would be perfectly legal in other countries.
The internet is meant to be decentralised, in which case smaller regional or individual services could run only having to satisfy the requirements of the jurisdiction in
Hoisted by their Own Petard (Score:2)
This is entirely of Facebooks own doing.
If they had not developed the capability to censor the platform for their own purposes by removing posts, then no one would be able to force them to use it.
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If you don't know the difference between those two, let me enlighten you:
- Right to be forgotten, you have to ask for something that you did in the past to be removed. You participated in it, just want to be forgotten, and it's triggered by the individual.
- This is about libel, defamation, etc.. triggered by a court order, it's not a decision on whim or due to some juvenile indiscretion that one wants to be forgotten, it's a pondered ruling from a court of justice.
Just because it's not shown in this side of
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I would assume they could declare Facebook a criminal organization - making it illegal for any companies who do business in the EU to do business with Facebook. It seems like that would make a tremendous impact on Facebook's ad revenue.
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Not really, Facebook generates ~$17B in ad revenue, only ~$1B from the EU.
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Wanted good relation with West Germany then doing the same with East Germany would be a more complex problem.
Want good relations with every EU nation?
Then accept EU laws and courts.
Thats the demand the EU offers the world.