6 ms·

Honest question: why doesn't google just stop serving France for a day, with a message such as "we can't provide service to you because France is bothering us,

by ikeboy 11y ago

Honest question: why doesn't google just stop serving France for a day, with a message such as "we can't provide service to you because France is bothering us, contact your (whatever the French equivalent of Congressman is)"? Or at least do what they did with SOPA and put a link on the homepage. Does anyone think that wouldn't work, or that the cost to Google would be too much? I don't think France would be as willing as China to part with Google.

seren 11y ago
Think of the impact in term of image. Would you be ready to use a company service that is willing to switch off its services, even temporarily, when they don't agree with the local law? Using your users as hostage, is a very bad way to create goodwill.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  So they could just put a link on the front page, then.
icebraining 11y ago
Because they'd get as much, or more popular opposition as support. SOPA was seen as a corporations vs people issue; this isn't. And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten, many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we should organize our society. Anti-capitalism, and anti-American-imperialism are still strong ideas in Europe.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten, many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we should organize our society. This isn't saying "organize your society like this", it's saying "we refuse to operate under these laws we view as restrictive, so as a society, decide whether you prefer to have these laws, or have Google". They have leverage, why not use it? As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn't need to censor things around the world that are only illegal under French law. That seems likely to be well supported (especially if the alternative is "we can't use Google at all anymore").
  - icebraining 11y ago
    As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn't need to censor things around the world that are only illegal under French law. It's not clear that France wants to censor things around the world. The problem is that Google doesn't censor results even to French connections, if the user accesses Google.com instead of Google.fr.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      I don't think Google would particularly care if they only needed to censor French connections . They're clearly understanding it as a global demand. See http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-european-not-global-right.html http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-... >We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access. Additionally, if this was all a misunderstanding, I believe it would have been cleared up by now, so the fact that nothing like that has come out in the last ten days tells me that they did understand correctly.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        I think Google is purposefully being misleading about that. If you read the notice they link to, it says: Although the company has granted some of the requests, delisting was only carried out on European extensions of the search engine and not when searches are made from “google.com” or other non-European extensions. In accordance with the CJEU judgement, the CNIL considers that in order to be effective, delisting must be carried out on all extensions of the search engine and that the service provided by Google search constitutes a single processing. Nowhere does it say that the problem is that the results are still accessible from other countries; it's specifically about still being accessible on the .com and other domains.
        ikeboy 11y ago
        I don't see any motive for Google to do that. Does it make sense to you? Why would they agree to censor the .fr, but not the .com for French users? I think they do understand the notice correctly. And if it was that simple, why hasn't CNIL come out and said that Google is misinterpreting it? Also, what they link to is not the notice, which can be found here: http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberations/Bureau/D2015-047_MED_GOOGLE_INC.pdf http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberat... I don't read French (and putting it through a translater didn't help much), so can someone who can maybe tell us what it actually says?

by ikeboy 11y ago

seren 11y ago

Think of the impact in term of image. Would you be ready to use a company service that is willing to switch off its services, even temporarily, when they don't agree with the local law? Using your users as hostage, is a very bad way to create goodwill.

ikeboy 11y ago
So they could just put a link on the front page, then.

icebraining 11y ago

Because they'd get as much, or more popular opposition as support. SOPA was seen as a corporations vs people issue; this isn't. And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten, many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we should organize our society. Anti-capitalism, and anti-American-imperialism are still strong ideas in Europe.

ikeboy 11y ago
>And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten, many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we should organize our society. This isn't saying "organize your society like this", it's saying "we refuse to operate under these laws we view as restrictive, so as a society, decide whether you prefer to have these laws, or have Google". They have leverage, why not use it? As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn't need to censor things around the world that are only illegal under French law. That seems likely to be well supported (especially if the alternative is "we can't use Google at all anymore").
- icebraining 11y ago
  As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn't need to censor things around the world that are only illegal under French law. It's not clear that France wants to censor things around the world. The problem is that Google doesn't censor results even to French connections, if the user accesses Google.com instead of Google.fr.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    I don't think Google would particularly care if they only needed to censor French connections . They're clearly understanding it as a global demand. See http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-european-not-global-right.html http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-... >We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access. Additionally, if this was all a misunderstanding, I believe it would have been cleared up by now, so the fact that nothing like that has come out in the last ten days tells me that they did understand correctly.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      I think Google is purposefully being misleading about that. If you read the notice they link to, it says: Although the company has granted some of the requests, delisting was only carried out on European extensions of the search engine and not when searches are made from “google.com” or other non-European extensions. In accordance with the CJEU judgement, the CNIL considers that in order to be effective, delisting must be carried out on all extensions of the search engine and that the service provided by Google search constitutes a single processing. Nowhere does it say that the problem is that the results are still accessible from other countries; it's specifically about still being accessible on the .com and other domains.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        I don't see any motive for Google to do that. Does it make sense to you? Why would they agree to censor the .fr, but not the .com for French users? I think they do understand the notice correctly. And if it was that simple, why hasn't CNIL come out and said that Google is misinterpreting it? Also, what they link to is not the notice, which can be found here: http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberations/Bureau/D2015-047_MED_GOOGLE_INC.pdf http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberat... I don't read French (and putting it through a translater didn't help much), so can someone who can maybe tell us what it actually says?