8 ms·

Google Fined by French Privacy Regulator

57 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
This is such a pittance. $112,000? That's like a parking ticket.
- NovaS1X 11y ago
  A drop in the bucket. I'm assuming there's some legal or other reason why they can't charge more. I also find it funny how Google is trying to take the stance of "freedom of expression". What a joke.
  - ryanobjc 11y ago
    What's so funny here? For example, if Google gave France the right to censor content based on "right to be forgotten" laws, why not other laws? For example, nazi memorabilia is illegal in fr but not us (or most countries). And if Google gave fr the right, why not de? Or cn? Or any other country in the world?
    - NovaS1X 11y ago
      It quite clearly states in the article that the laws apply to individuals requesting their personal data to be removed. This is not censorship. I agree there's a fine line that needs to be walked however I'm very sick and tired of the invasion of privacy that's become acceptable today and Google is an offender. I'v made my personal decisions to move away from as many Google services as possible and use pseudonyms as that's my choice and right, however, I do this because in Canada we don't have the same privacy protections that France does. I am well aware that by using Google Services I'm willingly giving up my information in exchange for their use and I've tailored my life around that assumption, however, not everyone is adept at this like I am and I think it's not morally alright to refuse the deletion of data requested by the individual who should rightfully own and control that data. I'm very, very, sick of the state of privacy today and I wish Google would've been fined significantly more. EDIT: for grammar
      - oh_sigh 11y ago
        Shouldn't the individuals request that their data is removed from the primary source? If that happens, google will relatively quickly remove those results from their index.
        DanBC 11y ago
        Yes, people should do that. Here's some thinking from 2010 about right to be forgotten and EU data protection law: https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Documents/EDPS/Publications/Speeches/2010/10-06-07_Speech_Cyber-harassment_EN.pdf https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Document... - It is important to highlight the persistent memory of the internet regarding the information used for the harassment. This information might stay for ever on the web and will be extremely difficult to erase completely. This point presents a great challenge for the respect of the right to be forgotten or for the enforcement of an appropriate and proportionate data retention policy. Here again the providers of such platforms are in a position to play a determinant role and their role could be driven by the respect of data protection rules which can, if properly implemented, mitigate the side effects produced by these three factors. Ignore this next bit - I'm wrong. I'm leaving it here because people have already responded to it. {RTBF arose because a man was a victim of harassment, where the harasser was creating very many websites across the world using fake details to do so with a variety of hosting services who had a variety of responses to the man's legal paperwork. At that point his only recourse was to go to the search engines and ask them to stop republishing (which is what the search result text snippets are doing) the harassment.} There are protections built into the RTBF for stuff that's in the public interest. EU and US have pretty different understanding of rights. US has strong freedom of speech, EU has strong right to privacy.
        thrownaway2424 11y ago
        I don't know where you got that the RTBF came from harassment. The case was about a man who didn't want people to be able to find out that his house had been repossessed by creditors: " On 5 March 2010, Mr Costeja González, a Spanish national resident in Spain, lodged with the AEPD a complaint against La Vanguardia Ediciones SL, which publishes a daily newspaper with a large circulation, in particular in Catalonia (Spain) (‘La Vanguardia’), and against Google Spain and Google Inc. The complaint was based on the fact that, when an internet user entered Mr Costeja González’s name in the search engine of the Google group (‘Google Search’), he would obtain links to two pages of La Vanguardia’s newspaper, of 19 January and 9 March 1998 respectively, on which an announcement mentioning Mr Costeja González’s name appeared for a real-estate auction connected with attachment proceedings for the recovery of social security debts."
    - codedokode 11y ago
      Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests. And what about privacy? What would you do to remove some unpleasant information about yourself from the internet?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - kodablah 11y ago
        What would you do to remove some unpleasant information about yourself from <some other publishing method>?
        ocdtrekkie 11y ago
        Presumably, get a lawyer and sue them for defamation, likely at great personal expense. Up against the corporate lawyers of media empires (or search engines), your chances are pretty slim.
      - curt15 11y ago
        With DMCA requests, the expression is deemed unlawful and the DMCA is used ultimately to take down the actual website. That is not the case here as the websites are allowed to continue publishing to the world without penalty.
      - magicalist 11y ago
        > Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests Google not only alerts you to the fact they removed a link due to the DMCA, they even link to the entry in the Chilling Effects database that contains the actual DMCA takedown notice. The implementation of the "right to be forgotten" specifically disallows a notification of any kind.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      Almost everyone complaining about Right To Be Forgotten is almost completely unaware of it's actual requirements. It protects the privacy of private citizens, specifically if the information isn't relevant to the public interest. In fact, the EU (and I believe, the United Nations actually), has defined privacy as a "fundamental human right". And I'd definitely argue it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens.
      - oh_sigh 11y ago
        Shouldn't this right extend to primary sources then?
        ocdtrekkie 11y ago
        Technically, it already does. You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online, such as Hulk Hogan's recent suit against Gawker. But that requires lawyers and a lot of money. Privacy isn't just for the rich, this framework to delist information from search engines to protect people's privacy is straightforward and only requires working with a few companies.
        Oletros 11y ago
        > Technically, it already does. No, it doesn't > You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online The information is not false and is not private
      - thrownaway2424 11y ago
        The EU has defined privacy, along with 117 other things, to be a fundamental human right. However the EU also contradicts that right with another right of "freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority". In the case of "right to be forgotten" EU law is holding that it is more important for an individual to be able to censor information about themselves than it is for other people to be able to share and receive information about that person. The courts also held, uselessly, that each invocation of the right to be forgotten must be individually balanced against that other right to convey and receive information, and that the burden of proof lies with the respondent charged with removing the information by the individual. In other words the right to be forgotten is effectively absolute, because no person or entity could afford to investigate and respond to each such claim, and is forced to simply accept them all as if they were uniformly meritorious. As a result, the public loses their right to receive and impart information, which is guaranteed by the EU Charter. So you can argue that "it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens" but in this instance the courts have erased one of those human rights. Also I wonder if you also believe in reciprocal enforcement of all the various rights guaranteed to Americans by their Constitution and by jurisprudence. You might not be aware, for example, that the most fundamental right of free speech in the US extends not only to individuals but to organizations and corporate entities. Are you prepared for American courts to start laying fines on European companies for infringing on the rights of free speech of American corporations?
- jstoiko 11y ago
  I don't know the details of that particular case but in France, a lot of laws have penalty clauses in them which doesn't leave much at the discretion of the judge. It's a different judicial system.
aub3bhat 11y ago
I guess its now Très chic to hate Google. Maybe they should revive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Nothing about this is about hating Google. It's about basic human decency.
  - aub3bhat 11y ago
    It's all about censorship plain & simple. There is nothing related to privacy in this fine.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      That would be false, sir. https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/eu-privacy-request https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/eu-privacy-request EDIT: The commenter above me claimed that this was all about hurting Google, and only Google was held to this standard. It looks like he edited his comment when I posted this link, demonstrating he was incorrect. Hopefully this explains my otherwise odd comment.
    - effie 11y ago
      I am not so sure. The fine is about the right to be forgotten, which is a very different thing from censorship. This may be of interest: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_rtbf_mythbusting_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...
disgusted405 11y ago
The Times should really stop referring to the "right to be forgotten" madness as a privacy restriction as it only touches on public info, it's a censorship law. They are being fined and ordered to censor public record items globally, say what you will about China but even they don't do that.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  Right...and the insane part is they aren't even censoring the primary documents - just the index! It's like not allowing a library to have index card saying "Mein Kampf is located in section 23, row 8 under 'misguided ideologies'", but you do allow them to stock the book itself.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Because this isn't about censorship! Google results are the default answer to 'what something is' online. It's improper for someone's first result online to be fraudulent or irrelevant. So Google is the problem. Not the actual article. Furthermore, actually removing content from original websites is incredibly hard, incredibly costly, and involves a lot of legal work. Tracing down web hosts all over the planet. Controlling this at the search engine level, on the other hand, only needs to talk to a handful of companies, and a simple, common framework can ensure individuals are able to expediently request redress for these wrongs against them.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - cromwellian 11y ago
      What if one day everyone runs their own indexer, or there's a distributed search engine where people index parts of the web and share it with others like FreeNet/Kazaa? What of sites like archive.org whose job it is to preserve the history of the web, in effect, a history of our culture? You're talking about in effect, erecting a Great Firewall around Europe so that EU citizens can't surface information that the rest of the world can. But anyone in Europe could use Tor, a foreign proxy, or a VPN to get around this. Ultimately, if government censorship extends too far, it may push decentralized information indexing and sharing to be more mainstream than the darknets it currently exists on.
disaster01 11y ago
Ah les Francais. Show le Google our force. 100.000 EUR fine. Regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong, the real question is: will it work. Will they make Google and other companies submit with such methods?
- effie 11y ago
  Unless Google wants do withdraw its business from France and potentially all Europe, it will comply. I think it is quite probable it will comply, it is in its financial interests.
  - topspin 11y ago
    Google has fought unreasonable Chinese demands, and Google has lost a lot of Chinese market share as a result. Perhaps Google will also not bow to unreasonable EU demands. "Right to be forgotten" is a euphemism for censorship, and censorship is anathema to the Internet. That's the beginning and end of the matter. Stop legislating fantasies.
    - effie 11y ago
      Censorship is bad, but "right to be forgotten" is a very different thing. Please read this document: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_rtbf_mythbusting_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...
      - ejk314 11y ago
        Censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. The reason someone's search results are considered 'objectionable' is because they consider those results private. The private citizen, in the case, is the censor. The french government is just the enforcing body behind that censorship.
        effie 11y ago
disaster01 11y ago
Ah les Francais. Show le Google our force. 100.000 EUR fine. Regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong, the real question is: will it work. Will they make Google and other companies submit with such methods?
Someone1234 11y ago
Why do American commenters become so defensive whenever an American company operating abroad is subject to local laws? Foreign countries aren't subject to the first amendment of the US constitution, and a lot of other countries both through law and through social norms don't consider freedom of speech absolute. This law doesn't allow individuals to remove any information they find distasteful, it allows individuals to apply to remove information about THEM. And there is already built in a "public interest" defence, meaning if there is a public interest to the link then the link stays. Ultimately this isn't black and white, and there are some interesting use cases of this Right to be forgotten (e.g. revenge porn), I'd suggest people read the Wikipedia article top to bottom, it is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten But I'll say this, whatever opinion you come away with, you cannot criticise France for not holding up to the US's ideals. If Google doesn't want to operate under the EU's privacy standards then Google can leave. I also find it slightly ironic that Americans on one hand whine endlessly about other countries violating perceived rights while on the other operating the world's largest surveillance dragnet, and Americans routinely say (paraphrasing) "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!" So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France then I'm going to argue that the US's 4th amendment should too!
- turbohz 11y ago
  Internet will die by thousand cuts if we let any country apply their clueless, stupid, misguided, shortsighted, unenforceable laws. This is a European giving leaving his opinion.
- kodablah 11y ago
  The defensiveness, at least for me, is that the laws are being applied globally. Nobody should agree with US laws applying in France. Seems a lot of people agree with EU laws applying in the US. The internet is global, laws are not. I have the same opinion if a French company, doing business in the US, is told how it must do things in France by US regulators (as opposed to its part in the US). > So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France Did you read the article? It's the opposite (EU law applying outside of the EU)
gorbachev 11y ago
The logical conclusion of following orders like this is for China to demand every trace of Tiananmen Square to disappear from all of the Internet. This is madness.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  This is strawman! A reasonable right to privacy is defined as a fundamental human right both by the United Nations and the European Union. The United States constructively by precedent has a right to privacy though it's not explicit and clearly, rarely followed. Right to be forgotten, as the EU defines it, is specifically written to protect individual citizens, not obscure information that is 'in the public interest' such as Chinese history.
  - gorbachev 11y ago
    sigh Let's put this in a way that you could understand. So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet? If you think that's a hypothetical scenario, you would be well served to read up on what's going on in Thailand with regards to writing about the king there.
    - effie 11y ago
      > So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet? Nothing, because China is sovereign state. On the other hand, the European right to be forgotten does not require Google to comply with China's government demands. What China may demand of Google has nothing to do with the current topic.
      - gorbachev 11y ago
        Sure, because we obviously can't make logical conclusions of consequences from actions regarding the issue at hand. Once Google starts applying local laws globally, there's no stopping it. Everything even remotely controversial (in someone's opinion) will slowly, but surely, disappear from Google. It may take a while, but it will happen.
marcoperaza 11y ago
If France is able to pull this off, and Google doesn't just decide to close all of its French offices, someone will start an uncensored search engine based exclusively in the US, subject only to American jurisdiction. Anyone trying to dig up dirt, like a prospective employer, will search on that instead. You might say, France will then block that search engine. Okay, so people will use one of the hundreds of web proxies that can be easily found by searching "web proxy" on Google, or Tor. And yes, people will go through this trouble, especially in a place where it's almost impossible to fire someone, like France. Sounds like a stupid sword to fall on.
ejk314 11y ago
I think there must be a fundamental difference in the way Americans view privacy vs how Europeans view privacy. To me, 'privacy' means that my actions performed at home (or in other places where I can reasonably assume to be alone or in private company) should not be under the scrutiny of others. I should have the right to act how I want in public as well, so long as my actions do not affect other people. But I don't see how I could reasonably expect to have privacy in that case. Do Europeans have a different view?

57 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

This is such a pittance. $112,000? That's like a parking ticket.

NovaS1X 11y ago
A drop in the bucket. I'm assuming there's some legal or other reason why they can't charge more. I also find it funny how Google is trying to take the stance of "freedom of expression". What a joke.
- ryanobjc 11y ago
  What's so funny here? For example, if Google gave France the right to censor content based on "right to be forgotten" laws, why not other laws? For example, nazi memorabilia is illegal in fr but not us (or most countries). And if Google gave fr the right, why not de? Or cn? Or any other country in the world?
  - NovaS1X 11y ago
    It quite clearly states in the article that the laws apply to individuals requesting their personal data to be removed. This is not censorship. I agree there's a fine line that needs to be walked however I'm very sick and tired of the invasion of privacy that's become acceptable today and Google is an offender. I'v made my personal decisions to move away from as many Google services as possible and use pseudonyms as that's my choice and right, however, I do this because in Canada we don't have the same privacy protections that France does. I am well aware that by using Google Services I'm willingly giving up my information in exchange for their use and I've tailored my life around that assumption, however, not everyone is adept at this like I am and I think it's not morally alright to refuse the deletion of data requested by the individual who should rightfully own and control that data. I'm very, very, sick of the state of privacy today and I wish Google would've been fined significantly more. EDIT: for grammar
    - oh_sigh 11y ago
      Shouldn't the individuals request that their data is removed from the primary source? If that happens, google will relatively quickly remove those results from their index.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Yes, people should do that. Here's some thinking from 2010 about right to be forgotten and EU data protection law: https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Documents/EDPS/Publications/Speeches/2010/10-06-07_Speech_Cyber-harassment_EN.pdf https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Document... - It is important to highlight the persistent memory of the internet regarding the information used for the harassment. This information might stay for ever on the web and will be extremely difficult to erase completely. This point presents a great challenge for the respect of the right to be forgotten or for the enforcement of an appropriate and proportionate data retention policy. Here again the providers of such platforms are in a position to play a determinant role and their role could be driven by the respect of data protection rules which can, if properly implemented, mitigate the side effects produced by these three factors. Ignore this next bit - I'm wrong. I'm leaving it here because people have already responded to it. {RTBF arose because a man was a victim of harassment, where the harasser was creating very many websites across the world using fake details to do so with a variety of hosting services who had a variety of responses to the man's legal paperwork. At that point his only recourse was to go to the search engines and ask them to stop republishing (which is what the search result text snippets are doing) the harassment.} There are protections built into the RTBF for stuff that's in the public interest. EU and US have pretty different understanding of rights. US has strong freedom of speech, EU has strong right to privacy.
        thrownaway2424 11y ago
        I don't know where you got that the RTBF came from harassment. The case was about a man who didn't want people to be able to find out that his house had been repossessed by creditors: " On 5 March 2010, Mr Costeja González, a Spanish national resident in Spain, lodged with the AEPD a complaint against La Vanguardia Ediciones SL, which publishes a daily newspaper with a large circulation, in particular in Catalonia (Spain) (‘La Vanguardia’), and against Google Spain and Google Inc. The complaint was based on the fact that, when an internet user entered Mr Costeja González’s name in the search engine of the Google group (‘Google Search’), he would obtain links to two pages of La Vanguardia’s newspaper, of 19 January and 9 March 1998 respectively, on which an announcement mentioning Mr Costeja González’s name appeared for a real-estate auction connected with attachment proceedings for the recovery of social security debts."
  - codedokode 11y ago
    Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests. And what about privacy? What would you do to remove some unpleasant information about yourself from the internet?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - kodablah 11y ago
      What would you do to remove some unpleasant information about yourself from <some other publishing method>?
      - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
        Presumably, get a lawyer and sue them for defamation, likely at great personal expense. Up against the corporate lawyers of media empires (or search engines), your chances are pretty slim.
    - curt15 11y ago
      With DMCA requests, the expression is deemed unlawful and the DMCA is used ultimately to take down the actual website. That is not the case here as the websites are allowed to continue publishing to the world without penalty.
    - magicalist 11y ago
      > Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests Google not only alerts you to the fact they removed a link due to the DMCA, they even link to the entry in the Chilling Effects database that contains the actual DMCA takedown notice. The implementation of the "right to be forgotten" specifically disallows a notification of any kind.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Almost everyone complaining about Right To Be Forgotten is almost completely unaware of it's actual requirements. It protects the privacy of private citizens, specifically if the information isn't relevant to the public interest. In fact, the EU (and I believe, the United Nations actually), has defined privacy as a "fundamental human right". And I'd definitely argue it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens.
    - oh_sigh 11y ago
      Shouldn't this right extend to primary sources then?
      - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
        Technically, it already does. You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online, such as Hulk Hogan's recent suit against Gawker. But that requires lawyers and a lot of money. Privacy isn't just for the rich, this framework to delist information from search engines to protect people's privacy is straightforward and only requires working with a few companies.
        Oletros 11y ago
        > Technically, it already does. No, it doesn't > You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online The information is not false and is not private
    - thrownaway2424 11y ago
      The EU has defined privacy, along with 117 other things, to be a fundamental human right. However the EU also contradicts that right with another right of "freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority". In the case of "right to be forgotten" EU law is holding that it is more important for an individual to be able to censor information about themselves than it is for other people to be able to share and receive information about that person. The courts also held, uselessly, that each invocation of the right to be forgotten must be individually balanced against that other right to convey and receive information, and that the burden of proof lies with the respondent charged with removing the information by the individual. In other words the right to be forgotten is effectively absolute, because no person or entity could afford to investigate and respond to each such claim, and is forced to simply accept them all as if they were uniformly meritorious. As a result, the public loses their right to receive and impart information, which is guaranteed by the EU Charter. So you can argue that "it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens" but in this instance the courts have erased one of those human rights. Also I wonder if you also believe in reciprocal enforcement of all the various rights guaranteed to Americans by their Constitution and by jurisprudence. You might not be aware, for example, that the most fundamental right of free speech in the US extends not only to individuals but to organizations and corporate entities. Are you prepared for American courts to start laying fines on European companies for infringing on the rights of free speech of American corporations?
jstoiko 11y ago
I don't know the details of that particular case but in France, a lot of laws have penalty clauses in them which doesn't leave much at the discretion of the judge. It's a different judicial system.

aub3bhat 11y ago

I guess its now Très chic to hate Google. Maybe they should revive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Nothing about this is about hating Google. It's about basic human decency.
- aub3bhat 11y ago
  It's all about censorship plain & simple. There is nothing related to privacy in this fine.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    That would be false, sir. https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/eu-privacy-request https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/eu-privacy-request EDIT: The commenter above me claimed that this was all about hurting Google, and only Google was held to this standard. It looks like he edited his comment when I posted this link, demonstrating he was incorrect. Hopefully this explains my otherwise odd comment.
  - effie 11y ago
    I am not so sure. The fine is about the right to be forgotten, which is a very different thing from censorship. This may be of interest: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_rtbf_mythbusting_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...

disgusted405 11y ago

The Times should really stop referring to the "right to be forgotten" madness as a privacy restriction as it only touches on public info, it's a censorship law. They are being fined and ordered to censor public record items globally, say what you will about China but even they don't do that.

oh_sigh 11y ago
Right...and the insane part is they aren't even censoring the primary documents - just the index! It's like not allowing a library to have index card saying "Mein Kampf is located in section 23, row 8 under 'misguided ideologies'", but you do allow them to stock the book itself.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Because this isn't about censorship! Google results are the default answer to 'what something is' online. It's improper for someone's first result online to be fraudulent or irrelevant. So Google is the problem. Not the actual article. Furthermore, actually removing content from original websites is incredibly hard, incredibly costly, and involves a lot of legal work. Tracing down web hosts all over the planet. Controlling this at the search engine level, on the other hand, only needs to talk to a handful of companies, and a simple, common framework can ensure individuals are able to expediently request redress for these wrongs against them.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    What if one day everyone runs their own indexer, or there's a distributed search engine where people index parts of the web and share it with others like FreeNet/Kazaa? What of sites like archive.org whose job it is to preserve the history of the web, in effect, a history of our culture? You're talking about in effect, erecting a Great Firewall around Europe so that EU citizens can't surface information that the rest of the world can. But anyone in Europe could use Tor, a foreign proxy, or a VPN to get around this. Ultimately, if government censorship extends too far, it may push decentralized information indexing and sharing to be more mainstream than the darknets it currently exists on.

disaster01 11y ago

Ah les Francais. Show le Google our force. 100.000 EUR fine. Regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong, the real question is: will it work. Will they make Google and other companies submit with such methods?

effie 11y ago
Unless Google wants do withdraw its business from France and potentially all Europe, it will comply. I think it is quite probable it will comply, it is in its financial interests.
- topspin 11y ago
  Google has fought unreasonable Chinese demands, and Google has lost a lot of Chinese market share as a result. Perhaps Google will also not bow to unreasonable EU demands. "Right to be forgotten" is a euphemism for censorship, and censorship is anathema to the Internet. That's the beginning and end of the matter. Stop legislating fantasies.
  - effie 11y ago
    Censorship is bad, but "right to be forgotten" is a very different thing. Please read this document: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_rtbf_mythbusting_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...
    - ejk314 11y ago
      Censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. The reason someone's search results are considered 'objectionable' is because they consider those results private. The private citizen, in the case, is the censor. The french government is just the enforcing body behind that censorship.
      - effie 11y ago

disaster01 11y ago

Someone1234 11y ago

Why do American commenters become so defensive whenever an American company operating abroad is subject to local laws? Foreign countries aren't subject to the first amendment of the US constitution, and a lot of other countries both through law and through social norms don't consider freedom of speech absolute. This law doesn't allow individuals to remove any information they find distasteful, it allows individuals to apply to remove information about THEM. And there is already built in a "public interest" defence, meaning if there is a public interest to the link then the link stays. Ultimately this isn't black and white, and there are some interesting use cases of this Right to be forgotten (e.g. revenge porn), I'd suggest people read the Wikipedia article top to bottom, it is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten But I'll say this, whatever opinion you come away with, you cannot criticise France for not holding up to the US's ideals. If Google doesn't want to operate under the EU's privacy standards then Google can leave. I also find it slightly ironic that Americans on one hand whine endlessly about other countries violating perceived rights while on the other operating the world's largest surveillance dragnet, and Americans routinely say (paraphrasing) "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!" So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France then I'm going to argue that the US's 4th amendment should too!

turbohz 11y ago
Internet will die by thousand cuts if we let any country apply their clueless, stupid, misguided, shortsighted, unenforceable laws. This is a European giving leaving his opinion.
kodablah 11y ago
The defensiveness, at least for me, is that the laws are being applied globally. Nobody should agree with US laws applying in France. Seems a lot of people agree with EU laws applying in the US. The internet is global, laws are not. I have the same opinion if a French company, doing business in the US, is told how it must do things in France by US regulators (as opposed to its part in the US). > So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France Did you read the article? It's the opposite (EU law applying outside of the EU)

gorbachev 11y ago

The logical conclusion of following orders like this is for China to demand every trace of Tiananmen Square to disappear from all of the Internet. This is madness.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
This is strawman! A reasonable right to privacy is defined as a fundamental human right both by the United Nations and the European Union. The United States constructively by precedent has a right to privacy though it's not explicit and clearly, rarely followed. Right to be forgotten, as the EU defines it, is specifically written to protect individual citizens, not obscure information that is 'in the public interest' such as Chinese history.
- gorbachev 11y ago
  sigh Let's put this in a way that you could understand. So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet? If you think that's a hypothetical scenario, you would be well served to read up on what's going on in Thailand with regards to writing about the king there.
  - effie 11y ago
    > So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet? Nothing, because China is sovereign state. On the other hand, the European right to be forgotten does not require Google to comply with China's government demands. What China may demand of Google has nothing to do with the current topic.
    - gorbachev 11y ago
      Sure, because we obviously can't make logical conclusions of consequences from actions regarding the issue at hand. Once Google starts applying local laws globally, there's no stopping it. Everything even remotely controversial (in someone's opinion) will slowly, but surely, disappear from Google. It may take a while, but it will happen.

marcoperaza 11y ago

If France is able to pull this off, and Google doesn't just decide to close all of its French offices, someone will start an uncensored search engine based exclusively in the US, subject only to American jurisdiction. Anyone trying to dig up dirt, like a prospective employer, will search on that instead. You might say, France will then block that search engine. Okay, so people will use one of the hundreds of web proxies that can be easily found by searching "web proxy" on Google, or Tor. And yes, people will go through this trouble, especially in a place where it's almost impossible to fire someone, like France. Sounds like a stupid sword to fall on.

ejk314 11y ago

I think there must be a fundamental difference in the way Americans view privacy vs how Europeans view privacy. To me, 'privacy' means that my actions performed at home (or in other places where I can reasonably assume to be alone or in private company) should not be under the scrutiny of others. I should have the right to act how I want in public as well, so long as my actions do not affect other people. But I don't see how I could reasonably expect to have privacy in that case. Do Europeans have a different view?