11 ms·

Google under fire from regulators on EU privacy ruling

37 points by fpgeek 12y ago

Painboss 12y ago
Can someone explain why the EU is pushing for right to be forgotten so hard? This type of legislation can only end badly.
- redthrowaway 12y ago
  Because European courts are no more tech-savvy, nor capable of reasoning about the consequences of their judgements, than American ones.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    What are the specific parts of their reasoning about the consequences that you find fault with? I'm actually quite impressed that they're not falling for the non-existent technological obstacles that have been put in place here to side-step the law, for a change the EU court actually seems to be on the ball.
    - Afforess 12y ago
      Because "The right to be forgotten" is just doublespeak for censorship. Politicians are using it to hide an unsavory past. Businesses will use it to cover up past wrongdoings. I'm not just exaggerating, this is already happening now with the current implementation.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Of course it isn't. That right applies to any citizen, not just to politicians, and besides, the newspaper morgues are not so forgetful. Also, for 'public figures' the standards are different and they probably will be only very partially successful in this. The Streisand effect will nicely counteract any attempt to be 'forgotten' for those who are extra deserving of being remembered.
        smsm42 12y ago
        Streisand effect can only exist when the speech is free. When EU can ban any mention of a politician being embroiled in a juicy scandal 10 years ago, how would you disseminate this information? Only at great risk to yourself. This is not what should be happening in a free country, but apparently EU doesn't really need all the troubles of being free countries, their politicians are completely fine to deny their citizens the right of free speech. It's safer for them this way.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        The EU can not ban any such mention, you are completely misrepresenting the intent and the actual use of these laws. Free speech American Style is American, the EU is different, whether better or worse is not for me to decide but it is the law of the land and as such it should be respected by corporations operating there. The EU is concerned with privacy here, you are concerned with censorship, those are not the same concepts and they are not addressed by the same mechanisms. The fact that in some EU countries (ex) politicians hold large stakes in media conglomerates and can manipulate public opinion is a much bigger source for worry than that some politician embroiled in a juicy scandal would be able to wipe his trail completely. Especially newspapers will take a serious stance against that and it will simply not work.
        smsm42 12y ago
        >>> Especially newspapers will take a serious stance against that and it will simply not work. Or they won't, as you noticed they are owned by ex-politicians. Or they would, but the law gets passed anyway and what they do? They don't have 1st amendment to appeal to, so they get nothing. >>> Free speech American Style is American, the EU is different, whether better or worse is not for me to decide Why not for you? Nobody can prohibit you to think for yourself and decide if having freedom of speech is better or worse than not having it. Not even EU can, at least for now until they didn't invent "right not to be thought of".
        ASneakyFox 12y ago
        News papers are going digital. Google search engines is how many people get their news (searching news web sites)
    - magicalist 12y ago
      > for a change the EU court actually seems to be on the ball These new demands are not from a court.
fpgeek 12y ago
I wonder how EU regulators are going to react when, for example, Russian regulators demand that Google remove all links to "inaccurate" (i.e. not Russian propaganda) stories about MH17, worldwide.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It's a fairly natural privacy issue. The EU DPD has some fairly clear rules about automated gathering of information about people, the rules under which you are required to honor requests for reports about that data, to update it if so required and to be deleted at the first request. Google is side-stepping the reach of the EU by keeping the data on servers outside of the EU but this goes against the spirit of those laws, it is about the citizens not about where the data resides.
  - shakethemonkey 12y ago
    It's not so much against the spirit of those laws, but an attempt by the EU to apply its laws outside the jurisdiction of the sphere of absurdity that is the EU. This is not at all about "where the data resides", as you claim, because the EU is not attacking the data where it resides -- it leaves that alone, on their original servers -- but instead where the data is indexed.
  - jim-greer 12y ago
    Thailand can just as easily say that laws banning criticism of the king are about the king, not where the data resides.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      They could indeed. And if Google had a Thai presence (I don't know if they do) and plan on keeping it then they should probably comply. Pesky problem, nation states that claim they trump corporations.
      - jim-greer 12y ago
jacquesm 12y ago
That's a very bad title. What the article states is that the EU would like those users that want to be forgotten to be forgotten from all google servers, not just from the servers in the EU. So it's not the EU pushing for the right to be forgotten to be extended to the citizens of all countries.
- Zancarius 12y ago
  > So it's not the EU pushing for the right to be forgotten to be extended to the citizens of all countries. It may be a bad title, probably for the purpose of link baiting, but the article itself isn't completely wrong assuming the EU desire is ultimately to gain control over what information is retained for EU citizens. It's possible this is merely speculation. Personally, if the EU wishes to extend this limit themselves, then they should block access to US search engines from within EU member states. That's entirely within their right to do and it's a whole lot easier than upsetting everyone else who doesn't want to play by the same rules (and negates the need for extending treaties and the likes). At its most extreme, I'm humored a bit by the prospect of what this sort of precedent would set for future demands made by North Korea.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
emiliobumachar 12y ago
I've said this before, and I'm saying it again: If EU courts and regulators want to give citizens the right to be forgotten, they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing. Way before ordering a corporation to burn books.
- Vik1ng 12y ago
  Seems disproportionate to me. So much goes in my name and it would be a huge pain in the ass to change it just because a high ranking search result maybe is some stupid forum post by someone else from 10 years ago and the person who ran is not reachable and it's hosted in a different country.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing. There are very few restrictions on changing your name in England. Is that not the case for the rest of Europe?
  - esbranson 12y ago
    The US adopted the English legal system, and changing your name is easy as pie. Mexico adopted the French and Spanish legal systems and changing your name is damn near impossible (from what I hear). I figure that's a feature of those legal systems (and their associated legal cultures), not the US and Mexico.
RichardFord 12y ago
They had come up with an excuse to use as an opening salvo for censorship, so they came up with "right to be forgotten".
nitrogen 12y ago
Why are there so many posts talking about censorship and none talking about privacy?
- clickok 12y ago
  I suspect that's because no one has access to whatever data has been gathered about them, and so it's hard to draw a mental picture of how that could be (or is) being exploited by corporations which apparently believe that they are above the law.
- ASneakyFox 12y ago
  Because it's not a privacy issue. Privacy is the red herring. There's already ways to protect your privacy online. Additionally no one wants online privacy. People spend long hours making their facebook page
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    People make Facebook pages because they think they can control who sees them. Also, different cultures value privacy more than others, because they have more experience with the risks of a lack of privacy.
zmmmmm 12y ago
This is just the start of the inevitable slippery slope: the initial censorship doesn't work (and it never can, because information wants to be free), so they broaden, widen, deepen it. Then since it is still trivial to circumvent by technical means they add laws to try and restrict technical circumvention of the censorship. Then as loopholes are found in the laws against circumvention they have to broaden and deepen those. Soon it is illegal just to know things, to tell people basic knowledge of how to do things. And thus the only viable end point is totalitarianism. There's really no in between - if you want "free speech" at all you have to take all of it or none of it.
- clickok 12y ago
  I disagree on a couple of points. Information doesn't want anything. There may be a statistical tendency of information to propagate, but it seems to me that the only people who want information to want to be free are those advancing an agenda with a catchy slogan. Further, the only viable endpoint is not totalitarianism-- one can argue about where on the spectrum we stand today, or might be in the future, but in the US we try to strike a balance. Unless you support being able to use whichever country's version of Google that permits things like searching for identity theft, illicit pornography, etc., it seems like we're OK with at least some restrictions on speech. Assuming we accept the EU has the authority to pass such a law, then so long as Google wishes to operate within their jurisdiction, it seems fair that it abides by the law, vis., "deleting data as requested", not "make data inaccessible to those who cannot execute a second Google search on how to subvert the restrictions".
  - smsm42 12y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "search for identity theft", but once Google starts accepting requests for banning any content objectionable in any corner of the world worldwide, a mere picture of a woman with her face not hidden by a burqa would be "illicit pornography". You'd say it's too much, but we need to strike a balance between your desires and religious feelings of people in Sudan, Syria and Iran, don't we? And when you're trying to "strike the balance" by trampling on rights, the ones who cry the loudest - i.e. fanatics - will always win, unless there's a strong and impenetrable barrier that they can not overcome. Like the First Amendment in the US, which, despite all efforts, is still standing. But Europe doesn't have it, and there bans on information and suppression of unpopular expression is the norm. This is just one more example of their descent.
wzdd 12y ago
This is blogspam for the Reuters article it links to, which has neither the inaccurate title nor the speculation (i.e. that blocking based on geo-ip would not be acceptable).
tn13 12y ago
I am not sure why "to be forgotten" is a right in first place. The kind of thuggery that Steve Jobs did to keep our salaries low should be forgotten by society few years down the line ?
tn13 12y ago
This reminds me of the Indian government regulation for telecom companies. According to the regulation the range of a telephone tower should end exactly at the border of the county (taluka) !
syntern 12y ago
I'm wondering, at what point will the EU demand that Santa Claus shall forget what he knows about us? (Referring to the song: "He's making a list, Checking it twice; Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.")
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-extend-ri.html http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-extend-r..., which points to this.
cpa 12y ago
I understand that HN is on the side of absolute freedom of expression which entails that if anything has been public once, it has a right to stay to public till the dawn of times, so I hardly ever comment on these matters. I'm French, and I definitely do not agree with this opinion. In 1978, the french government proposed to cross-reference (through digitalization) many of its databases (birth registry, healthcare, retirement fund, driver's license…). It encountered a very strong resistance from the public, mostly because of an news article in one the biggest newspaper (Le Monde) titled "SAFARI [the name of the project]: the hunt for french citizens" (la chasse aux français). Needless to say that such a system would have been a blessing for the German administration during WW2. It was 1978 and WW2 didn't seem that far away, either your generation or the one of your parents lived during the war. That's how France ended up with a law (Loi Informatique & Libertés) that regulates what one can do with databases storing personal information. How's that related to the right to be forgotten? Bear with me. This law (and up to minor differences, the EU directive on the matter), makes explicit what I consider to be a very smart and important idea: "purpose of data" (finalité des données). Basically, before you're authorized to store personal data (like email adresses, names, phone numbers, IP addresses[1]), you have to state what the purpose of this data is (to who and how is another matter, but that's not too difficult). Also, data should only be stored for a specific amount of time. This duration is determined by the purpose of the data. For example, if you have a database of all the people that used to be registered to your {nodejs,rails,lisp} newsletter but aren't anymore, you cannot keep that data for, say, 10 years. 10 years doesn't make sense given the purpose of your data. Note that if you anonymize the data, you're good to go. On the other hand, if you have medical data on cutting edge treatment of cancer, you may want to keep the data for 30 years if you need to contact a former patient when you discover longterm side-effect of your drug. And in this case, it's fine. You may start to see where I'm going. We have basically the same idea in the right to be forgotten. Yes, it impedes freedom of speech as american people think of it. Sure. But, you know, in Europe, we have a different freedom of speech, which also traces back to WW2. I can't go around saying that I hate black people and that I'm a nazi. I'm gonna be fined/thrown in jail for doing that. And a vast majority of Europeans do agree with that. Basically restrictions are nothing that promotes hate/racism and libel (you can't say that somebody's a serial killer before he's convicted for example.) And you may think I'm backwards, turning away from the blinding beauty of technology (right to be forgotten? that's not how the internet works!). Thinking that Freedom of speech as the US knows it is the way to go everywhere is universalism, pure and simple. So, please remember that countries and people have a history. Yep, the internet doesn't work that way. And I am aware the I can host my server in some random third world country and get away with mostly whatever I host. Or I can use a tor hidden service. But that's not the point. 99% of these cases will be about data hosted by legitimate businesses, which have a name and address and that will be compelled to remove the data. In my opinion, the slope isn't that slippery. After all, you'd be hard pressed to consider EU countries as being way too censorshipy (?) — in general, not just when talking about Internet. And yes, law will always be stupid when you pit it against technology. But unless you advocate total deregulation, it's a matter of how much idiocy you can accept. Finally, a thought on jurisdiction: european judges consider that they have authority if the intended public is european. So yes, google.es, google.co.uk and such are subject to european law. Wether or not google.com is subject to EU law has not been tested in court (it probably has, but I can't remember any specific case), but even in this case, it would be perfectly acceptable (from the court standpoint) to alter google.com for EU IP addresses and leave it untouched for other addresses. So, no, nobody's gonna tread your freedom. Ironically, I don't really have an opinion on Freedom of speech (US vs EU). But I find that the EU has struck a nice balance when it comes to that. Knowing that companies must destroy data that has my name attached to it when it's not relevant anymore is very appealing. In the end, the US and the EU, in this case, disagree on principle, which are like axioms. You can't prove me that one is better (in the general framework of modern civilization, ie, let's say The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to keep it simple.) [1] this one is tricky, but this comment is already long enough
kijin 12y ago
This is going to be a big problem for multinational corporations like Google and Microsoft in the coming years. In order to do business in Country X, they'll have to censor all information that is objectionable to the citizens of X, even when citizens of other countries are trying to access it. Google pulled its Chinese version a few years ago, redirecting users to the Hong Kong version instead. But Google only had a small stake in the Chinese market when it did that. It can't pull the same trick with the EU. It needs to sell ads in the EU, and you can't sell ads in a country while openly violating its laws. Why doesn't the EU take issue with the fact that, for example, the Internet Archive probably has copies of every page that EU citizens want censored? Well, to begin with, few people even know about the Internet Archive. But even more importantly, the Internet Archive has no presence whatsoever in the EU. It's a US charity with US servers. So although it will never be able to get away with hosting content that violates American law, it doesn't need to give a flying fuck about EU law, Thai law, Russian law, or whatever. Oh, the Saudis want to censor images of women driving cars? Feel free to arrest our Chairman if he ever visits Saudi Arabia. I think this is exactly why keeping the flow of information distributed is so important to keeping it open. Different countries want to censor different kinds of information, so the union of censored information is huge, but the intersection is very small. If we become dependent on a few multinational corporations to access information, we'll end up suffering the union of every censorship regime in the world (or at least the union of regimes where those corporations do business in). But if we keep the flow of information distributed, only the intersection need be censored.
cwyers 12y ago
What I really wish someone would explain is why the EU seems to be focusing on Google's indexing of other people's content, rather than the content itself.

37 points by fpgeek 12y ago

Can someone explain why the EU is pushing for right to be forgotten so hard? This type of legislation can only end badly.

redthrowaway 12y ago
Because European courts are no more tech-savvy, nor capable of reasoning about the consequences of their judgements, than American ones.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  What are the specific parts of their reasoning about the consequences that you find fault with? I'm actually quite impressed that they're not falling for the non-existent technological obstacles that have been put in place here to side-step the law, for a change the EU court actually seems to be on the ball.
  - Afforess 12y ago
    Because "The right to be forgotten" is just doublespeak for censorship. Politicians are using it to hide an unsavory past. Businesses will use it to cover up past wrongdoings. I'm not just exaggerating, this is already happening now with the current implementation.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Of course it isn't. That right applies to any citizen, not just to politicians, and besides, the newspaper morgues are not so forgetful. Also, for 'public figures' the standards are different and they probably will be only very partially successful in this. The Streisand effect will nicely counteract any attempt to be 'forgotten' for those who are extra deserving of being remembered.
      - smsm42 12y ago
        Streisand effect can only exist when the speech is free. When EU can ban any mention of a politician being embroiled in a juicy scandal 10 years ago, how would you disseminate this information? Only at great risk to yourself. This is not what should be happening in a free country, but apparently EU doesn't really need all the troubles of being free countries, their politicians are completely fine to deny their citizens the right of free speech. It's safer for them this way.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        The EU can not ban any such mention, you are completely misrepresenting the intent and the actual use of these laws. Free speech American Style is American, the EU is different, whether better or worse is not for me to decide but it is the law of the land and as such it should be respected by corporations operating there. The EU is concerned with privacy here, you are concerned with censorship, those are not the same concepts and they are not addressed by the same mechanisms. The fact that in some EU countries (ex) politicians hold large stakes in media conglomerates and can manipulate public opinion is a much bigger source for worry than that some politician embroiled in a juicy scandal would be able to wipe his trail completely. Especially newspapers will take a serious stance against that and it will simply not work.
        smsm42 12y ago
        >>> Especially newspapers will take a serious stance against that and it will simply not work. Or they won't, as you noticed they are owned by ex-politicians. Or they would, but the law gets passed anyway and what they do? They don't have 1st amendment to appeal to, so they get nothing. >>> Free speech American Style is American, the EU is different, whether better or worse is not for me to decide Why not for you? Nobody can prohibit you to think for yourself and decide if having freedom of speech is better or worse than not having it. Not even EU can, at least for now until they didn't invent "right not to be thought of".
        ASneakyFox 12y ago
        News papers are going digital. Google search engines is how many people get their news (searching news web sites)
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > for a change the EU court actually seems to be on the ball These new demands are not from a court.

fpgeek 12y ago

I wonder how EU regulators are going to react when, for example, Russian regulators demand that Google remove all links to "inaccurate" (i.e. not Russian propaganda) stories about MH17, worldwide.

jacquesm 12y ago
It's a fairly natural privacy issue. The EU DPD has some fairly clear rules about automated gathering of information about people, the rules under which you are required to honor requests for reports about that data, to update it if so required and to be deleted at the first request. Google is side-stepping the reach of the EU by keeping the data on servers outside of the EU but this goes against the spirit of those laws, it is about the citizens not about where the data resides.
- shakethemonkey 12y ago
  It's not so much against the spirit of those laws, but an attempt by the EU to apply its laws outside the jurisdiction of the sphere of absurdity that is the EU. This is not at all about "where the data resides", as you claim, because the EU is not attacking the data where it resides -- it leaves that alone, on their original servers -- but instead where the data is indexed.
- jim-greer 12y ago
  Thailand can just as easily say that laws banning criticism of the king are about the king, not where the data resides.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    They could indeed. And if Google had a Thai presence (I don't know if they do) and plan on keeping it then they should probably comply. Pesky problem, nation states that claim they trump corporations.
    - jim-greer 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

That's a very bad title. What the article states is that the EU would like those users that want to be forgotten to be forgotten from all google servers, not just from the servers in the EU. So it's not the EU pushing for the right to be forgotten to be extended to the citizens of all countries.

Zancarius 12y ago
> So it's not the EU pushing for the right to be forgotten to be extended to the citizens of all countries. It may be a bad title, probably for the purpose of link baiting, but the article itself isn't completely wrong assuming the EU desire is ultimately to gain control over what information is retained for EU citizens. It's possible this is merely speculation. Personally, if the EU wishes to extend this limit themselves, then they should block access to US search engines from within EU member states. That's entirely within their right to do and it's a whole lot easier than upsetting everyone else who doesn't want to play by the same rules (and negates the need for extending treaties and the likes). At its most extreme, I'm humored a bit by the prospect of what this sort of precedent would set for future demands made by North Korea.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

emiliobumachar 12y ago

I've said this before, and I'm saying it again: If EU courts and regulators want to give citizens the right to be forgotten, they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing. Way before ordering a corporation to burn books.

Vik1ng 12y ago
Seems disproportionate to me. So much goes in my name and it would be a huge pain in the ass to change it just because a high ranking search result maybe is some stupid forum post by someone else from 10 years ago and the person who ran is not reachable and it's hosted in a different country.
DanBC 12y ago
> they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing. There are very few restrictions on changing your name in England. Is that not the case for the rest of Europe?
- esbranson 12y ago
  The US adopted the English legal system, and changing your name is easy as pie. Mexico adopted the French and Spanish legal systems and changing your name is damn near impossible (from what I hear). I figure that's a feature of those legal systems (and their associated legal cultures), not the US and Mexico.

RichardFord 12y ago

They had come up with an excuse to use as an opening salvo for censorship, so they came up with "right to be forgotten".

nitrogen 12y ago

Why are there so many posts talking about censorship and none talking about privacy?

clickok 12y ago
I suspect that's because no one has access to whatever data has been gathered about them, and so it's hard to draw a mental picture of how that could be (or is) being exploited by corporations which apparently believe that they are above the law.
ASneakyFox 12y ago
Because it's not a privacy issue. Privacy is the red herring. There's already ways to protect your privacy online. Additionally no one wants online privacy. People spend long hours making their facebook page
- nitrogen 12y ago
  People make Facebook pages because they think they can control who sees them. Also, different cultures value privacy more than others, because they have more experience with the risks of a lack of privacy.

zmmmmm 12y ago

This is just the start of the inevitable slippery slope: the initial censorship doesn't work (and it never can, because information wants to be free), so they broaden, widen, deepen it. Then since it is still trivial to circumvent by technical means they add laws to try and restrict technical circumvention of the censorship. Then as loopholes are found in the laws against circumvention they have to broaden and deepen those. Soon it is illegal just to know things, to tell people basic knowledge of how to do things. And thus the only viable end point is totalitarianism. There's really no in between - if you want "free speech" at all you have to take all of it or none of it.

clickok 12y ago
I disagree on a couple of points. Information doesn't want anything. There may be a statistical tendency of information to propagate, but it seems to me that the only people who want information to want to be free are those advancing an agenda with a catchy slogan. Further, the only viable endpoint is not totalitarianism-- one can argue about where on the spectrum we stand today, or might be in the future, but in the US we try to strike a balance. Unless you support being able to use whichever country's version of Google that permits things like searching for identity theft, illicit pornography, etc., it seems like we're OK with at least some restrictions on speech. Assuming we accept the EU has the authority to pass such a law, then so long as Google wishes to operate within their jurisdiction, it seems fair that it abides by the law, vis., "deleting data as requested", not "make data inaccessible to those who cannot execute a second Google search on how to subvert the restrictions".
- smsm42 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "search for identity theft", but once Google starts accepting requests for banning any content objectionable in any corner of the world worldwide, a mere picture of a woman with her face not hidden by a burqa would be "illicit pornography". You'd say it's too much, but we need to strike a balance between your desires and religious feelings of people in Sudan, Syria and Iran, don't we? And when you're trying to "strike the balance" by trampling on rights, the ones who cry the loudest - i.e. fanatics - will always win, unless there's a strong and impenetrable barrier that they can not overcome. Like the First Amendment in the US, which, despite all efforts, is still standing. But Europe doesn't have it, and there bans on information and suppression of unpopular expression is the norm. This is just one more example of their descent.

wzdd 12y ago

This is blogspam for the Reuters article it links to, which has neither the inaccurate title nor the speculation (i.e. that blocking based on geo-ip would not be acceptable).

tn13 12y ago

I am not sure why "to be forgotten" is a right in first place. The kind of thuggery that Steve Jobs did to keep our salaries low should be forgotten by society few years down the line ?

tn13 12y ago

This reminds me of the Indian government regulation for telecom companies. According to the regulation the range of a telephone tower should end exactly at the border of the county (taluka) !

syntern 12y ago

I'm wondering, at what point will the EU demand that Santa Claus shall forget what he knows about us? (Referring to the song: "He's making a list, Checking it twice; Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.")

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-extend-ri.html http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-extend-r..., which points to this.

cpa 12y ago

I understand that HN is on the side of absolute freedom of expression which entails that if anything has been public once, it has a right to stay to public till the dawn of times, so I hardly ever comment on these matters. I'm French, and I definitely do not agree with this opinion. In 1978, the french government proposed to cross-reference (through digitalization) many of its databases (birth registry, healthcare, retirement fund, driver's license…). It encountered a very strong resistance from the public, mostly because of an news article in one the biggest newspaper (Le Monde) titled "SAFARI [the name of the project]: the hunt for french citizens" (la chasse aux français). Needless to say that such a system would have been a blessing for the German administration during WW2. It was 1978 and WW2 didn't seem that far away, either your generation or the one of your parents lived during the war. That's how France ended up with a law (Loi Informatique & Libertés) that regulates what one can do with databases storing personal information. How's that related to the right to be forgotten? Bear with me. This law (and up to minor differences, the EU directive on the matter), makes explicit what I consider to be a very smart and important idea: "purpose of data" (finalité des données). Basically, before you're authorized to store personal data (like email adresses, names, phone numbers, IP addresses[1]), you have to state what the purpose of this data is (to who and how is another matter, but that's not too difficult). Also, data should only be stored for a specific amount of time. This duration is determined by the purpose of the data. For example, if you have a database of all the people that used to be registered to your {nodejs,rails,lisp} newsletter but aren't anymore, you cannot keep that data for, say, 10 years. 10 years doesn't make sense given the purpose of your data. Note that if you anonymize the data, you're good to go. On the other hand, if you have medical data on cutting edge treatment of cancer, you may want to keep the data for 30 years if you need to contact a former patient when you discover longterm side-effect of your drug. And in this case, it's fine. You may start to see where I'm going. We have basically the same idea in the right to be forgotten. Yes, it impedes freedom of speech as american people think of it. Sure. But, you know, in Europe, we have a different freedom of speech, which also traces back to WW2. I can't go around saying that I hate black people and that I'm a nazi. I'm gonna be fined/thrown in jail for doing that. And a vast majority of Europeans do agree with that. Basically restrictions are nothing that promotes hate/racism and libel (you can't say that somebody's a serial killer before he's convicted for example.) And you may think I'm backwards, turning away from the blinding beauty of technology (right to be forgotten? that's not how the internet works!). Thinking that Freedom of speech as the US knows it is the way to go everywhere is universalism, pure and simple. So, please remember that countries and people have a history. Yep, the internet doesn't work that way. And I am aware the I can host my server in some random third world country and get away with mostly whatever I host. Or I can use a tor hidden service. But that's not the point. 99% of these cases will be about data hosted by legitimate businesses, which have a name and address and that will be compelled to remove the data. In my opinion, the slope isn't that slippery. After all, you'd be hard pressed to consider EU countries as being way too censorshipy (?) — in general, not just when talking about Internet. And yes, law will always be stupid when you pit it against technology. But unless you advocate total deregulation, it's a matter of how much idiocy you can accept. Finally, a thought on jurisdiction: european judges consider that they have authority if the intended public is european. So yes, google.es, google.co.uk and such are subject to european law. Wether or not google.com is subject to EU law has not been tested in court (it probably has, but I can't remember any specific case), but even in this case, it would be perfectly acceptable (from the court standpoint) to alter google.com for EU IP addresses and leave it untouched for other addresses. So, no, nobody's gonna tread your freedom. Ironically, I don't really have an opinion on Freedom of speech (US vs EU). But I find that the EU has struck a nice balance when it comes to that. Knowing that companies must destroy data that has my name attached to it when it's not relevant anymore is very appealing. In the end, the US and the EU, in this case, disagree on principle, which are like axioms. You can't prove me that one is better (in the general framework of modern civilization, ie, let's say The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to keep it simple.) [1] this one is tricky, but this comment is already long enough

kijin 12y ago

This is going to be a big problem for multinational corporations like Google and Microsoft in the coming years. In order to do business in Country X, they'll have to censor all information that is objectionable to the citizens of X, even when citizens of other countries are trying to access it. Google pulled its Chinese version a few years ago, redirecting users to the Hong Kong version instead. But Google only had a small stake in the Chinese market when it did that. It can't pull the same trick with the EU. It needs to sell ads in the EU, and you can't sell ads in a country while openly violating its laws. Why doesn't the EU take issue with the fact that, for example, the Internet Archive probably has copies of every page that EU citizens want censored? Well, to begin with, few people even know about the Internet Archive. But even more importantly, the Internet Archive has no presence whatsoever in the EU. It's a US charity with US servers. So although it will never be able to get away with hosting content that violates American law, it doesn't need to give a flying fuck about EU law, Thai law, Russian law, or whatever. Oh, the Saudis want to censor images of women driving cars? Feel free to arrest our Chairman if he ever visits Saudi Arabia. I think this is exactly why keeping the flow of information distributed is so important to keeping it open. Different countries want to censor different kinds of information, so the union of censored information is huge, but the intersection is very small. If we become dependent on a few multinational corporations to access information, we'll end up suffering the union of every censorship regime in the world (or at least the union of regimes where those corporations do business in). But if we keep the flow of information distributed, only the intersection need be censored.

cwyers 12y ago

What I really wish someone would explain is why the EU seems to be focusing on Google's indexing of other people's content, rather than the content itself.