12 ms·
Google to France: We Won't Forget It for You Wholesale
- amelius 11y agoI think it is crazy that we still cannot define individually how many bytes of data Google may store to profile us. Note that it should not take many bits to profile us in a way that is useful, while still respecting our privacy. For example, with about 33 bits of information, one can identify any individual on this planet. With less than this amount, one can still put you in a class of individuals, such that you get relevant search results.
- Qantourisc 11y agoGEOip anyone ? Not sure if it's reliable or it's performance impact. In terms of bypassing it: it's either world-wide block outside of your juridiction or tough luck.
- weinzierl 11y agoGoogle already uses GeoIP (and IP multicast). Doesn't matter if you type google.de or google.com in the URL-bar of the browser. You will always get the German version, which differs significantly and is practically worthless for programming or technology topics. I assume it's the same for google.fr (can't try it for obvious reasons). What works is google.com/ncr or just use duckduckgo.
- Twisell 11y agoOnly thing that bother me is that this article revolve solely around google point of view. The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen privacy when published media can have negative effect on their life. As for an example revenge porn, false public accusation or protection of witness are more in the spectrum of RTBF law than chinese-like censorship mentionned by Google. And correct me if I'm wrong but french RTBF apply only to individuals, so how could they even compare this with state censorsphip?
- azinman2 11y agoBecause the precedent is dangerous and is a very slippery slope. RTBF will easily start applying to politicians, from there we'll let's also remove XYZ and soon we're in China.
- brians 11y agoWell, Google does have programs to take revenge porn out of many search results, and does (unsurprisingly) have programs to rate truth above falsehood: that's part of the search quality about which they're so passionate. The bit where the state says they'll punish you if you don't comply---if you don't stop talking about the things they want kept quiet? That's state censorship. What else could it be?
- msh 11y agoBut then again, why should they have a right to ask google not to show a newspaper article that is legal for the newspaper to keep online? It sounds like a end run around press freedom to me.
- Twisell 11y agoI totally understand your point and of course it had to be both in and ideal world. But if the web server is hosted offshore... But again its strange because Google dont say they won't apply RTBF, they just say they will apply it on a per country basis... But from a technical standpoint this is even more complicated... So they basically say "we Google define the law" for everything that is "out" of your country. Yet good luck to them defining what "out your country mean" in a global network.
- neokya 11y agoExactly, I find myself feeling uneasy while reading the article. I thought 'Right to be forgotten' was something organisation like EFF stand for.
- DannyBee 11y agoThe right to be forgotten is the right to erase history. EFF is not a fan of right to erase history when they see other mechanisms for solving the same problem. (IE either we should give up an curtail press freedoms, or we should accept that society needs to be more accepting of reality. This intermediate state where we curtail the freedom of certain actors, but have decided another set get a pass, is what the EFF is complaining about)
- OedipusRex 11y agoRTBF is unenforceable.
- threeseed 11y agoOf course it is. Google is not the Internet. They are a multinational company who store search results in a series of databases created and managed by people. Those results can be changed if Google wants to do business in France and quite likely the EU if it all starts to escalate. And I'll let you in on a secret. European startups would be more than happy to build the next Google.
- panzagl 11y agoI'll let you in on another secret- it will fail. EU regulations will strip it of any ability to make money.
- bduerst 11y agoWasn't this one of the reactions to the RTBF? That it's a red herring to the EU's greater trade regulatory problems?
- meatysnapper 11y agoNot to mention nice tax loopholes
- azinman2 11y agoThere's nothing preventing them from starting the next Google, except the insane amount of difficulties in doing so. That said, Russia and China have been able to do so quite well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Bluestrike2 11y agoWon't stop people from trying and getting upset when they run into that little obstacle.
- wmeredith 11y agoThis is like China wanting to extend the great firewall to the rest of the world. France, if you want to have whatever little censored version of the internet locked in bureaucratic stranglehold, fine. But worldwide? GTFO.
- okasaki 11y agoThe internet is already censored worldwide. We censor copyrighted works, pornography (< 18 y), libel, etc.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoCensorship wouldn't be so bad if it was just "click yes to proceed"!
- azinman2 11y agoThat's a per-country situation. Copyright is not universal, and even age of consent is per country. Various countries like Indonesia ban all porn, some countries outlaw animal porn, other's allow it. Etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...
- kuschku 11y agoAnd the US opinion on these things is applied worldwide. People are arrested in New Zealand and Germany even though they didn’t break local laws by hosting pirated content. If the US can enforce their laws on the web, why should France, China, etc not be able to do so, too?
- azinman2 11y agoIt's not opinion. They've entered mutually agreed upon trade/copyright agreements explicitly. Similarly New Zealand or Germany can enforce its copyrights in the US.
- exelius 11y agoIt's almost like the EU wants to become irrelevant...
- tdaltonc 11y agoImagine this: A website that fulfills a search query by searching google.com, then searching google.fr, then searching google.cn. It shows the results to the google.com query but gives badges to results based on which governments appear to be censoring them.
- stephengillie 11y agoLong ago, there was a search engine named Dogpile that would search Google and Altavista and Yahoo and Ask Jeeves about a dozen others.
- n0us 11y agoFor some reason our computer teacher in elementary school had a strange obsession with this site and we were only allowed to use dogpile instead of any of those sites individually. There might have been another one that was used from time to time called "metacrawler" I think... its been a while.
- mirimir 11y agoBack in the day before Google, MetaCrawler _ruled_ :)
- jgrowl 11y agoI almost got in trouble with a friend for using dogpile. A teacher walked passed and immediately assumed that it was obscene (thinking it was referencing a pile of dog poop I guess?). Luckily their was another teacher nearby that knew what it was and gave it the OK.
- cwyers 11y agoDuckDuckGo is an example of a metasearch engine, although it does some of its own spidering as well.
- azinman2 11y agoSounds like the way that google.cn already works -- google will tell you its omitting certain search results because China requested it.
- jobu 11y agoIt seems the judicial system in France could learn something from Colombia: "Seeking to balance the right to clarify the record and the right to freedom of expression, the [highest Constitutional Court in Colombia] held that the newspaper was not required to remove the article. The court did require the newspaper to update the published information and use “robots.txt” and “metatags” to prevent the indexing of the content by Google due to the particularly serious nature of the crime and the severe personal consequences for Gloria."
- jegutman 11y agoBe careful with spelling here. You get it right once and wrong the other time. Columbia - University in NYC Colombia - Country in South America I make so many spelling mistakes I hate to correct, but when I ready your first sentence I thought you might have meant the university.
- ics 11y agoThere are many more well known nouns called Columbia than just the university, but amusingly the very first sentence on Wikipedia reads "'Columbia' is a frequent misspelling of Colombia, a large country in South America. See also Colombia (disambiguation) for other uses of that spelling." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- davnicwil 11y agoNever realised this spelling mistake was such a thing but now I notice it all the time! I've been living in Bogotá for a few months and I only realised I was spelling Colombia wrong a couple of months in - pretty embarrassing. I now notice many if not most of my English-speaking friends make the same mistake when emailing/facebooking/whatsapping me and I try to correct them as I go. It appears Columbia is a reflex spelling of the sound of the word - I'm from the UK so haven't had that much exposure to the use of the word for the NY University, so I don't think that's the explanation in my case. Someone should make a website for this along the lines of amispellingcolumbiacorrectly.com -> NO to spread the word ;-)
- stuxnet79 11y agoSo no mention of the Phillip K Dick short story that's being referenced either in the article itself or HN?
- stephengillie 11y agoI'm not familiar with Phillip K Dick's short stories. Which one do you mean?
- js2 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Wholesale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Who... (adapted to film as "Total Recall" twice). Quite a few of his stories have been made into movies with Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") probably the best adaptation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Film_adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Fi...
- stephengillie 11y agoPerhaps you mean Piers Anthony? And that was a full-length novel, later turned into a major motion picture, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Edit: it was adapted into that movie, then novelized afterward? Edit2: http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-Anthony/dp/0380708744 http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-Anthony/dp/03807087...
- js2 11y agoNope, Total Recall was based on "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." I wonder what story you are thinking of? Edit: yes, apparently: "In 1966, the late Philip K. Dick published the novelette "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." A movie based on the story will be released next year; this book is a novelization of the script and the original novel" -- http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-Anthony/dp/0688052096 http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-Anthony/dp/06880520...
- macmac 11y agoBefore mounting your US judicial high horse please remember that the US claims universal jurisdiction more than any other country in the world. As a US corporation please keep this in mind before you denigrate this judicial practices of foreign jurisdictions.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- stock_toaster 11y agoOr it could be that accusing critics of hypocrisy (tu quoque fallacy?), instead of addressing the actual criticism itself, is simply discouraged.
- guelo 11y agoNo. I will not think about how one specific country does bad things every time someone points out any other country doing bad things.
- belorn 11y agoDo Google have any presence in France like offices or property which to give the judicial system in France jurisdiction to make this decision over the site?
- traek 11y agoYes. https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/ https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/
- tedunangst 11y agoThey definitely have EU offices, which exposes them to some cross jurisdiction uniformity blah blah.
- fit2rule 11y agoI view this as a very cynical attempt by Googles' counsel to prevent it from being governed by the laws of France. Associating the "right to be forgotten" with Russias' homophobic laws is clearly an attempt to frame the idea in the negative - when the right to be forgotten is far from the same kind of heinous cultural act as homophobia. Very, very cynical - and Google have lost yet another point in their race to dominate culture as a corporate, global power..
- javert 11y agoFrance's attempt to censor Google is an act of aggression against Google and all of its users. So, you are wrong. The cynical thing is for France to aggress against the entire free world.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago>France's attempt to censor Google is an act of aggression against Google and all of its users. Just to be clear, the argument here is that censoring Google is an act of aggression against Google and all of its users regardless of what is being censored. So forcing Google to censor illegal material would be beholden to this argument as well?
- javert 11y agoThe only thing you can't do is aggress against other people. Google has the right to spread whatever it wants as long as it is not aggressing against other people in doing it.
- fit2rule 11y agoIf I'm French, and I want to be forgotten, then Google should forget me. If I'm American, and want to look at the life of my French friend - and can do so only because I'm not in France but rather in America - then why is it acceptable for Google to say "okay your friend is forgotten: only in France - here is the stuff they didn't want you to know". Again this is is just cynical flaunting of sovereignty on Googles' part, and another example of a supra-national entity lauding its power over democratic governments.
- Maarten88 11y agoWhy is the solution of an ip address based block not proposed? To me that seems to be the most reasonable solution to this problem.
- mitchty 11y agoWhat happens when we move to ipv6 then and have privacy extensions? Block a new ip address every 3-8 hours depending on what os is backing things?
- Dylan16807 11y agoThankfully IP addresses are distributed in large blocks, not individually.
- jerf 11y agoFrom a legal perspective, hypotheticals about the Internet becoming the union of all restrictions worldwide isn't even the best argument. If we accept that Google can be compelled by France to be forced to hide some content from the entire world, then we must also accept that Google can be compelled by some other jurisdiction to be required to make that content available. It's the same power. The Republic of X may make its propaganda mandatory and the Breakaway Republic of X may ban it, and I'm only being generic to be polite, I could easily name specific examples of this sort of thing if the French precedent is to be accepted.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoGood. The concept of RTBF as is currently implemented is insane, and it's good to see Google finally reacting like in that scene from Avengers: "I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago"In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world’s least free place." Well, duh! Governments WANT this.
- bsaul 11y agoSomething i don't get. Why ask google to modify its content depending on the domain name rather than the ip of the client ? Ip geolocating can work to identify if someone lives in france. Client living in France => serve content based on french laws.
- forty 11y agoPeople can use VPN, so it's not very easy to know whether someone lives in France. That's all the problem IMO: some people here are saying "France: do whatever you want in your country but don't censor elsewhere". France could just answser: "very well, I just want this content not to be accessible in France, so do whatever you have to do, but respect our laws in France". And Google would have no choice to censor everywhere if it wants to comply since otherwise the search results would be accessible from France (through VPN).
- bsaul 11y agoBut vpn is another matter entirely. You're explicitey trying to avoid the limits of your current access point / physical location. They could comply and say to he cnil "if vpn is bothering you, then you should regulate vpn use".
- forty 11y agoI agree, it's pretty hard to know in this case whether the one breaking the law is the VPN provider (since is "smuggling" illegal search result into France) or the illegal search result provider. EDIT: I wonder how it works for drugs for example: if someone sells drugs from a country where it's legal to France, could he be found guilty in France? (I am pretty sure the smuggler/dealer will ^^)