6 ms·

This 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

This 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 ago
The internet is already censored worldwide. We censor copyrighted works, pornography (< 18 y), libel, etc.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Censorship wouldn't be so bad if it was just "click yes to proceed"!
- azinman2 11y ago
  That'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 ago
    And 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 ago
      It'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.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Yes, it is an opinion. There are laws that are above those agreements, and they are continously broken by the US. Again, and again, and again. We have to be on a web where stuff like nude boobs is considered NSFW, where sites that allow users to sell used digital goods are instantly sued to death, etc. These things are all based on a US-centric moral framework. The whole web is full of that. And Google, a company that, until recently, was legally headquartered in Ireland, applies only the US moral standard for their products. Even if I am in europe, I can’t upload a movie to YouTube that is allowed to be shown on TV in Germany during daytime just because the US moral standard says nude boobs are not okay. If the US and its companies want to force their moral and legal standards upon us, we will force our standards upon them, too. Which is one of the reasons why TTIP contains the "local IP" part: Only sparkling wine made in France may be called Champagner from then on, only Parmesan made in Italy may be called this, etc.
        cheald 11y ago
        > If the US and its companies want to force their moral and legal standards upon us, we will force our standards upon them, too. This is incredibly silly reasoning. Google enforces the standards it chooses (generally American standards, in this case, as it is an American company) on its own properties. That's quite a far cry from imposing your own set of values on a third-party service provider. The equivalent would be to start your own service which imposes your own set of standards (which, I'll point out, exists in the form of DailyMotion and LiveLeak, among others), not to say "well if you get to apply your standards to your service then I get to apply my standards to your service."
        kuschku 11y ago
        I made the same point before, but: If a German company operates within Germany with German customers completely legal according to German law, and then gets fucked over by US institutions forcing US banks to seize the money of that company just because the actions (which happened solely under German law) were not according to US law... Then it is the exact same situation. If the US can dictate our companies laws, we can dictate their companies laws, too. The Euro was made also to reduce the influence of the dollar for international trade, and especially the countries within the EU have almost no contact with the dollar anymore, nor do most companies here. Which makes sure the US can’t just seize their assets (like they used to seize assets of companies because "if they trade in dollar, they operate under US law")
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Per country, but the way the laws work (from my non-lawyer understanding) would mean that any company with an office in one country would have to censor those results for other countries as well. If Google was hosting/indexing/etc. certain illegal material in a country where it was illegal, it could still be in major trouble in the US and many countries in Europe.
vegabook 11y ago
Unlike China, France has a democratically elected government. If the french do not like the censorship actions that their government requires of google, they are free to elect an alternative administration. It is disingenuous to assume that all societies have the same ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned, perspective, as appears to be prevalent in the anglo-saxon world, and it is healthy that some democratically elected governments should question Google's hegemony. It certainly doesn't appear to be the case that America's federal administration has anything but sycophantic praise for everything that Silicon Valley does.
- nostromo 11y ago
  French voters are free to censor their own internet. They aren't free to censor the internet globally. France is free to set up their own version of the Great Firewall of China if they want to block Google.com within their borders. That's their recourse; demanding Google censor search results everywhere is not.
  - vegabook 11y ago
    Yet America demands the right a) to tax its citizens globally b) to force other countries to enforce its sanctions under risk of freezing their banks' payment systems (BNP Paribas / Russian banks), c) Hollywood inspired copyright law must be imposed on the rest of the planet (Hollywood is "free" not to sell its wares to the globe, if it doesn't like the piracy risk), d) free-market "democracy" must be imposed on unready countries lest 500 000 troops land on your doorstep, ready to wreak decades of collateral havoc (see Iraq/ISIS). France is making a point that there is a legitimate argument to be discussed about things that happen in France not be pushed out to the rest of the planet. They may be wrong, but the debate is worth having. If Google doesn't like it, it is free to quit France, and the french will be free to punish their government for it.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      I concur - this is an act of corporate imperialism on the part of Google, and it should be no surprise that - as an American company - it flaunts its ability to ignore the will of sovereign entities freely. Troubling times indeed .. I hope this will be reversed in the near future, because I think the right to be forgotten is a very human right, and should not be impinged upon by those who have nearly no other purpose than the rampant commercialization of citizens as consumers. My citizenship is more important than my function as a consumer. Google need to be taught some respect for this fact, alas ..
e12e 11y ago
Well, not quite. I do agree that RTBF as written is sorely lacking -- but I think the fundamental issue is interesting: Do we have a right to privacy? Do we have a right to our own data, and data about ourselves? Both are as I understand it part of the law both in the EU and in the USA. The general mold (which AFAIK is quite similar across the EEC area, somewhat independent of the formation of the EEC/EU) -- is that a user has a right to a) make any (personal/sensitive) information stored is correct, and b) as an extension of various common legal principles one have the right to a new life after being acquitted, and after serving out a sentence. Just those two things imply a need for a global accord on how data should be handled, indexed etc. The current RTBF framework is probably not the best approach -- but I think it misses the mark to simply equate it with censorship. Controlling information is of course technically censorship -- but there's a difference between having a legal recourse against defamation -- and erasing Tiananmen Square from history. I do think we are right to be worried about the actual results of any legislation though. If it wasn't so unlikely to actually get anywhere, one might want the UN, or the Haag to set up some form of accord -- as right to privacy, and right to manage information in digital archives (which are much more versatile, accessible, trivial to copy and linkable than traditional paper archives) have some definite overlap with human rights. This isn't some insurmountable task; there appears to be wide co-operation on other kinds of data, such as child porn already -- even if the age of consent is very different in the (all of?) the US and much of Euorope.

okasaki 11y ago

The internet is already censored worldwide. We censor copyrighted works, pornography (< 18 y), libel, etc.

forrestthewoods 11y ago
Censorship wouldn't be so bad if it was just "click yes to proceed"!
azinman2 11y ago
That'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 ago
  And 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 ago
    It'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.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Yes, it is an opinion. There are laws that are above those agreements, and they are continously broken by the US. Again, and again, and again. We have to be on a web where stuff like nude boobs is considered NSFW, where sites that allow users to sell used digital goods are instantly sued to death, etc. These things are all based on a US-centric moral framework. The whole web is full of that. And Google, a company that, until recently, was legally headquartered in Ireland, applies only the US moral standard for their products. Even if I am in europe, I can’t upload a movie to YouTube that is allowed to be shown on TV in Germany during daytime just because the US moral standard says nude boobs are not okay. If the US and its companies want to force their moral and legal standards upon us, we will force our standards upon them, too. Which is one of the reasons why TTIP contains the "local IP" part: Only sparkling wine made in France may be called Champagner from then on, only Parmesan made in Italy may be called this, etc.
      - cheald 11y ago
        > If the US and its companies want to force their moral and legal standards upon us, we will force our standards upon them, too. This is incredibly silly reasoning. Google enforces the standards it chooses (generally American standards, in this case, as it is an American company) on its own properties. That's quite a far cry from imposing your own set of values on a third-party service provider. The equivalent would be to start your own service which imposes your own set of standards (which, I'll point out, exists in the form of DailyMotion and LiveLeak, among others), not to say "well if you get to apply your standards to your service then I get to apply my standards to your service."
        kuschku 11y ago
        I made the same point before, but: If a German company operates within Germany with German customers completely legal according to German law, and then gets fucked over by US institutions forcing US banks to seize the money of that company just because the actions (which happened solely under German law) were not according to US law... Then it is the exact same situation. If the US can dictate our companies laws, we can dictate their companies laws, too. The Euro was made also to reduce the influence of the dollar for international trade, and especially the countries within the EU have almost no contact with the dollar anymore, nor do most companies here. Which makes sure the US can’t just seize their assets (like they used to seize assets of companies because "if they trade in dollar, they operate under US law")
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Per country, but the way the laws work (from my non-lawyer understanding) would mean that any company with an office in one country would have to censor those results for other countries as well. If Google was hosting/indexing/etc. certain illegal material in a country where it was illegal, it could still be in major trouble in the US and many countries in Europe.

vegabook 11y ago

Unlike China, France has a democratically elected government. If the french do not like the censorship actions that their government requires of google, they are free to elect an alternative administration. It is disingenuous to assume that all societies have the same ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned, perspective, as appears to be prevalent in the anglo-saxon world, and it is healthy that some democratically elected governments should question Google's hegemony. It certainly doesn't appear to be the case that America's federal administration has anything but sycophantic praise for everything that Silicon Valley does.

nostromo 11y ago
French voters are free to censor their own internet. They aren't free to censor the internet globally. France is free to set up their own version of the Great Firewall of China if they want to block Google.com within their borders. That's their recourse; demanding Google censor search results everywhere is not.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Yet America demands the right a) to tax its citizens globally b) to force other countries to enforce its sanctions under risk of freezing their banks' payment systems (BNP Paribas / Russian banks), c) Hollywood inspired copyright law must be imposed on the rest of the planet (Hollywood is "free" not to sell its wares to the globe, if it doesn't like the piracy risk), d) free-market "democracy" must be imposed on unready countries lest 500 000 troops land on your doorstep, ready to wreak decades of collateral havoc (see Iraq/ISIS). France is making a point that there is a legitimate argument to be discussed about things that happen in France not be pushed out to the rest of the planet. They may be wrong, but the debate is worth having. If Google doesn't like it, it is free to quit France, and the french will be free to punish their government for it.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    I concur - this is an act of corporate imperialism on the part of Google, and it should be no surprise that - as an American company - it flaunts its ability to ignore the will of sovereign entities freely. Troubling times indeed .. I hope this will be reversed in the near future, because I think the right to be forgotten is a very human right, and should not be impinged upon by those who have nearly no other purpose than the rampant commercialization of citizens as consumers. My citizenship is more important than my function as a consumer. Google need to be taught some respect for this fact, alas ..

e12e 11y ago

Well, not quite. I do agree that RTBF as written is sorely lacking -- but I think the fundamental issue is interesting: Do we have a right to privacy? Do we have a right to our own data, and data about ourselves? Both are as I understand it part of the law both in the EU and in the USA. The general mold (which AFAIK is quite similar across the EEC area, somewhat independent of the formation of the EEC/EU) -- is that a user has a right to a) make any (personal/sensitive) information stored is correct, and b) as an extension of various common legal principles one have the right to a new life after being acquitted, and after serving out a sentence. Just those two things imply a need for a global accord on how data should be handled, indexed etc. The current RTBF framework is probably not the best approach -- but I think it misses the mark to simply equate it with censorship. Controlling information is of course technically censorship -- but there's a difference between having a legal recourse against defamation -- and erasing Tiananmen Square from history. I do think we are right to be worried about the actual results of any legislation though. If it wasn't so unlikely to actually get anywhere, one might want the UN, or the Haag to set up some form of accord -- as right to privacy, and right to manage information in digital archives (which are much more versatile, accessible, trivial to copy and linkable than traditional paper archives) have some definite overlap with human rights. This isn't some insurmountable task; there appears to be wide co-operation on other kinds of data, such as child porn already -- even if the age of consent is very different in the (all of?) the US and much of Euorope.