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Unlike China, France has a democratically elected government. If the french do not like the censorship actions that their government requires of google, they ar

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 ..
    - sangnoir 11y ago
      All I see is France trampling over other countries sovereignty. Free speech is a protected right in the US, but France is trying to exert French law over American citizens (I'm using the US as an example). It's silly argument: if you do this for all countries, you'll be left with a tiny intersection of only the content that is not illegal in some form somewhere on earth.
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        I can see it as France trampling over other countries sovereignty, but I can also see it as France protecting its sovereign citizens, which is .. after all .. the Purpose of Sovereignty in the first place. So I'm not swayed by your corporatist argument that we should just negate the rights of citizenry for the sake of a clearly non-Sovereign, corporate entity - which has demonstrably profited from the mass-harvesting of social information at the personal layer. It is indeed a gray area, but what did you expect between the extreme black and white of individual freedom and corporate control/hegemony? Some sort of simple 'bit flip'? Alas, precisely because the bits are so easily flipped, this discussion must be continued - and it must not be being conducted, so, reactively. I am an advocate for the right to disappear. I happen to think, having witnessed the bit flip in the positive direction - i.e. mass-surveillance as a consumer - I also wish to remind my peers that it must be recognized that it can .. also .. just as easily be turned off. In other words, French mores on the issue should infect American mores. It would be good for other cultures, other mores, to not let it go the other way: Total Surveillance as a normative. In this sense, perhaps yet again, the French lead the way.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Apples and oranges not only between the situation, but each point you listed. America can do whatever it wants tax-wise to its own citizens. Copyright and bank integration has to do with existing trade agreements that are peer-shared and mutually respected. Russia is free to keep its assets within its own country if it doesn't want to participate in a larger system with shared rules. The issue here is that France is trying to apply a local law that is not mutually agreed upon with any other country, to other countries. And in doing so is creating bad precedent regarding censorship extended across borders with no recourse. I can't challenge France's law in court as a US citizen, so why should I be denied access to information at their discretion?
    - vegabook 11y ago
      Your perspective is too narrow. The wider point is that not everyone agrees with America, yet by virtue of the dollar's dominance, and America's military dominance, America can force anyone to accept its point of view. Clearly no country can survive without access to the dollar-based global payments system. To pretend that Russia can merrily go on without access to it is to sit behind a convenient lie. That is what is happening in all of my points, including (the relatively minor) point a). Recall that it is not obvious that revenue earned in a country that is not America should be taxed by America. More generally, someone democratic needs to challenge America once in a while, arguably for America's own health.
      - DannyBee 11y ago
        So they point out what is wrong with your example, and you make even vaguer arguments in favor of it? Here, your argument is even weaker because it is essentially "we give america power, and they use it". The dollar's dominance is not america's fault, it's literally everyone else's :) America has not militarily imposed it's will on france or any other european nation that i'm aware of in the recent past so i'm not sure you can really claim america forcing y'all to their point of view on that one. If you think for a second that any country that has power will not use it against other countries in trade negotiations, that just seems ultra-naive to me. "Recall that it is not obvious that revenue earned in a country that is not America should be taxed by America." Hey, remember that time when france tried to tax all the Google revenue not earned in france by claiming google ireland has a permanent establishment in france (and then claims google owes it a billion in tax when the max google possibly earned was a total of 237 million in google france?)? No worries though, i'm sure, unlike every other country, france wouldn't try to use it's power to force any other country or multi-national corporation to do anything. They'll only do the right thing.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    Google will tell France to go piss up a rope before they go along with this nonsense. Google would lose far more by rolling over.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    A is an example of "you can do what you want to *your own citizens when it doesn't affect the sovereign rights of other countries", so it's not applicable (IE if the US started taxing french citizens, you'd have a point) b and c are examples of mutually-agreed treaties/agreements. If france didn't want to do it, it shouldnt' have signed the treaties :) d was a mostly-coalition force AFAIK (not my area of expertise), but let me just suggest that rules of starting/fighting wars is not quite the same as the right to be forgotten, and that this doesn't belong as an example because basically every country can be accused of starting wars to impose it's will unilaterally somewhere else. That's what war is :)
    - vegabook 11y ago
      I rest my case. You're basically saying "we're strong so we'll do what we want, thanks, and you'd do the same". Fair enough, and you are right, that is the way of history. But it is also the way that empires fall. ":)"
    - Calebopeko 11y ago
      You might be unaware of this, but FATCA does not only apply to US citizens, but to "U.S. persons for tax purposes". Me, being a German citizen, have to abide FATCA simply because I have income taxable in the US. The limitations are severe: Since living in the US I am not allowed to hold certain financial products that I owned when living in Germany, since compliance with US law would be to costly for German institutions. In particular, citing wikipedia [1], "It requires non-US (foreign) financial institutions, such as banks, to enter into an agreement with the IRS to search through their customer databases to identify those customers suspected of being U.S. persons and to disclose the account holders' names, TINs, addresses, and the transactions of most types of accounts." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act#Opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
      - GauntletWizard 11y ago
        You have income (effectively a form of residency) in two countries. How is it a surprise that you have to abide by both countries laws?
Jun8 11y ago
Labeling the opposing point to France's very strict defamation rules cannot be termed "ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned" really. It has been pointed out that this state of affairs has led to many criminal/politically harmful events to be widely known. One of the best known in recent memory was the DSK affair (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-french-laws http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-f...). Although his rapist past was well-known is some circles through informal gossip, the victims were never able to declare so in public due to threat of these strict laws. More on this sordid affair here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-kahn-book-ban-court-rules_n_2768578.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-k... Many more examples can be provided.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Whatever one thinks of DSK, no court, in either the US or France, has found him guilty. Yes he has paid compensation but there is no criminal charge that stuck. I'll further remind you that DSK was arrested, in traditional style (complaint is phoned in, police arrive), well before the internet got involved. Thus the idea that free-speech on the internet helped justice in this case is untrue.
tuxracer 11y ago
China does have elections and voting on laws. However only a special group is able to participate in those elections. We still do not consider China to be a democracy by any stretch of the imagination. The people who the laws are enforced against weren't able to participate in the election of the representatives who enacted them. By that same measure it would be undemocratic to enforce French laws on non-French citizens who weren't able to participate in the elections of the representative who enacted them. Whatever chip on your shoulder you have about American companies or the actions of the American government do not change this fact.

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 ..
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    All I see is France trampling over other countries sovereignty. Free speech is a protected right in the US, but France is trying to exert French law over American citizens (I'm using the US as an example). It's silly argument: if you do this for all countries, you'll be left with a tiny intersection of only the content that is not illegal in some form somewhere on earth.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      I can see it as France trampling over other countries sovereignty, but I can also see it as France protecting its sovereign citizens, which is .. after all .. the Purpose of Sovereignty in the first place. So I'm not swayed by your corporatist argument that we should just negate the rights of citizenry for the sake of a clearly non-Sovereign, corporate entity - which has demonstrably profited from the mass-harvesting of social information at the personal layer. It is indeed a gray area, but what did you expect between the extreme black and white of individual freedom and corporate control/hegemony? Some sort of simple 'bit flip'? Alas, precisely because the bits are so easily flipped, this discussion must be continued - and it must not be being conducted, so, reactively. I am an advocate for the right to disappear. I happen to think, having witnessed the bit flip in the positive direction - i.e. mass-surveillance as a consumer - I also wish to remind my peers that it must be recognized that it can .. also .. just as easily be turned off. In other words, French mores on the issue should infect American mores. It would be good for other cultures, other mores, to not let it go the other way: Total Surveillance as a normative. In this sense, perhaps yet again, the French lead the way.
- azinman2 11y ago
  Apples and oranges not only between the situation, but each point you listed. America can do whatever it wants tax-wise to its own citizens. Copyright and bank integration has to do with existing trade agreements that are peer-shared and mutually respected. Russia is free to keep its assets within its own country if it doesn't want to participate in a larger system with shared rules. The issue here is that France is trying to apply a local law that is not mutually agreed upon with any other country, to other countries. And in doing so is creating bad precedent regarding censorship extended across borders with no recourse. I can't challenge France's law in court as a US citizen, so why should I be denied access to information at their discretion?
  - vegabook 11y ago
    Your perspective is too narrow. The wider point is that not everyone agrees with America, yet by virtue of the dollar's dominance, and America's military dominance, America can force anyone to accept its point of view. Clearly no country can survive without access to the dollar-based global payments system. To pretend that Russia can merrily go on without access to it is to sit behind a convenient lie. That is what is happening in all of my points, including (the relatively minor) point a). Recall that it is not obvious that revenue earned in a country that is not America should be taxed by America. More generally, someone democratic needs to challenge America once in a while, arguably for America's own health.
    - DannyBee 11y ago
      So they point out what is wrong with your example, and you make even vaguer arguments in favor of it? Here, your argument is even weaker because it is essentially "we give america power, and they use it". The dollar's dominance is not america's fault, it's literally everyone else's :) America has not militarily imposed it's will on france or any other european nation that i'm aware of in the recent past so i'm not sure you can really claim america forcing y'all to their point of view on that one. If you think for a second that any country that has power will not use it against other countries in trade negotiations, that just seems ultra-naive to me. "Recall that it is not obvious that revenue earned in a country that is not America should be taxed by America." Hey, remember that time when france tried to tax all the Google revenue not earned in france by claiming google ireland has a permanent establishment in france (and then claims google owes it a billion in tax when the max google possibly earned was a total of 237 million in google france?)? No worries though, i'm sure, unlike every other country, france wouldn't try to use it's power to force any other country or multi-national corporation to do anything. They'll only do the right thing.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Google will tell France to go piss up a rope before they go along with this nonsense. Google would lose far more by rolling over.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  A is an example of "you can do what you want to *your own citizens when it doesn't affect the sovereign rights of other countries", so it's not applicable (IE if the US started taxing french citizens, you'd have a point) b and c are examples of mutually-agreed treaties/agreements. If france didn't want to do it, it shouldnt' have signed the treaties :) d was a mostly-coalition force AFAIK (not my area of expertise), but let me just suggest that rules of starting/fighting wars is not quite the same as the right to be forgotten, and that this doesn't belong as an example because basically every country can be accused of starting wars to impose it's will unilaterally somewhere else. That's what war is :)
  - vegabook 11y ago
    I rest my case. You're basically saying "we're strong so we'll do what we want, thanks, and you'd do the same". Fair enough, and you are right, that is the way of history. But it is also the way that empires fall. ":)"
  - Calebopeko 11y ago
    You might be unaware of this, but FATCA does not only apply to US citizens, but to "U.S. persons for tax purposes". Me, being a German citizen, have to abide FATCA simply because I have income taxable in the US. The limitations are severe: Since living in the US I am not allowed to hold certain financial products that I owned when living in Germany, since compliance with US law would be to costly for German institutions. In particular, citing wikipedia [1], "It requires non-US (foreign) financial institutions, such as banks, to enter into an agreement with the IRS to search through their customer databases to identify those customers suspected of being U.S. persons and to disclose the account holders' names, TINs, addresses, and the transactions of most types of accounts." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act#Opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
    - GauntletWizard 11y ago
      You have income (effectively a form of residency) in two countries. How is it a surprise that you have to abide by both countries laws?

Jun8 11y ago

Labeling the opposing point to France's very strict defamation rules cannot be termed "ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned" really. It has been pointed out that this state of affairs has led to many criminal/politically harmful events to be widely known. One of the best known in recent memory was the DSK affair (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-french-laws http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-f...). Although his rapist past was well-known is some circles through informal gossip, the victims were never able to declare so in public due to threat of these strict laws. More on this sordid affair here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-kahn-book-ban-court-rules_n_2768578.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-k... Many more examples can be provided.

vegabook 11y ago
Whatever one thinks of DSK, no court, in either the US or France, has found him guilty. Yes he has paid compensation but there is no criminal charge that stuck. I'll further remind you that DSK was arrested, in traditional style (complaint is phoned in, police arrive), well before the internet got involved. Thus the idea that free-speech on the internet helped justice in this case is untrue.

tuxracer 11y ago

China does have elections and voting on laws. However only a special group is able to participate in those elections. We still do not consider China to be a democracy by any stretch of the imagination. The people who the laws are enforced against weren't able to participate in the election of the representatives who enacted them. By that same measure it would be undemocratic to enforce French laws on non-French citizens who weren't able to participate in the elections of the representative who enacted them. Whatever chip on your shoulder you have about American companies or the actions of the American government do not change this fact.