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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
by 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 agoAll 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 agoI 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.
- sangnoir 11y agoImportant detail: not once in my comment did I mention or hint at a corporate entity. I was merely commenting on a nation-to-nation level. You seem to be fine with French law applying to American nationals - what do you think of sharia law applying to French nationals? How about the law-of-the-week declared by some upstart banana republic dictator? Who gets to pull the lever on global law? Where do you, fit2rule, draw the line - is it only France? Only countries where Google has operates? only western democracies? Or does every sovereign get to throw what they deem illegal into the pot?
- fit2rule 11y agoGoogle do business in France, and are thus subject to French laws when doing so - especially with regard to how it interacts with French citizens. Do you not think that as a state, France has some jurisdiction over how this occurs? And yes, I deem sovereign power more important than corporate power. Don't you?
- sangnoir 11y agoFrench laws being applied in France ate fine and dandy. French laws applied worldwide? I'm with "corporate power" on that one. Someone needs to tell France to keep it's laws to itself. That is the essence of sovereignty