Mr. Schmidt, Google’s outspoken chief who will be replaced by Mr. Page on
Monday, has made public gaffes when speaking about privacy. Mr. Levy reveals
that he has made gaffes inside the company, too. Mr. Schmidt asked that
Google remove from the search engine information about a political donation
he had made. Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who is now Facebook’s chief
operating officer, told him that was unacceptable. [2]
It's hard to say whether he's a sociopath or an entitled asshole, so I suggest compromise: he's an entitled sociopathic asshole.
[1] http://gawker.com/5477611/googles-ceo-demanded-his-mistress-...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/01author.html?_r=...
They are complaining that you are just removing it from google. The info is still there!
And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it.
Which makes it as stupid of a law as the one about cookies: Make it look like you are helping privacy while actually doing nothing of any value.
Anyone from the EU who wants the full scoop about someone will just use the US google site, making this a completely pointless exercise.
Which, as far as I can tell, is the point of the ruling.
The idea is to not have one particular thing that the world found interesting or newsworthy at some point in the past cast a shadow over an individual's life, so to speak. Yes, if you're really interested in someone's dirt, all the info is still there for you to dig up. Again, that's the idea.
Your point about google.com being unfiltered is, if true, somewhat valid. But the inability to enforce a good thing globally does not excuse not making an effort locally.
By the way, most countries in the EU do not use a `.co` domain for commercial entities.
Do you have a reference that confirms this? I have not seen it mentioned in any of the articles about this issue.
Where is this information from? Sounds a bit strange, but I guess it could be true. It's not the first time big companies say "f u" to these rulings.
Historically, for Europe it's been done via domain name. Doing it via IP address would not be any more effective though: there'd immediately be dozens of proxy sites set up running in the US that simply forward the search to the US Google and return the results.
Short of building an equivalent to the Chinese Great Firewall and blocking all encrypted traffic, or forcing Google to apply European cenorship globally, there's no way to stop Europeans who want regular results pages from getting them.
We, the users, are missing out on the completeness of our search results. You already have no control over information about you. It has always been like that, people have been gossiping since the dawn of language. If something was published, then it should be in the index.
If you don't like it, take it up with the publisher. This is just like those ridiculous rulings on copyright infringement by linking to a copyrighted work.
And yes, everyone who downvotes you is a shill for Google at 0.2$/downvote. There's just no other explanation.
We already make exceptions for certain things (illegal content). Obviously a line has to be drawn somewhere - it's just a matter of where we draw it.
>> "We, the users, are missing out on the completeness of our search results."
With this law AFAIK content cannot be removed if that would be against the public good. So, for example, a politician can't have an article that makes the look bad but is true removed. Technically, although no longer 'complete', the quality of your search results should not be hit. The only results being removed are ones which are incorrect and damaging to someone.
>> "If you don't like it, take it up with the publisher."
AFAIK with this law the publisher has to remove it too. Google is involved because they cache pages which can include deleted content.
Full EU court ruling in the following link: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
I think the case make a distinction between a newspaper publication that is rather ephemeral and spatially located vs a search engine that plays a big part in disseminating information or any other "data processor" that can potentially expose the information for ever.
The crux of the argument seems to be that even if you are only indexing, by definition, you are managing/duplicating data, and in some case, they are private data so you have a responsibility before the person being identified (the "data subject").
The distinction between someone of public interest and someone who isn't is entirely arbitrary and open to endless debate. What happens when people start disputing that they're famous enough to no longer meet this standard? Historically it results in giant and expensive court fights, which puts people off from trying this - almost by definition, if you're rich enough to waste money on arguing you're not in the public interest, then you are in the public interest. But making Google do this means unless they charge lawyer like bills, suddenly everyone has an incentive to argue they're not important.
Let's imagine you have somehow cleaned your past when you were unknown and you are now running for the presidential election. Your past is not going to magically reappear online, but you can expect that some journalist will try to write a bio on you, contacting friends, people you grew up with, etc... And it could happen that your friend Joe would talk about your drunk prom night. So it is back on the public eye, and it won't be removable this time.
Maybe it would have been easier if the information had always been available in the first place, but I am personally willing that some extra effort, both from "data processor" and investigator, would be needed in the sake of the personal data protection of John Doe.
But if someone is thinking about becoming a politician, uses their current obscurity to delete the data from a search engine, and then goes on to run in an election, isn't this exactly when we should want to see all that is on the internet about them? So it makes sense that the information would come back.
Your proposed solution to this is that everyone should have to effectively give up modern technology in this case and hope that some journalist, somehow, without any modern tools, finds all the relevant information despite governments helping this person bury it. Why would we give up powerful tools like this? How is that not a Luddite strategy?
I don't see any way this ruling (I hesitate to call it a law because it doesn't seem to be connected to any actual law that anyone knew about) can be applied in any kind of consistent or useful manner. It WILL turn into a giant fight over who is or is not worthy of being censored or not, with lots of people bending over backwards to argue that they aren't really in the public interest. As presumably there are punishments and fines for not censoring enough data, but there's no punishment for censoring too much, this will inevitably hurt not only ordinary everyday people but also democracy itself.
I agree it will cause issues, and create complex cases, but I think it is worth trying. And if it does not work out, it will be canceled or obsolete in 10 or 20 years. It is not such a big deal.
More on UE Data laws : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive
This "right to be forgotten" conveniently does not seem to apply to governments, only search engines. So from a democratic perspective it's lose/lose.
Search engines just index the web. If you have an issue with some stuff on the web, then go after the person hosting it, not the person telling you where it is.
This is akin to shooting the messenger.
The biggest gripe for me about this thing is that removing a link from google doesn't remove it from the website itself.
But people think they're safe once the can't find it via Google because Google is all they know. Especially in the age of removing URLs from the browsers input field and all.
Just because the person who brought the suit targeted Google first (which is not strange, given that Google collects and re-publishes that information in a way that makes it immeasurably more accessible and "public" than the original publication) doesn't make the everybody else exempt.
The only valid debate her is if Google significantly adds to the damage, or if Google's search engine is just a neutral utility. I would say the answer to that is pretty f-ing obvious. That ship has sailed a long time ago.
Today, Google's search results and interface are so thoroughly manipulated (not just for profit but also for political/ideological reasons) that it counts as a curated publication.
The fact that Google uses algorithms instead of humans for most of that curation doesn't absolve them from responsibility for the result.
But the same is probably true for the average person looking for it. A small Employer might look trough a few results to see if can find something about a applicant, but he is not going to do some big reasearch.
I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America.
For those downvoting - are you a shill for Google? Try reading the form itself to appreciate how exceedingly reasonable it is:
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.” In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.