Web firms, DON'T PANIC: The Euro Google 'right to be forgotten' isn't a problem Are you an internet company? Beware of companies and organisations purporting to "help" European firms interpret the new Google privacy ruling. you may find yourself taking unnecessary mitigation measures - and fuelling the trolls. Last week, the ECJ ruled that Google was subject to European privacy and data protection laws, …
It's a sad fact of life that there are those seeking to profit from this, as much as there are those seeking to profit from our (sometimes) private information.
I looked at the ruling and, TBH, I never thought it was intended to do anything but ensure that the big multinational companies remove our details from their systems should we ask them to. But, it's in the interest of these lawyers to perpetuate the myth that it applies to every company. After all, the Ambulance chasing market is pretty much saturated with lawyers, so I suspect there are a lot of them not doing much.
It's a fair bet that 99% of company owners and CEOs will not read this report, so they could be easy pickings for the snake oil salesmen that run these legal advice firms.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against lawyers as such. They can be good, although I have some reservations about the lawyer who handled my mum's estate when she died. He had us do all the leg work (including form filling and any research required), talked to us for about 90 minutes and charged us for 4 hours work at £190 an hour.
If only we could get a legal precedent that classifies everything on the internet (whether search results, web content, forum chatter or social media in its entirety) as being "hearsay" and therefore inadmissable, wouldn't that solve a lot of the problems of companies and individuals taking action merely on the basis of stuff they find on the web.
> So if BBC news says your a paedophile ... then it's just hearsay and is inadmissible
I really hope so - as I'm not (and never have been) - though it would make a lawyer very rich, if it did. Plus, I don't believe there has ever been a situation where something reported by any news media has ever been presented as evidence. It's obviously not - and places that decide guilt or innocence require much higher standards than "I read it in the Daily Mail" [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI ] and will only ever refer back to the primary source as an acceptable account of events or facts.
So yes: anything that is on the web should be treated as suspect, as its source is second-hand (hence: hearsay, not from a primary witness or victim) and we know that people post the most exaggerated accounts, can have their websites hacked and often get stuff wrong and repeat things that are either incorrect, out of date or simply illegal.
The problem would be that there are many ways around "reporting", such as reporting that <someone else> said the things we wish to promulgate or crediting it to "a reliable source" and then claiming press immunity.
But the principle stands: there is so much misinformation, so many lies, factual errors, misunderstandings and misreportings on the web that it would be good to have its legal status downgraded to something akin to inadmissible.
I dunno. You remember that woman in Bristol who got murdered and somebody from the Daily Heil decided her landlord looked a bit funny, declared him guilty and his life was ruined despite being later fully proven innocent?
The problem is that the public don't read followups and retractions, which is why media organizations are so happy to print them. All you need is the initial smear and that's it, damage done.
> I don't believe there has ever been a situation where something reported by any news media has ever been presented as evidence.
Er, what? News organisations routinely hand the results of their investigations to the police or CPS for further action. There are a couple of MPs in prison for fraud right now thanks to evidence provided by The Telegraph. It was a pretty big news story. Did you really not notice it?
Can someone explain the rationale behind the ruling? I am not fan of Google but it does seem obtuse. As I understand a man complained about the online presence of a (true) news story about him, and about Google linking to it. The court said the newspaper can keep the article online but Google must remove the link. Where is the logic or sense in that?
Blame the French, it was their idea.
Europe adopted "the right to a private life" as a fundamental right in 1995, it was incorporated into UK law more recently (hence the superinjunctions, etc) and Europe's highest Court has simply ruled that Google is not exempt. Newspapers have their own derogations.
I would recommend reading the ECJ's ruling as it is in plain English and the three page summary for idiots even more so:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf
From what I understand the news article is from a while ago and is no longer relevant to the situation the person is in. Unfortunately when people search for the person's name the article appears in the search results and negatively impacts on whatever he is doing.
By getting the search engine to no longer return that result the casual searcher will not see that article and will not be prejudiced. A more thorough searcher can still find it but they need to make the effort.
If Google deletes the link to information, do they have to delete it permanantly? Do they have to delete it globally? Or can they just delete it and let their spider find it again in a week? Are they going to handle it like they do DCMA takedown requests, where a handy link takes you to a copy of the document that includes all of the associated URLs?
From reading the ruling, AFAICT IANAL:
- That Source Page may be displayed in search results.
- That Individual's Name may be searched for, and show results.
- That Source Page may NOT be displayed in those results for that Individual's Name.
i.e. everyone has to rewrite their search engines to add filter layer functionality that is neither ingress nor egress.
Um, nice troll - but do you really think Google doesn't "censor" what its crawlers return? Google chooses not display millions of spammy sites already. It block deletes entire domains, too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/
If you think the internet "has just been broken", it's because you don't know how it works.
Woah. Erm, I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago, as you've misunderstood it, and attacked it, and used a link that shows an Ingress filter, which I said you can't use in this case.
And I wasn't actually saying anything about "the internet "has just been broken"" either.. or trolling..
I was saying, that search engines are typically designed with Ingress filters (against the data source), which you cannot use here, as it would negatively impact OTHER legitimate results from that source, or Egress filters (or call it the Search Term filter, actually) which you can't use as OTHER people have that name as well and you can't delete them.
So this court order must be enacted at the *data-relating* layer. I am asking, do any search engines actually have that feature?
You were asking if other search engines / services fall under the ruling. You're trying do this by not to reading the article - or the decision!
The Justices made it pretty clear that the societal impact that a service has is important. Google has a huge reputational impact. A subscription clippings service, or a search engine nobody uses (eg, Bing) less so. They simply rejected Google argument that it isn't exempt from EU law.
I'm sorry but your description of filters doesn't make sense to me, and I don't see its relevance. But just as with any other publisher, a search engine has some control over what it publishes.
I thought the ruling was quite simple to understand. I would sum it up as...
If you collect information on someone with whom you have a formal business relationship - no problem.
If you collect information on someone because you have a legal obligation or right to do so - no problem.
If you collect information on someone for the purposes of legitimate public interest journalism or media - no problem.
If you collect information on someone and none of the above apply - you may have a problem.
Than you need to start realising it.
It's not as if collecting data about people is some unforeseen side-effect of Google's business. Their business plan involves collecting as much data about everyone and everything in the world as possible. If their plan does not also include realising that they might have collected personal data about people, then they're fuckwits.
Can someone dig out the bit in the pdf that delineates what makes you too small to be affected by this? Is it that you have to be large enough to be capable of significant reputational damage in someone else's opinion?
Apparently it's In There Somewhere, but I didn't see it on my last reading.
Would not the obvious solution to Mario Costeja González's embarassment over having his house sold to satisfy a delinquent tax bill be to have the La Vanguardia Ediciones SL eliminate the article from its web site, or at least install a robot.txt file that would inform Google's crawler (and others) that the area should not be indexed? I have not heard of complaints that Google and other widely used indexers ignore those, and it would be reasonable to argue that to do so should be made unlawful ora cause for civil action.
As it is, information about Mr. Costeja Gonzalez's troubles now is far more available publicly than before, including from every major newspaper and news web site including, perhaps, The Register. Not good for him, although possibly OK for other, less well known, future petitioners.
There also would appear to be some law to be made around this decision, concerning the extent of the required web purge. Would search providers have to purge links to Maureen Dowd's column in this morning's New York Times, for instance
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/opinion/dowd-remember-to-forget.html?hp&rref=opinion
or to other articles that either the embarrassing sale or have links to it? Would the other individuals named Mario Costeja Gonzalez's have legal cause to complain if links referring to them were altered or removed accidentally? This is not made up: it appeared a few weeks ago that there are a number of distinct people with that name, some in South America; they are for now unfindable in the first 25 or so pages of Google search results.
The Source page is :
- protected by a different law - it won't go down - it's an official news archive.
- in the Judges opinion a smaller problem than Google rebroadcasting it.
- unlikely to block Google from their pages (as non-searchable archives aren't useful)
The Judges:
- haven't asked for the Source page to be removed from Google
- haven't asked for the Name to be Ungoogleable
- only ordered that that Source must NOT appear in that Name's list of results.
You *can* obey the ruling by deleting the Source from the spiderlist, *or* by refusing to display results for the Name. This causes collateral damage, as noted. Doing it in a way that *only* affects results where *both* factors intersect requires a *third* redaction layer in a different place in the engine.
If you do not have this third filter, you can only comply by causing collateral damage.
By that definition removing spammy links is also "collateral damage". I'm not sure who you're trying to convince.
But for context:
You joined The Register forums quite recently to defend Google.
80pc of your posts are about Google.
100pc of your posts about Google defend its evasion of some law: competition law, privacy law etc.
So at least you're being consistent.
"By that definition removing spammy links is also "collateral damage". I'm not sure who you're trying to convince"
Since I wasn't talking about spammy links, and I was *obviously* talking about the potential for *involuntary* collateral damage, which the spammy links *still* aren't, I'm not sure why you're bringing it up, again. Also, my point was *not specific to Google* no matter how much you want it to be.
"But for context:"
*smokebomb*
"You joined The Register forums quite recently to defend Google"
False. Proveably false. And my reply to this and your other accusations got rightly blocked by the moderator.
The Source page is :
- protected by a different law - it won't go down - it's an official news archive.
- in the Judges opinion a smaller problem than Google rebroadcasting it.
- unlikely to block Google from their pages (as non-searchable archives aren't useful)
The Judges:
- haven't asked for the Source page to be removed from Google
- haven't asked for the Name to be Ungoogleable
- only ordered that that Source must NOT appear in that Name's list of results.
You *can* obey the ruling by deleting the Source from the spiderlist, *or* by refusing to display results for the Name. This causes collateral damage, as noted. Doing it in a way that *only* affects results where *both* factors intersect requires a *third* redaction layer in a different place in the engine.
If you do not have this third filter, you can only comply by causing collateral damage.
You've pretty much summed up why this censorship of the index is something everyone should be terrified of.
The Source article is in the "Public Interest", but somehow it's not in the "Public Interest" for anyone to be able to find the Source article.
No what happened here is the EU court knows it'd step on a landmine if it forced the issue back onto the news source. It knows National Governments would get dragged into a shouting match over "freedom of the press" and the "right of the press to publish". It knows Public Libraries all over the EU would get worried about allowing access to newspaper archives. So it took the censorship route. It decided to interfere with the index. It decided that you are no longer allowed to find articles that somebody doesn't like you seeing, it passed a law allowing references to those library documents to be censored. Libraries everywhere should be reveiwing their cardex systems, and cataloging every entry in great detail lest someone requests a takedown notice for an index card.
This is exactly the kind of censorship western nations have been screaming about in China.
We don't like that they control what their people can see... but you're all going to sit back and say "it's OK for the EU to do it"?
Andrews argument that (it only affects Google, so who cares?) is a new slant on ignoring censorship of the press. Yes that's right it's censorship of the press... it doesn't matter what the press prints if you aren't allowed to find it and/or read it. That's what this ruling does.
"Andrews argument that (it only affects Google, so who cares?) is a new slant on ignoring censorship of the press."
Rubbish. RTFJ.
What you're actually doing is pretending that Lexis-Nexis is being censored, when it isn't. Then screaming the house down.
If you want the Article 8 repealed, then that's fair enough. Article is what's "censoring the press" - it is what inhibits publication.
So why not campaign for that? After you...
What you're actually doing is pretending that Lexis-Nexis is being censored, when it isn't. Then screaming the house down.
I'm not screaming any house down, I'm not screaming at all.
I am pointing out that this ruling amounts to censorship of the indexing system.
I'm surprised to find myself having an exchange of views with a European journalist who supports news articles (and the ability of the audience to be able to find them (and thus read them)) being censored by the state.
Although not as surprised as I was to read a European journalist opining that it didn't matter if perfectly legal 'pulic interest' material was being censored out of the index by the state.
Rubbish. RTFJ.
Where are you going to draw the line in the sand Andrew?
Would it be OK if a convicted time served rapist had news articles relating to his past crimes and convcitions removed from the index?
Would it be OK if a convicted time served murderer had news articles relating to his past crimes and convictions removed from the index?
Or are you going to set some kind of artificial limits, so only old minor offences can be censored?
Presuambly you're OK with all perfectly legal indiscretions being censored from the index, so we shouldn't have the right to be able to read of any politicians past indiscretions? What about business leaders. Will their indiscretions be fair game for removal? You know it doesn't matter that Paul Flowers was a crappy banker who didn't have a clue cause it happened 5 years ago? 10 years ago?
Where are the lines Andrew?
> It decided that you are no longer allowed to find articles that somebody doesn't like you seeing, it passed a law allowing references to those library documents to be censored.
No, it really didn't. The reference to the document can still be shown, but may not be returned as the result for a particular search term. As Andrew has pointed out, this is something Google already do for their own reasons. Their objection here is being asked to do it for someone else's reasons.
> Libraries everywhere should be reveiwing their cardex systems, and cataloging every entry in great detail lest someone requests a takedown notice for an index card.
This is ill-informed fantasy. Read the judgement.
"The Court observes, furthermore, that this information potentially concerns a vast number of aspects of his private life and that, without the search engine, the information could not have been interconnected or could have been only with great difficulty."
Such as by going to a number of libraries and trawling through their indexes. Note that a library's news archive will typically not be arranged by the name of every person mentioned in every article; it's more likely to be by date and subject and publication. What the court are doing is recognising the old-fashioned barrier of difficulty: that there is a relationship between how difficult something is to find out and how much effort people are willing to put into finding it out, and that Google are erasing that relationship by making certain things too easy. That makes sense: with progress, we get pros and cons. So there is no problem at all with deciding to look into the financial history of John Q Smith and going and trawling through bunkruptcy records and news archives in libraries and so on: if someone wants to find that particular bit of information, they still can. What has been stopped is asking the much vaguer question of "What about this John Q Smith, then, eh?" and having Google immediately wave a big flag in your face with "BANKRUPTCY" written on it.
"Furthermore, the effect of the interference with the person’s rights is heightened on account of the important role played by the internet and search engines in modern society, which render the information contained in such lists of results ubiquitous."
Which clearly and obviously doesn't apply to a library's index.
> This is exactly the kind of censorship western nations have been screaming about in China.
Seriously? You're claiming that the problem with oppressive totalitarian Communist dictatorships is that they insist on removing records of people's past transgressions, giving them a clean slate? Are you on crack?
Such as by going to a number of libraries and trawling through their indexes. Note that a library's news archive will typically not be arranged by the name of every person mentioned in every article; it's more likely to be by date and subject and publication. What the court are doing is recognising the old-fashioned barrier of difficulty: that there is a relationship between how difficult something is to find out and how much effort people are willing to put into finding it out, and that Google are erasing that relationship by making certain things too easy. That makes sense: with progress, we get pros and cons. So there is no problem at all with deciding to look into the financial history of John Q Smith and going and trawling through bunkruptcy records and news archives in libraries and so on: if someone wants to find that particular bit of information, they still can. What has been stopped is asking the much vaguer question of "What about this John Q Smith, then, eh?" and having Google immediately wave a big flag in your face with "BANKRUPTCY" written on it.
That natural extension of your logic that we should throw away the entire founding point of the internet in favour of the interest of an individual. That being able to share and access information easily, isn't worth the risk of having one persons personal history (good and bad) available to all.
Like I said earlier I wonder how long that belief would hold if Google stopped indexing all European news sources?
You can pretend that censorship of available content by a peoples court in Bejing is somehow different to censorship of content by a court in Brussels all you want.
You can do the whole Putin thing of objecting to people daring to state the historical parallels if you want.
It won't change the facts that Nazi Germanies annexation of Sudetenland, is exactly the same as Russia's annexation of Crimea, or that censorship of what perfectly legal content the people can or can't see, is the same whether it's done by a court in Bejing or in Brussels.
What about this John Q Smith, then, eh?"
Do that with me and you get the hate site that nasty shitty little scumbags created for me, filled with nasty libelous content... should I be entitled to censor it? Because I don't like what it says? Because all that it is filled with is based upon the nasty pernicious lies of a vicious little cow? I think not...
> meanwhile, the number of hits on "Mario Costeja Gonzalez" continues to rise (212,000 on Google today
To be fair, every single one of those links is about the highest court in the EU agreeing that the man is no longer bankrupt. That's not quite the same as an article saying that he's bankrupt.
I read the ruling, as recommended, and I don't see any reason not to panic. The basis for the decision is that the INTERNET is important in everyday life, not that Google is.
This is going to be a plain, straight-up, unmitigated weasel knot and no doubt about it. Everyone who can afford a data-cleaning company will have a squeaky clean internet profile and the rest of us will just have to live with our youthful indiscretions.
Gazillions will be spent on lawyers, which makes sense because the ruling was made by lawyers and no one is more concerned with the employment prospects of lawyers than other lawyers.
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