Google's "Right to be Forgotten" Disclaimer

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/googles-right-to-be-forgotten-disclaimer.html

by fpgeek • 12 years ago

22 52 12 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.com

comex• 12 years ago

The key point: unlike the old Chinese censorship warning, this notice appears on all name queries, not just queries which have actually had data removed. Thus, for better or worse, it isn't able to subvert the purpose of the law by encouraging people to search elsewhere...

WildUtah• 12 years ago

This is very bad. Google should be telling Europeans the truth about what their governments are doing. "Some results may have been removed due to EU censorship policy" would be a truthful and informative disclaimer.

Including the message only on pages that have actually been censored would be much better because then you'd know when the government has required Google to lie to you.

mantraxD• 12 years ago

The government isn't censoring information here, citizens are.

Any explicit mention of "there is censored information" would mean Google are back in court.

I honestly doubt any big scandal can be hidden by removing it from Google. Scandals spread virally, ear to ear (i.e. social networks, digital or not). This is more useful so embarrassing or false information can't prevent normal folks from getting a job and so on.

cheald2• 12 years ago

The government is absolutely the force of censorship here. These requests to be forgotten only have any teeth because the government backs them with its ability to punish Google if they fail to comply with them.

wmt• 12 years ago

"Google should be telling Europeans the truth about what their governments are doing."

What does private persons being able to censor searches of their own name have to do with the different censorship policies of European countries? These censorship policies, e.g. Piratebay blockades or secret child porn lists which when uncovered often also contain porn of young-looking adults, are also widely discussed in mainstream news of the countries in question, so saying that people are not informed about it is, well, misinformed.

Or are you referring to something else, some secret censorship, of which proof is difficult to obtain so it must be true?

buro95• 12 years ago

Why?

I'm a European and I like this policy.

I like that individuals have the ability to have things that are no longer relevant forgotten about them so that their ability to have social mobility isn't compromised. I like that young people who make mistakes are now given the chance to move on, mature and change.

The opposite to this law is a view that a person can never change, and must always be held accountable for their past in their future.

No, I'm really happy this exists.

"To err is human", otherwise translated as "everyone make mistakes". Life and potential shouldn't halt when it happens.

bprieto• 12 years ago

Except this only makes information disappear from Google, not from the web. If a news site has an articule about that time you were arrested for drug dealing, it will be there and you have no right to make it disappear.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

Is tying up sometime, stabbing him on the stomach and beating his head with a hammer past of those mistakes that young people make? Because an European Court has already decided that the murderer also has a right to be forgotten under this law.

You mustn't judge a law only by its best results, but by all of them, and particularly by its unintended consequences.

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

You do not get to decide whether your past acts are relevant to me, or aren't. It's that simple.

alandarev2• 12 years ago

Some asshole might be screwing lots of businesses, suing them, being a patent troll, etc. Let's call him - made a fortune on loopholes and f other businesses, dodgy/illegal deals, and so on.

And you will never know whom you face, because apparantly that he has a right to prohibit others learning about his wrong-doings.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

Google should be telling Europeans the truth about what their governments are doing.

How is the current notice not telling the truth about what the EU is doing? You mean you think they should make a value judgment, which is a different thing.

Personally, I don't mind calling it censorship - I'm wary about this law too - but it would be hypocrisy after allowing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pages to be censored by just sending a DMCA takedown, without calling it the same.

amirmc2• 12 years ago

"... when the government has required Google to lie to you."

Google already decides what to show you and we have little visibility as to how that decision is made (there's even an entire industry that tries to game it). To imply that that those search results are somehow 'pure' or better represent 'the truth', is completely ridiculous.

AnthonyMouse• 12 years ago

No one is making the claims you're refuting. If you don't like Google's results then you can use a different search engine. The issue is that the government is censoring information. You can't fix that by using a different search engine because the other search engine is presumably subject to the same law.

tspiteri• 12 years ago

You are only considering the censorship aspect, and seem to be ignoring the privacy aspect. When people call this EU policy censorship, I can't help thinking that they consider all forms of privacy protection as censorship.

And I see including the message only on affected pages as a kind of circumvention of the court ruling, because then the privacy of the individual is not really protected. Seeing such a warning only on an affected individual's search page would prompt searchers who are not already aware of any issue to look deeper, and probably find the information. (Which is why you want this I guess, since you seem to dislike the court ruling, and this would effectively circumvent it.)

evolve2k• 12 years ago

So can people request globally or just in Europe?

Jekyll2• 12 years ago

Only Europe - since the court ruling was by the EU and applicable only to EU residents I believe.

zmmmmm• 12 years ago

So it should only be a very short time before someone makes a "diffing" search engine that queries both the european versions and other versions and shows you the difference, thus revealing all the most controversial content about any individual you happen to be interested in, not least, the very fact they have tried to suppress the information. (I suggest it be called streisand.com). I am curious what the next step will be after that - ever more draconian laws? Canada style laws that try for world wide censorship? How far will it go?

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

Something along the lines of http://www.monzy.org/unsafesearch/, but for "forgotten" Euro-junk would be just the thing to send up these crazy "rights".

Jekyll2• 12 years ago

On the whim of national governments and rich individuals, Google has already been censoring the search results that appear to everyone. The only thing this law does is give the little man a chance - which is good.

gdewilde2• 12 years ago

The idea is that we don't want businesses distributing your personal life and we don't want a defamation industry. Imagine the 2 of those combined, it would be powerful propaganda, we would all have to invest in the negative review industry just to compensate. We already have copyrights on everything else, ownership laws that apply to everything except humans. It seems fair for your life belongs to you. It would be something if I couldn't have mickey mouse on my website but could use your face for everything?

wombosi6• 12 years ago

I find it fascinating to see the division of this topic being along seemingly national lines, i.e. European commenters seem in favor, while American commenters seem vehemently against the EU court ruling. This is somewhat of a generalization, but it does highlight an interesting phenomenon. It appears the overwhelming (?) majority of young American internet users, who have come of age in the post 9/11 USA are disturbingly willing to relinquish as many freedoms and rights, as is demanded of them. In fact, they take it one step further, in a form of self-perpetuating pseudo-cultural hegemony, they try to impose this "If you're innocent you have nothing to hide!" mentality on Americans and non-Americans alike.

The fact that global search engines often can have extremely negative implications vis-a-vis personal data retention, is one that more easily escapes those who were born naturally into the Internet age, as opposed to those who "merely adopted it". The "adopters" are usually more sensitive to the before-and-after effects, than the "naturals", usually because the naturals often lack the firsthand context with which to make informed comparisons of said effects.

A contributing, and perhaps aggravating, factor is the tendency of many (possibly younger) HNers to fall into knee-jerk behavioral patterns of vociferously defending all that is Google, from the somewhat irrational perspective of Google being All That Is Good And Holy, simply because of the corporation's trite slogan of "Do No Evil". At the very latest, the Snowden revelations and ensuing NSA scandals have shown us Google and co. are as far from sainthood as any other multibillion dollar multinational corporation.

In summary, the European little guy has scored an important victory that gives them the tools to improve their quality of life, or at the very least avoid a degradation thereof. How this is twisted into censorship of a search giant is fascinating and very revealing of other deeper and far more worrisome underlying tendencies within the very defenders of the "Mega Corp".

HenryMc2• 12 years ago

It appears the overwhelming (?) majority of young American internet users, who have come of age in the post 9/11 USA are disturbingly willing to relinquish as many freedoms and rights, as is demanded of them.

I see Google's censorship as an attack on "freedoms and rights".

HNers to fall into knee-jerk behavioral patterns of vociferously defending all that is Google

I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible. I've used Bing for a number of years, and recently switched most of my searching to DuckDuckGo.

European little guy has scored an important victory that gives them the tools to improve their quality of life

I don't think this is an "important victory", but rather an attack on the freedom of information.

P.S. I live in Australia and New Zealand.

wombosi6• 12 years ago

I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible.

You took my quote out of context and ran with that. I said many HNers. Not all HNers.

There is no censorship involved here. Read the EU ruling. The ruling does not prevent Google from indexing personal information. It prevents Google from permanently indexing personal information if it is irrelevant or no longer relevant. Even after said information has been removed from Google's database, it will still be available at the source that Google previously linked too. It's fallacious to pretend that information is being surpressed.

zxcdw• 12 years ago

I see Google's censorship as an attack on "freedoms and rights".

Have I misunderstood something, but isn't this exactly about giving people a right to choose about the online visibility of their name?

If that is the case, isn't it a good thing that people get to have control over what is being shown and what is not? Or is full disclosure of personal details, the full personal transparency online the Right Thing to go with?

I thought a year ago during the NSA diclosures the consensus was that people should have the right to control the information collected, stored and shown about them. I see this paralleling that indirectly.

For what it's worth and to give someone something to grab onto, I am from Europe.

gdewilde2• 12 years ago

We might not agree, they do provide us a great service actually. One can never have to many different opinions to consider. It seems online American opinions about what Europe should do outnumber the European opinions 10 to 1. They told us a million times what they think about it.

What do the Russians think? And the Chinese? And the Africans? No one knows? Assuming they even have an opinion about it?

If we don't like it we can always censor them?

hehehe

ASneakyFox• 12 years ago

I'm pro privacy. But the law is just stupid. Its about taking information that is meant to be public knowledge (much of it being public for good reasons, eg lawsuits) and saying that the information should still exist just be hard to find. Bassicaly instead of implementing actual privacy they just outlawed effeciency. And they didn't even do that. I'm sure any one who is interested in those search results can easily just access the us google. Hell I'm sure its about to be a chrome browser extension.

Google's "Right to be Forgotten" Disclaimer

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