

Google Ordered to Remove Links to Stories About Google Removing Links to Stories - JohnTHaller
http://gizmodo.com/google-ordered-to-remove-links-to-stories-about-google-1725473144

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kazinator
It's not dumb at all, nor hard to understand. Those stories are material which
references that person and their criminal record. The reason that those
stories exist is that the information was leaked.

Those leaks were almost certainly Google's fault. Either Google leaked the
information themselves, or they leaked it indirectly. If we read the
enforcement notice, it claims that Google at first complied with the order to
de-index the web site which published that person's criminal record, but
Google _also notified that website owner_. In other words, they tipped off the
owner, which can be regarded as a form of defiance of the court order:
agreeing to the letter of the order (performing the delisting) but not to the
spirit (earnestly helping to bury that person's past).

So that might be the source of the leak; maybe the website owner's feathers
were ruffled, and they reacted by gleefully leaking the story to the media.
Such a reaction is so predictable that it's likely Google tipped off that
website owner _on purpose_ in order to generate the leak. Knowing that the
leak will reveal details about that person, and knowing that the Google index
will in turn pick up the stories resulting from the leak. Also knowing that
they could refuse to delist those stories on grounds that they are are
noteworthy stories of recent interest, representing the journalistic judgment
of their respective news organizations that Google has no reason to second-
guess.

Google should have removed that index entry _quietly_ , without notifying the
website owner. Then the removal could easily have gone unnoticed and there
might now not be any stories mentioning that person.

They are now simply being asked to mop up the leak that they caused.

Whether or not you agree with this "right to be forgotten" business, you have
to agree that particular twist in the plot isn't any _dumber_. It's just more
of the same.

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JohnTHaller
The depths of stupidity of the European "right to be forgotten" likely still
hasn't been reached yet.

