
Google to France: We Won't Forget It for You Wholesale - ghosh
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/google-france-we-wont-forget-it-you-wholesale
======
wmeredith
This is like China wanting to extend the great firewall to the rest of the
world.

France, if you want to have whatever little censored version of the internet
locked in bureaucratic stranglehold, fine. But worldwide? GTFO.

~~~
vegabook
Unlike China, France has a democratically elected government. If the french do
not like the censorship actions that their government requires of google, they
are free to elect an alternative administration.

It is disingenuous to assume that all societies have the same ultra-liberal,
privacy-be-damned, perspective, as appears to be prevalent in the anglo-saxon
world, and it is healthy that some _democratically elected_ governments should
question Google's hegemony. It certainly doesn't appear to be the case that
America's federal administration has anything but sycophantic praise for
everything that Silicon Valley does.

~~~
Jun8
Labeling the opposing point to France's very strict defamation rules cannot be
termed "ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned" really. It has been pointed out that
this state of affairs has led to many criminal/politically harmful events to
be widely known. One of the best known in recent memory was the DSK affair
([http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-
lives-f...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-french-
laws)). Although his rapist past was well-known is some circles through
informal gossip, the victims were never able to declare so in public due to
threat of these strict laws. More on this sordid affair here:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-
strauss-k...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-kahn-
book-ban-court-rules_n_2768578.html)

Many more examples can be provided.

~~~
vegabook
Whatever one thinks of DSK, no court, in either the US or France, has found
him guilty. Yes he has paid compensation but there is no criminal charge that
stuck. I'll further remind you that DSK was arrested, in traditional style
(complaint is phoned in, police arrive), well before the internet got
involved. Thus the idea that free-speech on the internet helped justice in
this case is untrue.

------
Twisell
Only thing that bother me is that this article revolve solely around google
point of view. The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen
privacy when published media can have negative effect on their life.

As for an example revenge porn, false public accusation or protection of
witness are more in the spectrum of RTBF law than chinese-like censorship
mentionned by Google. And correct me if I'm wrong but french RTBF apply only
to individuals, so how could they even compare this with state censorsphip?

~~~
DannyBee
"The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen privacy when
published media can have negative effect on their life."

Yet the main method is to try to control secondary indexing instead of primary
distribution?

If the published media has a negative effect on their life, why aren't they
making the published media go away?

~~~
srdev
I'm ignorant of the actual law, so this is just a guess. Targeting the
companies indexing the information is probably a more tractable problem then
tracking down and eliminating all the sources. There's only a handful of
really influential companies indexing this data compared to the numbers that
produce and distribute it. If you remove the indexes and render the
information difficult to find, its not that much different from removing the
information altogether.

~~~
DannyBee
And my guess is: the local newspapers are a worse political target than evil
large western company they can blame all their ills on :)

"Targeting the companies indexing the information is probably a more tractable
problem then tracking down and eliminating all the sources."

I don't buy this. All of these sources need a way to print retractions/etc in
these countries due to the way libel/etc laws work. So they already must have
mechanisms to achieve this.

This is like targeting library card catalogs for indexing microfiche.

~~~
IanCal
> And my guess is: the local newspapers are a worse political target than evil
> large western company they can blame all their ills on :)

I don't think that's the reason:

> In 1995 the European Union adopted the European Data Protection Directive
> (Directive 95/46EC) to regulate the processing of personal data.[9] This is
> now considered a component of human rights law.[10] The new European
> Proposal for General Data Protection Regulation provides protection and
> exemption for companies listed as “media” companies, like newspapers and
> other journalistic work. However, Google purposely opted out of being
> classified as a “media” company and so is not protected. Judges in the
> European Union ruled that because the international corporation, Google, is
> a collector and processor of data it should be classified as a “data
> controller” under the meaning of the EU data protection directive. These
> “data controllers” are required under EU law to remove data that is
> “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant, ” - making this directive of
> global importance

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten)

------
jobu
It seems the judicial system in France could learn something from Colombia:

 _" Seeking to balance the right to clarify the record and the right to
freedom of expression, the [highest Constitutional Court in Colombia] held
that the newspaper was not required to remove the article. The court did
require the newspaper to update the published information and use “robots.txt”
and “metatags” to prevent the indexing of the content by Google due to the
particularly serious nature of the crime and the severe personal consequences
for Gloria."_

~~~
jegutman
Be careful with spelling here. You get it right once and wrong the other time.

Columbia - University in NYC Colombia - Country in South America

I make so many spelling mistakes I hate to correct, but when I ready your
first sentence I thought you might have meant the university.

~~~
davnicwil
Never realised this spelling mistake was such a thing but now I notice it all
the time!

I've been living in Bogotá for a few months and I only realised I was spelling
Colombia wrong a couple of months in - pretty embarrassing.

I now notice many if not most of my English-speaking friends make the same
mistake when emailing/facebooking/whatsapping me and I try to correct them as
I go.

It appears Columbia is a reflex spelling of the sound of the word - I'm from
the UK so haven't had that much exposure to the use of the word for the NY
University, so I don't think that's the explanation in my case.

Someone should make a website for this along the lines of
amispellingcolumbiacorrectly.com -> NO to spread the word ;-)

~~~
RobAtticus
A lot of Americans probably are used to spelling it Columbia because there are
tons of towns/cities/roads named Columbus or Columbia here. That would
unfortunately render your website idea mostly incorrect - for most Americans
"Columbia" is the correct spelling of what they are trying to spell. It's
really only the country and some towns in Latin America that spell it with an
O.

(The reflex spelling probably comes from the fact that most English speakers
are primarily familiar with the English spelling of Christopher Columbus)

~~~
davnicwil
> That would unfortunately render your website idea mostly incorrect

I meant correct in the context of trying to spell Colombia, the country name,
given that's what I was talking about - obviously the spelling Columbia is
correct if you're referring to anything else which actually goes by that
spelling..

------
jerf
From a legal perspective, hypotheticals about the Internet becoming the union
of all restrictions worldwide isn't even the best argument. If we accept that
Google can be compelled by France to be forced to hide some content from the
entire world, then we must also accept that Google can be compelled by some
_other_ jurisdiction to be _required_ to make that content available. It's the
same power. The Republic of X may make its propaganda mandatory and the
Breakaway Republic of X may ban it, and I'm only being generic to be polite, I
could easily name specific examples of this sort of thing if the French
precedent is to be accepted.

------
tdaltonc
Imagine this:

A website that fulfills a search query by searching google.com, then searching
google.fr, then searching google.cn. It shows the results to the google.com
query but gives badges to results based on which governments appear to be
censoring them.

~~~
stephengillie
Long ago, there was a search engine named Dogpile that would search Google and
Altavista and Yahoo and Ask Jeeves about a dozen others.

~~~
n0us
For some reason our computer teacher in elementary school had a strange
obsession with this site and we were only allowed to use dogpile instead of
any of those sites individually. There might have been another one that was
used from time to time called "metacrawler" I think... its been a while.

~~~
mirimir
Back in the day before Google, MetaCrawler _ruled_ :)

------
bsaul
Something i don't get. Why ask google to modify its content depending on the
domain name rather than the ip of the client ?

Ip geolocating can work to identify if someone lives in france. Client living
in France => serve content based on french laws.

~~~
forty
People can use VPN, so it's not very easy to know whether someone lives in
France. That's all the problem IMO: some people here are saying "France: do
whatever you want in your country but don't censor elsewhere". France could
just answser: "very well, I just want this content not to be accessible in
France, so do whatever you have to do, but respect our laws in France". And
Google would have no choice to censor everywhere if it wants to comply since
otherwise the search results would be accessible from France (through VPN).

~~~
bsaul
But vpn is another matter entirely. You're explicitey trying to avoid the
limits of your current access point / physical location.

They could comply and say to he cnil "if vpn is bothering you, then you should
regulate vpn use".

~~~
forty
I agree, it's pretty hard to know in this case whether the one breaking the
law is the VPN provider (since is "smuggling" illegal search result into
France) or the illegal search result provider.

EDIT: I wonder how it works for drugs for example: if someone sells drugs from
a country where it's legal to France, could he be found guilty in France? (I
am pretty sure the smuggler/dealer will ^^)

------
TeMPOraL
Good. The concept of RTBF as is currently implemented is insane, and it's good
to see Google finally reacting like in that scene from Avengers:

"I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a
stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE)

------
Qantourisc
GEOip anyone ? Not sure if it's reliable or it's performance impact. In terms
of bypassing it: it's either world-wide block outside of your juridiction or
tough luck.

~~~
weinzierl
Google already uses GeoIP (and IP multicast). Doesn't matter if you type
google.de or google.com in the URL-bar of the browser. You will always get the
German version, which differs significantly and is practically worthless for
programming or technology topics. I assume it's the same for google.fr (can't
try it for obvious reasons).

What works is google.com/ncr or just use duckduckgo.

------
stuxnet79
So no mention of the Phillip K Dick short story that's being referenced either
in the article itself or HN?

~~~
stephengillie
I'm not familiar with Phillip K Dick's short stories. Which one do you mean?

~~~
js2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Who...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Wholesale)
(adapted to film as "Total Recall" twice).

Quite a few of his stories have been made into movies with Blade Runner ("Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") probably the best adaptation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Film_adaptations)

~~~
stephengillie
Perhaps you mean Piers Anthony?

And that was a full-length novel, later turned into a major motion picture,
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Edit: it was adapted into that movie, then novelized afterward?

Edit2: [http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-
Anthony/dp/03807087...](http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-
Anthony/dp/0380708744)

~~~
js2
Nope, Total Recall was based on "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." I
wonder what story you are thinking of?

Edit: yes, apparently: "In 1966, the late Philip K. Dick published the
novelette "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." A movie based on the story
will be released next year; this book is a novelization of the script and the
original novel" \-- [http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-
Anthony/dp/06880520...](http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers-
Anthony/dp/0688052096)

------
Maarten88
Why is the solution of an ip address based block not proposed? To me that
seems to be the most reasonable solution to this problem.

~~~
mitchty
What happens when we move to ipv6 then and have privacy extensions?

Block a new ip address every 3-8 hours depending on what os is backing things?

~~~
Dylan16807
Thankfully IP addresses are distributed in large blocks, not individually.

------
belorn
Do Google have any presence in France like offices or property which to give
the judicial system in France jurisdiction to make this decision over the
site?

~~~
traek
Yes.

[https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/](https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/)

------
JustSomeNobody
"In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world’s least free
place."

Well, duh! Governments WANT this.

------
OedipusRex
RTBF is unenforceable.

~~~
prewett
If you have offices in Europe it is. They can always fine you it is too
expensive to comply, or until you close your offices and end your corporate
entity there.

~~~
mikeash
This is why I don't understand why people think these countries are
overstepping. It's not like they're forcing total outsiders to do their
bidding. Google set up offices all over the place, and, surprise! Now they're
beholden to the local authorities.

If you only want to be subject to the authority of one jurisdiction, make sure
your company doesn't have a presence anywhere else. That's not a guarantee,
but it helps a lot.

~~~
pgodzin
Google doesn't have a problem being subject to multiple jurisdictions, just as
an American company it reasonably doesn't want to apply French law outside
France's jurisdiction.

~~~
mikeash
And France reasonably wants French law to apply to a company with French
presence.

One can debate the merits of the law all day long, but in the end all that
matters is that a national government is sovereign within their own territory.
If they want you to do something that you don't want to do, you can remove
yourself from their jurisdiction, change their mind somehow, or do it anyway.

------
macmac
Before mounting your US judicial high horse please remember that the US claims
universal jurisdiction more than any other country in the world. As a US
corporation please keep this in mind before you denigrate this judicial
practices of foreign jurisdictions.

~~~
guelo
No. I will not think about how one specific country does bad things every time
someone points out any other country doing bad things.

------
exelius
It's almost like the EU wants to become irrelevant...

~~~
rblatz
To whom? You? Because Europe is a giant, they will never be irrelevant.

~~~
exelius
It was meant to be a bit of a joke in that they're trying to be forgotten :)
But obviously the sarcasm didn't make it through...

~~~
rblatz
Went right over my head... I'm blaming Monday, maybe I should get more coffee.

------
fit2rule
I view this as a very cynical attempt by Googles' counsel to prevent it from
being governed by the laws of France. Associating the "right to be forgotten"
with Russias' homophobic laws is clearly an attempt to frame the idea in the
negative - when the right to be forgotten is far from the same kind of heinous
cultural act as homophobia.

Very, very cynical - and Google have lost yet another point in their race to
dominate culture as a corporate, global power..

~~~
jerf
Google complies with French law within French borders. That's not the issue
here, the question is whether France can compel Google _out_ of France's
borders. I think you've completely misunderstood the issue here.

~~~
forty
Within French IP addresses you mean. I am in France and can access the
"American internet" with a VPN easily. According to France Google is breaking
the law because it let me access illegal search results from France. So France
is just trying to enforce the law within their borders after all (at least, so
they could say)

~~~
jerf
It seems to me it would make a lot more sense to charge you for bypassing the
restriction than to charge Google for activities that occurred outside of
France. Clearly the solution is to outlaw VPN usage for French citizens so
they don't stray off the French internet.

------
amelius
I think it is crazy that we still cannot define individually how many bytes of
data Google may store to profile us.

Note that it should not take many bits to profile us in a way that is useful,
while still respecting our privacy. For example, with about 33 bits of
information, one can identify any individual on this planet. With less than
this amount, one can still put you in a class of individuals, such that you
get relevant search results.

