

Google's "Right to be Forgotten" Disclaimer - fpgeek
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/googles-right-to-be-forgotten-disclaimer.html

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zmmmmm
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?

~~~
thrownaway2424
Something along the lines of
[http://www.monzy.org/unsafesearch/](http://www.monzy.org/unsafesearch/), but
for "forgotten" Euro-junk would be just the thing to send up these crazy
"rights".

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wombosi
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".

~~~
HenryMc
> 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.

~~~
wombosi
>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.

~~~
Oletros
The problem is defining what it is irrelevant

Wby Bing or Google can't index a La Vanguardia article? Why they are the ones
censoring that name and not La Vanguardia?

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comex
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...

------
Jekyll
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.

------
gdewilde
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?

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WildUtah
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.

~~~
buro9
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
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.

~~~
buro9
This is true for very many things, the act of making it searchable is to make
it follow you into the future.

The example I used in the other conversation about this when it first emerged
is a real one, I know a girl who was the victim of an attack and chose to
contact the police. The attacker was young and the court scrubbed his name
from public record, but the local newspaper reported the victim's name and
profession. Now you have a victim with a permanent smear against her created
by an easily accessible record of fact (the newspaper, not the court record).
The problem with the patriarchy and an unequal society being that woman who
are victims of attacks are frequently met with doubt and victim blaming, "Was
it something she wore?", "Did she act in any way as to provoke it?"... and so
a victim is punished by the availability of information. Her peers have
remarked how they've seen it on Google, because in her profession researching
your peers is what you do.

The courts aren't wrong to record things.

The newspapers aren't wrong to report things.

But neither action was intended to be a permanent cross for the person to
carry.

The girl in question? Her view is that if she knew it would end up on the
front page of Google for her name, she would never have gone to the police.

Now ask yourself, is that the world you want to live in? I'm very glad the EU
legal system agrees that it isn't, and that the EU politicians enshrined that
it isn't. It makes me glad to be European.

~~~
DanBC
Sorry, I just accidentally down voted you. I was trying to upvote.

~~~
buro9
No worries, it seems such a divisive topic it's almost entertaining watching
the upvotes and downvotes aggressively cancel out each other.

I didn't realise just how extreme the opinion on this is. Shame HN doesn't
show this in how the votes are displayed... I get that they're not
displayed... but black text vs shaded implies only positive or negative, and
hovering around 1 vote with lots of up and down votes is interesting in
itself.

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evolve2k
So can people request globally or just in Europe?

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

