
Google's questionnaire response to Article 29 Working Party - jontro
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8syaai6SSfiT0EwRUFyOENqR3M/edit
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Shinkei
I really have to rant about the idiocy of this law. For full disclosure, I am
American.

They call it a "right to be forgotten," but guess what, I have a right to
information (speech, press, etc.) that I think supercedes this supposed right
which I've never heard of before this law. People need to learn to live with
their mistakes and be more careful about their actions. If a person (to cite
the specific example commonly mentioned) went into bankruptcy due to economic
issues, poor investment or even 'bad luck' then that is a matter of legal
proceedings and should be public record.

I can certainly understand things like nude photos, sex tapes, etc. but we
already have legal means of dealing with those examples. Can someone convince
me why this law is necessary and in the public interest?

Edit: Took out statement about Chinese censorship because people were
attacking that rather than the substance of THIS law.

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spingsprong
Chinese censorship exists to protect the state. EU right to be forgotten
protects the individual.

That's a pretty huge difference.

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DannyBee
So it's a good ol' ends justify the means argument. That certainly never turns
out badly ...

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spingsprong
I didn't make any argument

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DannyBee
Uh?

This is surely an argument.

You are arguing that using the same means (censorship) to achieve two
different end goals (protecting the individual, protecting the state), are
very different situations. You imply that they should be looked at very
differently.

If you don't want it to be an argument, simply state the facts, and remove,
among other things the "that's a pretty huge difference" statement.

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socrates1998
I just don't get this law. It's so shortsighted and really will only benefit
the rich elite who can hire lawyers to enforce it.

Think about it. If a common joe asks to have a link removed, but google
doesn't do it, what can he do? He has to hire a lawyer to get it removed.

So, the only people that can afford this process are the rich elite. And then
you have the rich elite essentially censoring the internet on stuff they don't
want you to know about.

It just doesn't make any sense at all.

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michaelfeathers
They could make the argument that Google (and other search engines)
essentially re-publish information so it's appropriate to make them
responsible.

I think that point of view is one that many in the tech community don't share.
We see it as collating results rather than publishing information.

That difference of viewpoint is very significant when you think about it.

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jontro
It's interesting that they have already received 91000 removal requests
involving more than 320 000 urls.

53% of these have been removed, this is having a big impact...

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happyscrappy
EU citizens will have the search results censored but the rest of the world
will not, nor will any European who is mildly tech savvy. How is this not
useless whack-a-mole?

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jontro
As the documents states: "Fewer than 5% of European users use google.com, and
we think travelers are a significant portion of those."

So this affects pretty much all europeans.

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happyscrappy
Do you believe that most Europeans won't know that their search results are
being censored? Or that they won't care?

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heinrich5991
Or maybe that they agree with the intentions of that law.

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happyscrappy
My point is that even if you agree with the intentions of the law it will not
prevent Europeans from finding the truth if they want it.

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kuschku
But that's not what the law aims for either. It's just supposed to make
finding those results harder, so that you don't accidentally stumble upon
them, but have to actually search for them.

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DannyBee
??? It's exactly the opposite If you actually search for them, you get
nothing. If you stumble around, you may find them.

