
France fines Google over 'right to be forgotten' - jim-greer
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-france-privacy-idUSKCN0WQ1WX
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ocdtrekkie
Duplicate, discussion is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355270)

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jim-greer
Whoops, didn't see that one.

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jim-greer
To be more precise, they are requiring Google to remove specific results for
searches on a person's name.

The problem is that Google gets hundreds of thousands of these requests, and
over 50% of them are deemed to be invalid - a doctor removing links to a
malpractice suit against him, for instance.

The search engine must make the call on whether the request is valid or not,
based on very vague standards. If they don't remove something and is later
found to have been wrong, they could be fined up to 4% of their annual revenue
or €20M, whichever is greater (that's under pending legislation)

[http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2015/12/18/the-
fin...](http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2015/12/18/the-final-draft-
of-europes-right-to-be-forgotten-law/)

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kevin_b_er
France has declared the absolute right to artificially censor google globally?

Dandy. Next China will ask the same thing globally of other results. How can
you do anything on the internet if you must follow all laws everywhere at the
same time?

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solidangle
France has the absolute right to protect its citizens.

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B1FF_PSUVM
Bubble wrap is reputed to work well.

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gkya
Is there a right to be forgotten? Because if there is,

a) it should not be limited to the internet: one should be able to request to
be forgotten by a certain group or by the humanity altogether. This is not
possible.

b) it is not practical: to what extent does it apply (in essence, not in
practice)? I grab pdf-prints of articles sometimes. Am I guilty if an author
wants their online presence removed? More, there are many search services,
many other services that index and archive online content, which of these
would have to respond to such requests? And if the _right_ is not limited to
the internet, how it is possible to do, practically? Well, it's impossible.

c) it is a _right_ that conflicts with the freedom of thought: It should be at
one's own will to forget something or not, this is a state intervention into
peoples knowledge and memories.

d) it has implications on posthumous publications of work: after someone is
passed away, who decides if they shall be forgotten or not? Or does anybody
have the right to?

e) it has implications on the collective knowledge of the man: if, say,
Stephen Hawking wanted to be forgotten, we'd have lost some important part of
it.

f) it has implications on derived works and citations: If one quotes person A,
in, say a blog post, and if that person A wanted to be forgotten, what will
the citing author would have to do? Anonymise the quotes? Remove them?

I guess this _right to be forgotten_ is either not a right, and is an example
of a freedom that violates others' freedoms. It's unbelievable that serious,
smart people (!) got convinced enough about this that this became a law.
Publicising something is completely at one's will. Will brings
responsibilities, and one should either take the responsibility for what he
publishes, or live with the consequences. Because if there is a right, it
applies globally, i.e. equally to the non-digital realm, and the _right to be
forgotten_ would have really bad consequences.

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AnimalMuppet
France can get lost. They may get to censor France; they don't get to censor
the planet.

And if France does, does China? ISIS? Trump? Me, too?

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molecule
Saying that a law needs to be applied across the entire planet is another
demonstration of the viral ridiculousness of the so-called Right To Be
Forgotten.

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andrewflnr
This is a free speech issue, plain and simple. Google is being entirely
truthful in saying "this is a page that exists", and no one has a moral right
to tell them they can't. This whole idea of a "right to be forgotten" is
purest excrement of bull, and can only be enforced by violating the rights of
free speech and, if you took the phrasing seriously, rights to our own
thoughts. But of course they don't take the phrasing seriously, because that
would reveal what a runny load of crap it is.

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orf
Maybe it's the European in me but I think the right to be forgotten is a good
idea. Maybe not implemented the best, but the idea is sound.

Say someone published a book of peoples names and photos, complete with a
description of the worst thing they have done during their lifetime. Sure, if
your a doctor and you had some malpractice problems then it's a good thing
that people can see that, but that time you got drunk and did something stupid
that ended up in the news? Should that be the first thing that pops up when
searching for you? Wouldn't that effect your employment prospects, your
future? Is there any actual value to anyone in that being only a search away,
other than it matches a particular query for your name?

Google is being truthful in saying "this is a page that exists", but does it
have to if the person the page is about has a legitimate reason for wanting it
removed? The actual page still exists and can still be accessed so nobodies
freedom of speech is being curtailed, this just gives citizens a right to say
"maybe I don't want the fact I was wrongly convicted of something to follow me
around forever".

If anything this is giving citizens the freedom of speech to say "I want this
to be forgotten, it's not me and shouldn't haunt me forever".

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grahamburger
The implementation really is the problem here. There just isn't a way that
this can be implemented fairly. Or maybe there is, but trying to force it
before we've found the right way to implement it just isn't working. Obviously
it would be great if the Internet really could forget about the stupid things
I've done. It would be even better (for me) if I could get everyone to
literally forget about those things. Of course there's not an ethical way for
me to get other people to literally forget things, and I think what GP is
saying (and I agree) is that there's also not an ethical way to get the
Internet to forget things.

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orf
> there's also not an ethical way to get the Internet to forget things.

Sure there is, be lucky enough to have a common name (or one shared with a
celebrity) and wait until enough news piles ontop of your bad news that nobody
will ever find it.

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grahamburger
Lol I guess that's true. Or start to use a nickname / middle name. Or even
just do enough neutral / good things that get reported online that you bury
your own bad stories.

