
Defending the Right to Be Forgotten - pilif
http://jacquesmattheij.com/defending-the-right-to-be-forgotten
======
WhatsName
If you look at the fact, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt actually recommends to
teenagers, to change their name at the age of 18 just to escape the online
artefacts of their young years[1], there are actually strong arguments to have
a "right to be forgotten".

As we are moving forward to a society, where everything we do is shared
online, not only by us but also by our friends, we suddenly loose the control
over how we are portrayed. Of course there is the argument that this has been
true with classic media, but from personal experience you always have the
chance to rerecord something you said on a interview if it's not live and I
pre read a majority of all print articles and interviews, because newspaper
have high quality standards and try hard to get everything right.

As copyright holders are (quite successfully) lobbying to enforce their rights
to their content globally, we as a society should enforce our rights on how we
are portrait globally. This should not be exclusive to europeans and european
cyber space, everyone should enjoy the freedom to decide which parts of his
past should be forgotten.

[1][http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/16/google-ceo-eric-
sch...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/16/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-
s_n_684031.html)

~~~
maxerickson
That's not quite what he said:

 _Mr. Schmidt is surely right, though, that the questions go far beyond
Google. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is
available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says. He
predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be
entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in
order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.

"I mean we really have to think about these things as a society," he adds.
"I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to
evil things," he says._

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487049011045754232...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212)

------
avar
The article brushes aside _the_ major issue with how the French are trying to
enforce this, which is that the French government is asserting that its law
should apply to all global properties of an international corporation simply
because it has a subsidiary operating in France.

A quote from Google on the matter:

    
    
        "we respectfully disagree with the idea that a national data
        protection authority can assert global authority to control the
        content that people can access around the world."
    

The author brushes this aside with the assertion that:

    
    
        "search engine results aren’t ‘free speech’ to begin with in my
        opinion, they’re re-hashings of someone else’s speech."
    

And doesn't address the inherent problem with a global company being subject
to the combination of the censorship regulation of all the countries in which
it operates.

What is Saudi Arabia decides to start punishing Google because its image
search shows "revealing" images of women, is that just fine because search
engine results aren't free speech anyway, and any nation on earth should be
able to make laws about search results that apply globally?

~~~
mattmanser
Google collect this data on French soil, and then export it abroad.

Why is it so hard to understand that the condition to allowing them to collect
the data in the first place is that they respect the local law about that
data?

~~~
jbob2000
Interesting thought about data being exported, I had never looked at it that
way. From the French perspective, data is like a new "resource", and Google is
the mighty data baron, in the era of the "data rush".

------
nevinera
This whole concept is ludicrous.

I can understand why it appeals to people - their sense of unfairness is
triggered, and that is a useful heuristic for finding unjust behavior.. but
the actual _implementations_ discussed amount to "make it like it used to be".
On the surface it seems like you can design something that might work.. but
the trick is, it'll involve a ton of fiddly bits of law. Those fiddly bits are
things that lawyers (and therefore corporations and rich people) are very good
at playing with, which will inevitably result in a evolving double-standard,
just like in finance, health-care, politics, and employment law.

There is a form of the 'right to be forgotten' that makes total sense. Your
creations - your journal, your twitter feed, your facebook notes and photo
blog - these belong to you in a sensical way, and determining who has access
to them might be a reasonable right you possess (though I'm unaware of any
legal system that enforces that right).

But the conceptions of this 'right' I hear discussed all hinge on some variant
of 'noteworthy' \- that's because a moment's thought of the obvious approach
tells you "wait, that will gag the news services!", which we've trained
ourselves to think of as representative of goodness and openness. But
'noteworthy' is a context-based definition! The news that is noteworthy to one
group is not to another, and that distinction is inherent in society - we
can't wrap a semantic game around to solve the problem.

The reality is that the nature of accessible information is _changing_ , and
society will need to change with it. It's hardly the first time technology has
forced society to change! The right to be forgotten is the right to exist in
the world circa 1960 forever.

~~~
qznc
> Your creations - your journal, your twitter feed, your facebook notes and
> photo blog - these belong to you in a sensical way, and determining who has
> access to them might be a reasonable right you possess (though I'm unaware
> of any legal system that enforces that right).

That would be "Copyright".

~~~
nevinera
Would be, if copyright were implemented that way. But it's not - you signed
over the right to control the stuff you put on Facebook as soon as you wrote
it.

~~~
ZoFreX
> you signed over the right to control the stuff you put on Facebook as soon
> as you wrote it.

You still retain copyright on it, though.

~~~
dkuntz2
But you've also given them a non-exclusive and irrevocable right to use it as
they want (with limitations, you'd need to read their exact policy to be
sure).

So while you may retain the copyright, you could very easily have signed over
permission to whatever company who's website you used to post it to use it
however they want.

~~~
tzs
> But you've also given them a non-exclusive and irrevocable right to use it
> as they want

Such things are not actually irrevocable in the US, although they do last a
long time.

Starting 35 years after the grant of a transfer or license of copyright, there
is a 5 year window during which the author can give written notice of
termination, and the transfer or license ends. The author may do this
regardless of any agreement to the contrary. This is codified at 17 USC 203
[1] for those who want the gory details. "copyright termination rights" is a
good search term to find discussion and articles on this.

Probably not much use in getting embarrassing content removed from a website
that you unwisely licensed it to because after 35 years people have probably
long forgotten about it unless it is really bad, in which case it has probably
already harmed you as much as it can.

It will be interesting to see if the termination right ever affects free/open
source software.

[1]
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/203](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/203)

~~~
Flenser
> It will be interesting to see if the termination right ever affects
> free/open source software.

I wonder if this could be tested with code assigned to Oracle? I bet there are
contributors to OpenSolaris under CDDL that wouldn't mind testing it out.

------
planetjones
I know of many contractors in the UK who registered a LTD Company. Since then
they have taken permanent jobs so dissolved the company. What's left on the
internet if you google their name is their personal details and home
addresses. Companies House say there is nothing they can do because the
company has been dissolved. However, companies house have sold the data to
hundreds of other companies who splatter this private information all over the
Internet. These other companies have no processes in place for hiding private
information.

IMO this is not acceptable and a good application of the right to be forgotten
principle. If companies house were not so greedy in selling the data to
companies which employ heavy SEO tactics to get hits, the problem would not
exist.

------
seren
I also agree with the right to be forgotten principle.

However regarding its current implementation, I don't necessarily agree with
the fact that private entities are the one judging the requests (and they
never asked for it!). If it is some sort of legal requirement, in my opinion,
it should be reviewed by some kind of judge, administrative body or peers,
that would apply consistently the rules.

Finally regarding the EU vs Global application of the rule, I have to side
with Google : you can't comply globally with every specific request from every
country or sensibility, because it would mean banning a lot of things (from
blasphemy, homosexuality to various disputed historical events, or
territories...). I can't see that working practically.

~~~
nthcolumn
QUESTION: Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'?

~~~
icebraining
Technically, because the EU countries are sovereign and can decide what rights
their own citizens should have.

*EDIT: wrong word

~~~
ikeboy
That's why people may _have_ such rights, not why they _should_.

~~~
samastur
Nope, that's pretty much all it takes. Society decides itself what rights its
members have which is why they are not the same everywhere.

Or can you suggest a better authority to define them?

~~~
V-2
So if society decides that redheads have no right to live, then they have no
right to live, end of story?

This is a dangerous school of thought, authoritarian in spirit - the state as
the source of ethics and the ultimate moral authority (Hegel's view).

The opposing concept is called
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law)

~~~
samastur
OK, let's take the third paragraph of your link as an example, where it
basically describes how Natural law forms a philosophical bedrock of US
society. Why were documents resulting from it accepted by society (eventually,
more or less)?

Clearly from the same page there is not just one and societies existed and
still do that don't share the same underpinning. They could have turned it
down and go with something else.

My point is that they didn't because this was close enough to existing shared
values. That doesn't mean it matched anyone's perfectly or that you can't move
them over time, but they are not imposed.

Well, they may be for a while under occupation of a stronger force, but surely
that is not what you argue for.

In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't _in that society_.
Like converting to a different religion can get you killed in some places even
if it is completely unimaginable where I am from.

I am certainly not agreeing with or defending choices of every society under
sun.

~~~
V-2
> In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't in _that society_

So you mean "rights" in descriptive sense, you're talking about the _de facto_
rights. This obviously excludes rights that are legally violated, but which
are still there (from ethical point of view).

If someone asks why people _should_ have a certain right (as nthcolumn did),
they clearly mean _rights_ in the latter sense of the word. Otherwise it's not
an answer because it's circular logic: why would society grant you these
rights? Because society grants you these rights. Well, like every tautology
it's true ("technically", as you put it), only it's of no use :)

------
sergiosgc
The logic fails on this premise:

> On the other hand, from the view of an individual that has done something
> wrong at some point in his or her life and that has through either a fine or
> a jail sentence paid their debt to society it is kind of annoying that
> they’ve been declared pretty much un-employable by google or one of their
> lesser competitors.

The error here is in the behaviour of the society in general. If you use the
right to be forgotten as the correction mean, then you prevent society from
evolving and changing this wrong behaviour.

We are entering an era of increasing information, society needs to adapt, and
we must allow it to adapt, painful as it may be.

~~~
lagadu
> We are entering an era of increasing information, society needs to adapt,
> and we must allow it to adapt, painful as it may be.

I've a nagging feeling that I've misunderstood your post somehow, if so let me
apologize in advance for the remainder of my post:

That's exactly what society is doing: adapting. Previously information wasn't
as accessible as it is nowadays so society adapted to the new situation, in
this particular case by enacting laws that further protect people's privacy.

~~~
sergiosgc
No. The right to be forgotten law is not an adaptation, it is an attempt to
cling on to the past.

In the past your personal history was difficult to dig. Nowadays it is
archived on the Internet for anyone to search and read. These laws try to
emulate the past environment in the new information age.

Instead, I think we should let information flow. People will adapt to having
lots of information available, and the effect of negative signals, that people
are so afraid of today, will probably be minor. As an example: who cares if
you smoked pot in college when 60% of people also have an online record of
smoking pot.

~~~
samastur
No, it is an adaptation, but time will show how successful. Just as it does
for every other. Adaptations are not only changes that succeed or that conform
to the way you would like to see society evolve.

------
jamiemchale
At what point are you remarkable enough to lose the right to be forgotten?
What counts as being in the public eye? Do you have to desire to be in the
public eye?

How do you manage the case of an unremarkable person removing something, then
becoming remarkable enough to lose that right?

~~~
marrs
This is why we have courts, to answer these sorts of questions on a case by
case basis.

~~~
jamiemchale
I agree with the other commenters here - it can be a bit 'fuzzy', which is
disagreeable to people who like definite answers. Case by case is probably a
good way of tackling it. The cases, however, do need to be held in reference
to the law, and those laws need to be appropriate for the scope and scale of
our communication technology.

If we are arguing that someone needs to be 'remarkable' then I'd be interested
in what people think counts as remarkable. You may be remarkable in a certain
community, job or geography, but not in others.

------
yummybear
Even with the rules the author speaks of the entire law is still one big,
stinking gray area:

\- Should single owner corporations be treated as corporations or persons? A
singer with his own company in his own name might want an article about him
removed. \- Should a low level government employee be able to have a forum
rant about his handling of a case removed? What if the mishandling of a case
wasn't the employees fault? \- Can a corporation get (pay/threaten) another
person to remove an article if that person is mentioned in the article? \-
What level of politician should be unable to have a link removed? Member of a
political party? City counsilman in some small town? \- Does the article about
a politician have to be about politics? What about a personal/non-work related
link about a politician? \- Famoust pianists shouldn't be able to have a
review removed, but what constitutes a 'review'? \- What about people who
don't want to be in the public eye - it's not always their choice? \- So EU's
laws should apply everywhere - what about Iran's? Why are they different?

This just scratches the surface.

------
nthcolumn
Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'? And why should it only be
Google that has to do this?

edit:Having to click 'accept cookies on every site' is such EU nonsense too -
does anyone really think you can't be tracked without cookies?

~~~
lagadu
> Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'?

Why should anyone have any rights? Rights are granted by sovereign nations to
their citizens. Sometimes (and this is a good example, the US "right to bear
arms" is another good one) different nations give their citizens different
rights. When these rights are given by democratically elected governments,
it's fair to assess that the people collectively decided they wanted said
rights and enacted them.

~~~
ChristianBundy
But these rights almost always have a philosophical justification – they
aren't just things that we want, they're bigger than that.

~~~
marrs
Perhaps people should be able to move on with their lives after they make
mistakes.

~~~
seren
Moreover, in some circumstances, it is not even a mistake, but you've been the
victim of something terrible, and your name will be associated forever with
it.

"I am not sure I want to employ/rent to someone who's been victim of X..."

------
columbo
I have a newspaper clipping from when a car hit me when I was 5 years old...
the dark truth of the matter was _I hit the car_ by bolting across the road
and smacking my head into the passenger side door as it was trying to drive
through an intersection. This little page 6c clipping is all that exists of
that moment. No cameras, videos, blog or twitter posts.

If that happened today the driver's name might be permanently searchable and
could even cause problems when looking for a job "They hit a 5 year old, that
doesn't sound like the type of person we'd want to hire as a delivery driver."

Maybe we can't fix this problem, or maybe it isn't a problem at all but just
something we should accept. One thing is certain, we've never been in a
situation where everything was recorded so thoroughly before. Can we adapt?

------
golemotron
It's really 'The Right to Pretend to Be Forgotten.'

Google isn't the only search engine or gateway to the web. Every year there
are more avenues.

If the EU were serious they'd force newspapers to edit and republish back
issues - but they're not.

~~~
tremon
A citizen of the EU can also ask a newspaper to remove online articles about
him, and in fact the requests usually start there. Why that doesn't apply to
hardcopies has also been discussed at length.

Newspapers are not required to retroactively publish their articles, because
the EU directive is about data accessibility, not about rewriting history. The
EU is simply codifying that the natural shelf-life of (newspaper) articles
also applies to online content.

Yes, you can still find those articles if you're willing to spend the effort.
Search engines removed the effort requirement, and the EU decided that this
placed a disproportionate burden on their subjects' personal lives.

------
ebbv
The problem with the "right to be forgotten" is it's like a "right to have a
nice day." It sounds great in principle and certainly nobody will say that
people shouldn't have nice days, but any actual implementation requires the
elevation of one person's rights over another. And that's not acceptable.

~~~
lagadu
> requires the elevation of one person's rights over another. And that's not
> acceptable.

I'm sorry but that is senseless. Elevating certain rights over others is
effectively the basis of any society. To use a crass example: it's widely
accepted that your right to not be assaulted is elevated over another's right
to assault you.

~~~
nailer
Does the person who assaulted the other person in your scenario have a right
for any record of it to be removed from the internet?

~~~
netrus
In Western European societies: YES! Something like a public register of sex
offenders is UNTHINKABLE in Germany. You get a sentence for your assault, but
public shaming is not part of the punishment. That's not inherently worse or
better then the American approach, it's just what most people here consider
right and just. We consider people who break the law as human beings and
citizens, and we strive to make them functioning members of the society.

~~~
nailer
Public shaming is distinct from hiding all the evidence of someone's past
actions.

------
medecau
The Right to be Forgotten if enforced globally will create a blackmarket for
this type of information.

Downloading copyrighted material is illegal. Technical solutions exist and
individuals are making money off of it. Buying drugs is illegal too. Solutions
exist and individuals are making money off of it.

Do not fool yourselves, you won't be forgotten.

~~~
vidarh
The point is not to actually be forgotten, but to create a limited barrier
against casual discovery.

In Norway basic income tax information is publicly accessible, and have been
"forever" at the tax offices. This was considered important for
accountability, while the limited access was considered to make it an
acceptable loss of privacy. With the advent of the internet this information
was suddenly available online, and "everyone" looked up their friends and
neighbours. Suddenly the privacy impact was drastically different, and
recently there has been new restrictions added to find a balance more in line
with the original.

This is what the right to be forgotten is about too: Practices that previously
had little privacy impact, and public benefits, now have vastly different
privacy impact due to the internet. As a result we need to find new balances.
In some cases the benefit of the information will outweigh privacy
considerations. In others they won't.

Even then, so far EU courts have made it clear that the original publication
is protected: Nobody has been given the right to have information wiped from
newspaper archives, for example. But indexing and making that information
extremely easily available is a separate issue.

There's no reason for a black market: The information is still there and
easily accessible for those specifically looking for that information. It is
just not pushed in front of someone "just" doing a regular search for someones
name.

------
stingraycharles
I would like to add a few points to the discussion:

* from my experience with the Dutch cookie law, the interpretation is that if you serve or target a Dutch audience, you need to comply; it would only make sense if the same metric is used for the Right to Be Forgotten;

* one interesting moral dilemma I have is whether this right to be forgotten should also apply to the audience in a different country (USA, for example). In other words, when someone from France requests a removal of a search result which was found on a US server, would this still be visible to people from the USA ? I think the answer to this _should be_ yes, according to the laws that currently exist, but would allow someone who really wants to have "unfiltered" results (say, a recruiter) to simply use a VPN or proxy server to circumvent the law.

All in all, an important but difficult topic to discuss.

~~~
daurnimator
> * from my experience with the Dutch cookie law, the interpretation is that
> if you serve or target a Dutch audience, you need to comply; it would only
> make sense if the same metric is used for the Right to Be Forgotten;

The first question is going to be "or else what?". Outside of the USA, Ireland
and the UK, firms are going to simply choose not to operate there; but due to
the nature non-discriminatory nature of the internet, their services will be
available there anyway. There's not much that (e.g.) the Dutch government can
do, and trying to fight it with blocking will just end up turning themselves
into some sort of internet backwater; which I don't think anyone wants.

~~~
stingraycharles
You're missing the point I was trying to make: Google wanted to implement the
Right to be Forgotten only on the .fr domain, which seems like a cheap trick.
The way legislation works around this is by simply saying "if you serve people
from our country, you obey our laws", which makes sense.

Also, both this law and the cookie law are EU-wide laws, and I don't think
Google will be retreating from all EU countries any time soon. That's how
these things work when you're a small country, you work together with others
and suddenly they take you seriously.

------
llamallamallama
The EU already has laws regarding the correctness of information which protect
against keeping and reporting inaccurate information. We also have laws which
protect your right to a certain level of privacy.

The only valid reason for the right to be forgotten is because those existing
laws are not enforced - news outlets can print falsehoods and leaked celebrity
nudes, companies can publish data they know is outdated, and laws that exist
to punish them for these things are not enacted.

If such laws were to be enforced, what need is there to be forgotten? Only
factually true public scandals seem to remain, and we have laws to protect
their existence (freedom of the press, etc.) for a reason.

~~~
icebraining
It's not about "public scandals", it's about small reports that got printed on
page 34 twenty years ago on a regional newspaper, and that would have been
history if Google didn't pull it out when you search for the person's name.

The landmark case for this issue was _Costeja_ : in 1998, a guy had some debts
to Social Security, which forced the sale of some of his property to get
reimbursed. More than a decade later, what would have been a record in a
library basement, now appears as one of the top results when you search for
his name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Spain_v_AEPD_and_Mario_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Spain_v_AEPD_and_Mario_Costeja_Gonz%C3%A1lez)

~~~
llamallamallama
I apologise, "public scandals" was poor phrasing. My point was that the right
to be forgotten aims to limit/remove access to information that is legally
publicly available.

In the Costeja case the court ruled that Google could be blocked from
displaying the information on the grounds that it was no longer relevant (and
did so under _existing_ data protection laws, even if I believe that their
application of those laws was misguided). The court also ruled that the
newspaper could not be forced to remove the information.

What bothers me about the right to be forgotten is that difference. The
_information_ was accurate and legal, but _Google_ displaying that information
was not. Why the split? If the information was truly irrelevant, why not have
the newspaper remove it (and solve the Google issue in the process)? Why only
Google (especially in the wider right to forgotten laws)?

------
rstuart4133
Having others forget your more embarrassing moments sounds so reasonable on
the the surface.

Yet our profoundly good memories allowing us to remember almost everything we
experience is one thing that separates from the rest of the animal kingdom. It
makes the prisoners dilemma not a dilemma for us at all, but rather turns the
history of decisions we make over time into a single fabric into which can be
woven all sorts cooperative behaviour.

Fortunately a world where people can demand things they have done be forgotten
has been explored by others in much greater depth than is displayed here.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)" is a good starting point.

------
ddoolin
Does the Right To Be Forgotten apply to those citizens (French in this case)
that have done or had bad thing happen in other places, outside of their home
country? What if that French citizen goes to e.g. Korea and, I don't know, bad
mouths a local politician in a blog post that maybe ends up as a local scandal
as well? The person is probably still "unremarkable." Citizens of other
countries that haven't enacted such laws or agreed to the removal have a right
to that knowledge, then.

My example isn't great but hopefully you get what I'm saying.

------
zimbatm
It might be naive but wouldn't it be easier for the individuals to change
their name ? It's like burned HN accounts, you don't keep the karma but a new
account gives you a fresh start.

~~~
_petronius
Unfortunately, as a general solution, this doesn't really work. The enormous
paperwork hassle aside, in some jurisdictions (like Germany), you can't change
your name except in very limited circumstances (I think here the situations
are marriage, naturalization, or you can demonstrate some hardship from it,
like being named "Assbutt McGee" or whatever).

~~~
zimbatm
In either case some change to regulation seem to be necessary though. "can
demonstrate some hardship from it" could be extended to the right to be
forgotten.

------
V-2
If humans have a "right to be forgotten", there's no reason why it should only
be enforced on Google or search engines.

Bringing the story up again in print, or on a talk show or wherever (in
public) should be made illegal as well.

------
xefer
What is the motivation behind his affectation of spelling "google" with a
lower case "G"?

~~~
lagadu
Completely unrelated to the article: your post made me wonder whether "to
google", as a verb, was accepted by any dictionaries and if it'd be
capitalized or not. According to Merriam-Webster it's indeed accepted as a
verb and is not capitalized (though they say it often is)[1]

I was just curious and wanted to share :)

[1] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/google)

------
1arity
Before delving into a view on the case for a "right" to be "forgotten", I want
to touch on some points about the article, the legal aspect, and some meta
points.

Regarding the article, I disagree with the "evil corporation" test, and also
disagree with the "unremarkable person" test. These test seems too
specialised, and too representative of a particular worldview, to be of
general applicability or usefulness.

Legally, it is an exciting and fascinating case, and really emblematic of the
present. Given their history, it's cool that France is the nexus where this is
going on. I'm fascinated to see what the courts adjudicate and what the
enforcement results are.

At a meta level, making regard to Google's strategy, if I ran Google, I would
never ever have given in to any of this, because as I will come to, this is
not really about a “right to be forgotten at all.” Europe wants to censor our
search results? Ignore. Europe threatens fines? Ignore. Europe makes some
effective threat? Respond with a threat to shutter Google services for Europe,
and market it, just to further incent the populist outrage, as adhering to
principles of freedom for individuals and anti-state censorship ( as they did
in China, even tho that decision was, because of different reasons, incorrect
). Then see where the regulators loyalties are, with the “cause of a lifetime”
or with their soon to be rescinded tenure?

The antitrust case, and now this, it worked for Google to never have budged an
inch on either of these things, but because the legal advice they listened to
was all cowardice, they did. A reason contributing to the workability of an
unflinching attitude for Google is that this is not really about a “right to
be forgotten” for individuals at all, it is really about a “right for Europe
to forget the reason their tech sector failed to produce a Google”.

Europe is bitter, that an American company has, again, taken over the world,
and left “poor Europe” with the scraps. Rather than owning this, the Europeans
would rather pretend that Google has done something wrong, so they can pretend
that their failure was, in fact, the result of some injustice perpetrated
against them by what they delude themselves is an evil corporation. Europe
indulges this fantasy of victimization instead of owning their failure and
creating improvements to make their tech sector work. Obviously their attitude
is self-defeating and their delusion isn’t helping them create any
improvements. It is giving them the fake pay off of pretending they are
righteous fake victims of an “evil”, American company, that they feel in their
delusion is “too successful to be moral”.

Because the antitrust case and now this is driven by Europe’s meta desire for
a catharsis from owning responsibility for its economic impotence, Google
should never have aided Europe in indulging their fantasy of victimization. It
doesn’t help Europe, and it doesn’t help Google, because, as Ivan Vanko in
Iron Man II says, “If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe
in Him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come. All I have to
do is sit back and watch as the world consumes you.” Europe is poking the
Googlebear because Europe, like Ivan, incorrectly blames Google for its own
legacy of failure, and is now obsessed with fabricating a narrative that fake
justifies their crusade against the American giant.

To paraphrase Tony Stark, “Where will you be watching the world consume me
from? Oh, that's right, economic meltdown. I'll send you a food voucher.”

Google should never have budged because there now is blood in the water, and
Europe has found a weakness.

To get even more meta, Europe actually was testing Google’s strength. Is
Google strong enough to be an inspiration for leadership here, to us? If
Google had showed true backbone, and said, “No, this is ridiculous,” Europe
would have stepped back, confident they were in the presence of something that
really deterministically knew what it was doing, take off their hats, bowed,
and said, “Okay, Google, show us the way.” This would have led to greater
integration and European collaboration with Google, which would have been
great for everybody. Unfortunately, Google caved at the crucial moment, a
trend that is disappointingly common in present-day American leadership.

Moving now to the actual ethics, I think there are two basic principles under
contention in a case for a “right to be forgotten” :

1) does anyone ( beside the state, which is fine ) have the right to control
the contents of another's mind?

2) what information about a thing ( person, company, entity ) is it lawful to
keep secret ?

The answer to the first is no, no one has a right to control the contents of
anyone else’s mind beside their own. Every person has perfect mental freedom
to discover, learn, think and believe whatever they choose or whatever random
chance leads them to. This is obviously to say nothing of expressing those
beliefs, or creating consequences from those beliefs in the world. These
latter two things are ignored in this present discussion.

The answer to the second is important to define. Some things are lawful to
keep secret, and laws are already being or have been introduced to protect
people in these cases ( such as the privacy of clinical information, the
illegality of “revenge porn”, “sealed” legal proceedings, trade secrets,
financial information of private companies, information that incites terrorist
violence ( in Britain, at last ), and other things ). There is a lot of scope
here for creating improvements, and likely a lot of future caselaw to
adjudicate what different places mores and standards are about these things.

So, in light of this, and in light of the internet being a “public space”, and
in light of Google being a major gateway to access information, it’s clear
that there are __some__ things which are lawful to keep private, and illegal
to publish publicly, and therefore, if they have appeared on the internet,
have appeared on the internet illegally, and therefore are subject to similar
treatment as now effected by DMCA takedown requests. So there is a right to
remove some of these things, and that is simply the normal legal apparatus
also finding the expression of its effects on the Internet. These things are
not legal off the internet, and eventually the law will enforce them on the
internet as well. In time, the coordination to strike a balance between
different jurisdictions will lead to some “enclaves of permissiveness and
iniquity” and also some new cooperative legislation between different
jurisdictions to work together to remove illegal content.

So the basic consideration here is that while no one can limit what an
individual puts into their head, there are some things that it is not legal to
publish, and so in effect, individuals will not be able to put them into their
heads.

Calling it a “right to be forgotten” is really just abstruse, and incorrect.
You can’t force someone to forget something particular ( unless Eternal
Sunshine is real ), and you can’t really even force the internet to forget.
You can make some types of information illegal, and effect their removal or
prevent their display. Practically tho, just as you can not unsay something
said, nor put the dropped tumbler back together in the same way, you can’t
rewind thermodynamics and you can never remove information once you have
unleashed it online. All you can do, is limit the fallout, and try to limit
the scope of dissemination, and try to dissuade people from releasing in the
first place. One of the things this difficulty of enforcement suggests is that
the penalties, when they are written, will come down on the side of being
exaggeratedly deterrent, since their excess must compensate for the lack of a
preventative complement.

~~~
seren
I can't manage to reconcile what you are explaining here with your previous
post on Turkish censorship.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005009)

It sounds like you are advocating the exact opposite in both posts regarding
how a global company should treat local laws and culture.

------
nthcolumn
Being downvoted just for asking a question is not cool. Can somebody please
tell me the/your argument(s) for a 'right to be forgotten' or state the 'right
to be forgotten principle.'?

------
ikeboy
Honest question: why doesn't google just stop serving France for a day, with a
message such as "we can't provide service to you because France is bothering
us, contact your (whatever the French equivalent of Congressman is)"? Or at
least do what they did with SOPA and put a link on the homepage.

Does anyone think that wouldn't work, or that the cost to Google would be too
much? I don't think France would be as willing as China to part with Google.

~~~
icebraining
Because they'd get as much, or more popular opposition as support. SOPA was
seen as a corporations vs people issue; this isn't.

And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten,
many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we
should organize our society. Anti-capitalism, and anti-American-imperialism
are still strong ideas in Europe.

~~~
ikeboy
>And even from those who don't particularly like the Right To Be Forgotten,
many would not take kindly to an American company trying to teach us how we
should organize our society.

This isn't saying "organize your society like this", it's saying "we refuse to
operate under these laws we view as restrictive, so as a society, decide
whether you prefer to have these laws, or have Google". They have leverage,
why not use it?

As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn't need to censor
things around the world that are only illegal under French law. That seems
likely to be well supported (especially if the alternative is "we can't use
Google at all anymore").

~~~
icebraining
_As for popular opposition, their case is that they shouldn 't need to censor
things around the world that are only illegal under French law._

It's not clear that France wants to censor things around the world. The
problem is that Google doesn't censor results _even to French connections_ ,
if the user accesses Google.com instead of Google.fr.

~~~
ikeboy
I don't think Google would particularly care if they only needed to censor
French connections . They're clearly understanding it as a global demand. See
[http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-...](http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-
european-not-global-right.html)

>We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what
content someone in a second country can access.

Additionally, if this was all a misunderstanding, I believe it would have been
cleared up by now, so the fact that nothing like that has come out in the last
ten days tells me that they did understand correctly.

~~~
icebraining
I think Google is purposefully being misleading about that. If you read the
notice they link to, it says:

 _Although the company has granted some of the requests, delisting was only
carried out on European extensions of the search engine and not when searches
are made from “google.com” or other non-European extensions._

 _In accordance with the CJEU judgement, the CNIL considers that in order to
be effective, delisting must be carried out on all extensions of the search
engine and that the service provided by Google search constitutes a single
processing._

Nowhere does it say that the problem is that the results are still accessible
from other countries; it's specifically about still being accessible on the
.com and other domains.

~~~
ikeboy
I don't see any motive for Google to do that. Does it make sense to you? Why
would they agree to censor the .fr, but not the .com for French users? I think
they do understand the notice correctly.

And if it was that simple, why hasn't CNIL come out and said that Google is
misinterpreting it?

Also, what they link to is not the notice, which can be found here:
[http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberat...](http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/deliberations/Bureau/D2015-047_MED_GOOGLE_INC.pdf)
I don't read French (and putting it through a translater didn't help much), so
can someone who can maybe tell us what it actually says?

