
BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list - mineshaftgap
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29658085
======
skwirl
The "right to be forgotten" is a doublespeak - it is really a concept for
revoking others' right to free speech. I have no idea how the EU justice
system works but I hope they have the means to correct this serious error.

~~~
wmf
_it is really a concept for revoking others ' right to free speech_

Yes, because in Europe free speech isn't an absolute right; sometimes the
right of privacy trumps free speech.

~~~
adharmad
Anything that trumps free speech, except for the truly extreme cases (shouting
fire in a theatre etc.) is a slippery slope that can erode liberty over a
period of time.

How long before this moves into "right to not be offended trumps free speech"
territory?

~~~
jasonzemos
Shouting fire in a theater isn't an extreme case if you think about it. When
was the last time you heard of a stampede in a crowded theater when someone
shouted fire and there was none? I've never heard of it. Who would take off
running? Would you take off running because someone else is? Honestly. The
case this phrase originated from is overpraised.

~~~
drcube
Is it even illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater?

This isn't 1900. There are accessible, well-lit exit routes in every theater
I've been in. Not to mention fire suppression systems, alarms, and the fact
that you'd most likely _see_ a fire before it was time to panic.

~~~
mc32
Perhaps this does not happen much in the US. However, there are "discotheque"
fires [1] which harm numerous people throughout the world. Typically
overcrowded with locked exit doors. It's a sad thing, but it happens.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nightclub_fires](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nightclub_fires)

------
pp19dd
"They included a link to a blog post by Economics Editor Robert Peston. The
request was believed to have been made by a person who had left a comment
underneath the article."

Now that's a good example of a feature fighting the product. Disable article
commenting: you might miss out on engagement and subsequent pageviews. Enable
commenting: you might get the article de-listed from Google. Allow anonymous
commenting: you invite trolls (such as jezabel/violent GIF swarm). Require
(partially) verified identities: you risk takedown requests.

~~~
andreasvc
I think you're glossing over the simplest option: allow commenters to remove
their comments. This puts the responsibility where it belongs. If you want
content removed, actually have it removed, don't involve some third party
search engine index.

~~~
diziet
Hence putting the load of managing a identity verification and removal program
on the shoulders of hundreds of thousands web developers?

~~~
Kalium
And thus putting some political backpressure on the whole affair, calling into
question the sanity of the whole idea.

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ryandrake
I don't really have a huge problem with "right to be forgotten". I think, as a
society, we might eventually discover the down side of having everything
anyone (including oneself) posts about everyone permanently archived, linked
to their real identities, and searchable forever. This will probably start to
happen once those who grew up as kids posting to the internet start wanting
respectable jobs or running for office. They'll realize the person they were
as a kid is completely different from the person they are as a 50 year old,
and not want to be judged by some troll post they wrote 35 years ago.

~~~
gerbal
The problem in this context is that this right is not being used to allow
youthful indiscretions to fade from memory, but to suppress speech that may be
in the public interest to protect.

~~~
Kequc
Hysteria surrounding the ruling is not completely warranted from what I can
see. Google's own page one would use to submit such a request specifically
says it isn't going to do that.

[https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=we...](https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch#)

> "When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include
> outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest
> in the information — for example, we may decline to remove certain
> information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal
> convictions, or public conduct of government officials."

There is a legitimate problem with Google's search results listing harassing
links to persons. Revenge porn would be a terrific example.

If there is something on the internet about you that you don't want there. It
isn't possible to remove it, that would be absurd but your public facing name
on the internet shouldn't be clouded by unwarranted defamation material.

They do at least promise not to remove professional malpractices and the like.
I doubt for instance they would not return reviews about your business on yelp
or similar.

A much larger issue that needs to be tackled is DMCA, which is being abused
today. We have tried DMCA and it needs some reform. We haven't really tried
right to be forgotten yet, and I just don't see that the downsides outweigh
the potential benefits.

BBC publishing links that have been deemed by persons who are the subject of
the links to be bad; paints a giant bullseye on those links.

~~~
PeterisP
The promises you list and your guesses about what google is or isn't going to
do are just empty words - the original article itself gives a real example
where a news story about convictions of IRA members was blocked, so the
expected risks are not only possible, but have already happened and happening
right now.

------
iand
Daily Telegraph is already publishing a similar list, which gives a
fascinating insight into what people would rather you did not read about:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11036257/Telegr...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11036257/Telegraph-
stories-affected-by-EU-right-to-be-forgotten.html)

~~~
blackRust
The last one is great:

    
    
        Google has also taken down a link to an online dating profile for user Thom109 on Telegraph Dating.
    

Raises questions about online services opt-in/out to be publicly
listed/searchable.

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freshflowers
Please note that this is not so much about the basic principle of the 'right
to be forgotten', but the way in which Google is deliberately turning it into
a bloodbath.

Google is constantly looking to create controversy and undermine any kind of
privacy rights enforcement rather than being constructive in finding
solutions.

Google has every right to ignore all but the most obviously justified removal
requests and only remove results after a court order. They are deliberately
taking an axe to the search results in an attempt to make EU privacy
protection look like censorship.

~~~
themartorana
Because it _is_ censorship, to the definition. It's no different than
requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles
from the past.

Besides, at the volume at which the requests have poured in, even Google has
limited time and resources to fight each request in court. It's unrealistic to
expect them to actually fight any takedown individually when the entire idea
is absurd.

Yes, I added my opinion at the end there.

~~~
vertex-four
> It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from
> public libraries to articles from the past.

Except that before the Internet was a thing, in general, if you did something
that got you in the newspaper five years ago, nobody would remember it when
you're applying for a job or networking or somehow get in the news again,
doubly so if you moved town.

These days, it's likely that if you were in the news once, that baggage is
likely to be attached to you forever; it can quite literally ruin your life.

That's quite a massive difference if you ask me.

~~~
Karunamon
So what's the end game where everyone has that level of "dirt" on them?
Doesn't it become a lot less extraordinary (and therefore, a lot less "life
ruining") if _everyone 's_ publicly-documented bad behavior is accessible?

FWIW, I see this as blatant censorship.

~~~
anigbrowl
Your comment assumes several things. First, that everyone has a similar level
of things to be embarrassed about. Second, that wealthy and powerful people
won't simply sue or bribe publishers to withhold or delete the embarrassing
material. Third, that living in a panopticon is a good thing.

I'm a little perplexed at how people who find NSA surveillance utterly
unacceptable and wish to be able to shield private information from even
lawful (warranted) scrutiny nonetheless seem fine with surveillance and
publication by private sector, whether that's more-or-less universal
publication via search engines or fee-based as in the case of data brokers
like Acxiom.

~~~
Karunamon
None of those assumptions are made, at all.

First, I asked _what the endgame is_ , not what it is right now.

 _First, that everyone has a similar level of things to be embarrassed about._

And yet here we're discussing a law that leaves the amount of damage to be
done to freedom of information up to the whims of each individual person who
thinks they should be able to censor some piece of data, rather than any kind
of objective test. Including the "rich and powerful".

 _Second, that wealthy and powerful people won 't simply sue or bribe
publishers to withhold or delete the embarrassing material._

That does not work in the real world. The rich and powerful have been trying
to restrict information getting out for years. Snowden and Streisand are
living proof of this. The continued explosions in the faces of people who try
to do this are further proof.

That old saying about the internet interpreting censorship (and we can quibble
about the wheretos and the whyfores all day long, but at the end of the day,
this definitely fits the definition of censorship) as damage? That doesn't
stop applying just because legislators want it to.

 _Third, that living in a panopticon is a good thing. I 'm a little perplexed
at how people who find NSA surveillance utterly unacceptable and wish to be
able to shield private information.._

In every case we're talking about here, it's not "private" information. It's
information that's always been there, for free, to anyone who cares to look.
Arrests are not private information, neither are blog comments, neither is
anything else you do in the public eye. I find it repugnant to suggest that
removing that information from one or two places makes it as if those things
never happened.

~~~
anigbrowl
Your post is so self-contradictory and illogical that I see little point in
discussing this further with you.

~~~
Karunamon
Let me make this simple then, your veiled insults aside:

There is a difference between public and private information, and you don't
seem to know what that is.

We're discussing censorship of public information.

Why did you choose to invoke the NSA bogeyman in a discussion about already-
public information?

Why do you think the "wealthy and powerful" will be able to censor information
when the wealthy and powerful are massive failures at it already?

------
funkyy
The worst thing is that this law will be used by politicians and their
families to cover up corruption stories.

The law that possibly profits governing bodies the most is a bad law.

Why we cannot know if our new neighbour have paedophile past, corruption or
rape incidents? Such mistakes should stay public for ever. But now very
specific groups of people are trying to whiten themselves up. Its somehow
scary...

~~~
Kalium
I think it already has been used to cover up past poor behavior.

------
takemikazuchi
I wonder how this will affect the Internet Archive. I understand they're based
in the US(and hopefully their servers are too), but will the EU courts take
any action if a sufficiently high profile lawsuit occurs over the archive's
contents?

~~~
danielweber
ISTR that the Internet Archive was fine honoring takedown requests.

------
denzil_correa
So now, we would require a new law to have "Right To Forget" for "Right to
Forgotten" removal lists?

------
dzhiurgis
Does anyone publish a list of government censored material?

Or stuff that has been taken down for copyright infringement?

~~~
vonmoltke
Google publishes DMCA takedown requests. Not sure about government censorship,
though.

~~~
dzhiurgis
It does not publish actual URLs

~~~
vonmoltke
Yes they do. They provide a link to the specific notice on Chilling Effects
when search results would have returned a URL that they received a takedown
request for. The notice contains exact URLs.

