

'I'm Happy,' Says Man Whose Case Changed Europe's Rules For Google - RougeFemme
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/14/312430713/-i-m-happy-says-man-whose-case-changed-europe-s-rules-for-google

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axanoeychron
This is a good thing.

If something terrible is posted online and it is true but it hurts nobody if
you take it down, it seems like common courtesy to not repeat it. You have to
weigh the public interest versus peace of mind for the individual. It's not
clear cut and dry.

There are things you choose not to say in real life, even if the are true.
Just because something is on the internet does not preclude you from that
courtesy and respect. Technical reasons (such as caches) can be used as an
excuse to act respectably. You do not go around telling colleagues at work
about what other colleagues have done. What would you have to gain?

Imagine if you had relations with someone and it was recorded online. The
allegations might be true but who has more right for that information to be
left up there for all to find? Should you be allowed to post all you like
about others, disregarding the potential effects on that person? Or should you
be thoughtful about what is in the public interest?

Now imagine a site that records who had relations with whom. There is no
maliciousness in this one: it's more of a public record or encyclopedia. Do
you have the right to opt out of it?

To go further with my example. Imagine having a sexually transmitted
infectious disease. Is the answer the same?

~~~
Goronmon
_This is a good thing._

Censorship is never a good thing. Just because you don't like information
being made public, doesn't mean that you should be able to get the government
to force other people to hide that information (assuming the information
itself isn't illegal).

If I steal money from your house, and I'm arrested and sent to jail, should I
be allowed to have Google remove any information related to that from search
results?

 _You have to weigh the public interest versus peace of mind for the
individual._

Exactly, and in this case you've put the desire of any given individual over
the needs of the public interest.

~~~
axanoeychron
This really is not the same as censorship, equating it does not make an
argument.

Your example uses a robbery - a crime which is very much in everyone's
interest to be public. It's useful to know where the crime was committed and
what kind of crime it was.

My personal life does not concern you. You gain nothing and lose nothing by
losing access to it for you should never have had access to begin with. The
negative consequences of it being public fall on me, not on you. You have an
asymmetric imbalance of power and social obligation with this information.

If you really do not care about your information being public, post something
damaging. Someone would probably publicly mirror it to avoid it being removed.
If you don't want to post, why not?

Social conduct is a real thing.

Forcing someone else to hide information is an interesting part of this
dilemma. That someone else should have no interest in the data either - it
does not cost them to remove it.

If there is a wall owned by a landlord and someone graffitis on that wall with
some hurtful truth about someone. The graffiti can be considered unnecessary
and should never have occurred to begin with. The landlord would have no qualm
with removing it.

~~~
Goronmon
_This really is not the same as censorship, equating it does not make an
argument._

Explain how this is not censorship. The government in this case is forcing
Google to remove (correct and public) information from their search engine
because "they say so."

 _That someone else should have no interest in the data either - it does not
cost them to remove it._

Of all places, it's strange to see someone on HN refer to development
resources referred to as "no cost". How do you expect Google to handle these
personally-filtered search results without spending money building the
framework necessary to handle this?

~~~
axanoeychron
The person who wants the information is the one causing the removal of the
content - not the government. It is not about the government trying to
suppress information. The government (or court system) is acting on behalf of
the individual.

Like anything involving people, it is merely a cost of society that makes us
better off if we accept it as the cost of doing business. There are many costs
like this in society. For example; your neighbours are outrageously noisy and
unwieldy and are making it difficult for you to sleep. You have tried asking
them to keep the noise down. Our society has has a slow and expensive process
to come to some sort of resolution. Rather unnecessary since your local
government and police have better things to do. It's not really their fault,
you just happen to live in their catchment area.

Rather than just accept that people can do what they want or without regard to
others, a pleasant society provides solutions to social issues like this.
Without it, life would be less smooth.

Google has many engineers and big datacentres, I am sure they will manage.

------
eames4
This is a dangerous precedent. Google should (and probably will) appeal, and I
really hope they win. Who knows, the "right to be forgotten" could turn into a
"fight to be remembered" ala Trotsky.

~~~
jrockway
I believe this is the final level of appeals, and the only option for changing
the ruling is to make new law.

------
if_by_whisky
Seems like a dangerous precedent.

~~~
e40
I disagree. I have a friend that had some crazy person badmouthing him on
various usenet groups. It really bummed him out because when you googled his
name, you'd see all those things first. Replace "usenet" with "blog" and you
could have the same problem today.

~~~
throwaway420
It almost seems backwards until you stop and think about it, but the existence
of these kinds of laws actually makes this problem worse for most people.

There is no way for anybody without significant means to continuously monitor
the internet for negative search results and then continuously sick lawyers on
publishers, search engines, blogs, websites, and forums to get this stuff
removed. And even with unlimited means, there really is no way to put some
facts back in the bottle once it's been unveiled.

The existence of this kind of law makes it much more likely that most people
will automatically believe anything negative that they read on the internet
about you because then otherwise they'd assume that you'd be able to get
lawyers to remove it.

Right now, today, there's a hint of doubt about the veracity of anything on
the internet, and that's actually a good thing for people who have been
unfairly attacked.

But if this law becomes widespread and sets a very strong precedent, then
people will automatically tend to believe anything that they read about
online.

This is a net loss not only for freedom, but for most people who have negative
search results.

~~~
gress
> But if this law becomes widespread and sets a very strong precedent, then
> people will automatically tend to believe anything that they read about
> online.

How is this true?

------
regoldste
"Gonzalez had his home repossessed 16 years ago. If you Google his name, you
can still see newspaper stories about his debts. 'It hurts my reputation,' he
says in Spanish. 'My debts are long paid, but those links were the first thing
you'd see.'"

Congratulations, Mr. Gonzalez; now when people Google your name, your
reputation won't only be defined by your foreclosure and past financial
troubles--which is now discussed in 10,000+ articles (good luck with those
takedown requests!)--but also for being the jerk who killed the internet for
Europe.

You have to appreciate the irony...

~~~
cpa
Killed the internet in Europe? Come on. Free speech in the US and in Europe
are two different things. But neither is better, it's a matter of culture.
This decision is not backwards and it's not killing free speech as I know it
in France (and most of the EU). Now, on the technicalities of the decision,
there's probably to be said.

~~~
VikingCoder
It is absolutely backwards.

It may be more cost effective for Google to stop serving search results in
Spain.

Before you call me ridiculous, how much do you think Google makes off of those
47 million Spaniards each year, and how much do you think it will cost Google
if those 47 million Spaniards or a large portion of them start demanding the
company remove information about them?

If the cost to comply is greater than the profit, what would you do?

~~~
regoldste
I believe the European Court of Justice's ruling applies to all of the EU
countries, not just to Spain. I think it's unimaginable that Google would stop
serving the entire EU market on principle.

But you raise a neat question: assuming it was just Spain (or the next
similarly sized country to reach this decision), what would happen if Google
threatened to entirely pull out of the country--i.e., stop serving search
results or supporting any Google services there? Are they powerful enough to
influence national policy? It seems unlikely, but it's a neat hypothetical.

~~~
VikingCoder
Google pulled out of China on principle.

China is a hell of a lot bigger than the EU.

~~~
cpa
Pulling out of China is a good PR move (although that's not the main reason).
Pulling out of Spain, not so much. The shitstorm that would ensue would be
very detrimental.

And tbh, you won't see many lawsuits where people try to enforce their "right
to be forgotten". We may have stronger libel laws here but we don't have the
lawsuit culture of the US. There's no way it'll be cost-effective for Google
to pull out from Spain or the EU.

------
sparkzilla
The Spanish fellow had a problem with a government agency that would not
remove his records. So instead of dealing with that government abuse he sues a
private company that reports using government data. Then the government says
the private company has to stop displaying the information. So the government
creates the problem and then hides it. Worse, the main beneficiaries of this
law will not be ordinary people, it'll be criminals, politicians and powerful
people who now have a way to hide their wrongdoings.

------
newman8r
I wonder how this would impact an organization like archive.org

~~~
pietro
There are probably hundreds of reasons why archive.org would be illegal in
Europe. It's wonderful that they are based in a country that respects freedom
of speech.

~~~
fleitz
That's funny most of HN seems pretty disappointed that it's AT&T's free speech
right to hand over your (technically AT&T's) phone records to the gov't (or
anyone else they feel like).

~~~
je_bailey
AT&T does not have a free speech right to expose information that was not
publicly available. Where as, if AT&T was providing information that you had
agreed to make available, or was providing information that was already
publicly available then they would have, arguably, the right to provide that
information again.

------
spinlock
I would say this ruling is Orwellian but even Big Brother had the common sense
to actually change the primary sources.

~~~
happyscrappy
Indeed. And Europe wonders why they have trouble innovating.

------
txutxu
Everybody talking here about "recorded sex" etc, should know better about what
"marabunta" is and how it's used in certain places and sexual groups.

I'm totally with anybody which wants to remove any (own) sex-related
recording. With or without tropical drugs. People is terrible.

------
nsxwolf
So - how long does it take to crawl the entire web yourself with a modern PC
and broadband connection? Is it feasible to have your own uncensored search
engine (even if it isn't frequently updated)?

~~~
gress
Do you seriously believe that Google is somehow unbiased?

~~~
mehta
but it's not about Google only. It is about bing, yahoo and ddg too!

------
happyscrappy
Europeans won't see the real search results and if that is how they want it
fine, they have no jurisdiction anywhere else.

------
gress
Seems like a great precedent. Google spiders the web and creates profiles
about people, and they should be held responsible for the consequences.

~~~
EvanKelly
I can't reply to the other comment, but the court case in general is not about
"creating profiles" of people. It only deals with things found and presented
from web-spidering. I dare say that duckduckgo would have the same results.

Are you opposed to spidering the web and presenting the data based on keyword
search? Why should Google be held responsible for indexing publicly available
webpages?

~~~
gress
I am opposed to the idea that because something is a machine process, the
people who operate that machine should not be held responsible for any harm it
does.

~~~
EvanKelly
Who gets to decide what is harmful? Do you simply defer to the courts?

Do you think Google holds a larger, equal, or smaller responsibility than the
content provider who is actually hosting this "harmful" information?

In this case, I don't see anyone at fault and don't think a crime has been
committed. The data presented was true and of public record.

I would see a case if Google was somehow treating this man as a special case
and only indexing negative things about him, or if google treated his publicly
available data differently than any other person's

~~~
gress
The responsibility could be measured in how much exposure each site gave to
the information.

Who gets to decide what is harmful is indeed generally decided by courts.

I agree that it shouldn't be a special case. Google does discriminate based on
how much other information about a person is posted online - someone with a
lot of professional info online will look better than someone who doesn't used
the internet much and so only these public records appear against their name
in search. That is a dangerous form of discrimination.

