French court applies Right to be forgotten globally

[taustin]

Originally Posted by gbm

Google shuts down its French subsidiary, lays off all it French workers and blocks all French IP address from accessing Google severs and services. Problem solved.

I'm sure they won't miss the revenue from those French customers one little bit, either. (Considering France is trying to collect a billion dollars in taxes from Google, one might reasonably speculate that Google is doing tens of billions in revenue there, and has billions in profits.)

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by taustin

I'm sure they won't miss the revenue from those French customers one little bit, either. (Considering France is trying to collect a billion dollars in taxes from Google, one might reasonably speculate that Google is doing tens of billions in revenue there, and has billions in profits.)

I am sure they miss Chinese revenue and the onetime hope thereof, too.


And listening to France could kill them elsewhere, like closer to home.

[leaston]

Perhaps it would be a good thing for Google to pull out of and block access to somewhere like France. It would encourage people to adopt a new search engine and increase competition with Google from other sources. About time too.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by leaston

Perhaps it would be a good thing for Google to pull out of and block access to somewhere like France. It would encourage people to adopt a new search engine and increase competition with Google from other sources. About time too.

I don't use Google exclusively, but blocking France wouldn't make me upset with any business. It's like shutting a gate on a little yapping dog that bites.

[murg]

Maybe Google should just redirect all results for French Tourism to other countries in Europe.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by murg

Maybe Google should just redirect all results for French Tourism to other countries in Europe.

France? Was that a town or something overseas?

[SteveEisenberg]

The original European Court of Justice ruling seems ambiguous on the question of whether Google can withhold results from google.co.uk, etc., while continuing to return the links on google.com. So this issue was going to be the subject of further litigation in any event. The French ruling, which was NOT from an appeals court, could have as easily come from, say, Germany. Google retaliating against the first EU state where a court rules against google.com would not make the issue go away. Therefore, I disagree with the France-bashing in some posts here.

On the underlying issue, while I tend to side with Google, I have mixed feelings. One of the great things about the US used to be that it was a country of second chances. But now, with the internet, a criminal acquittal, or an expunged conviction, is liable to stick with you forever. I can't see this as anything but unfortunate.

On the other hand, most of these takedowns seem wrong to me:

http://hiddenfromgoogle.afaqtariq.com/

[DiapDealer]

Most second chances come from people who are fully aware of your past and chose to give you a shot because something they saw in you convinced them you deserved one. There is no inherent right to a favorably edited personal history. Ask anyone with a checkered past, who made the most of a second chance, if they did so through hard work or through concealment/suppression.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by frahse

France? Was that a town or something overseas?

They probably meant Paris(, Texas).

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

The original European Court of Justice ruling seems ambiguous on the question of whether Google can withhold results from google.co.uk, etc., while continuing to return the links on google.com. So this issue was going to be the subject of further litigation in any event. The French ruling, which was NOT from an appeals court, could have as easily come from, say, Germany. Google retaliating against the first EU state where a court rules against google.com would not make the issue go away. Therefore, I disagree with the France-bashing in some posts here.

True, the real problem is just Europe.

[Shane R]

Privacy watchdogs in the European Union issued guidelines on Wednesday calling on the company to apply the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling to Google’s entire search empire.

Right now, the right to be forgotten ruling – which created a process for people to remove unwanted content from Google’s search results – applies only to Google’s local European sites, like Google.de in Germany. But the law is easy to get around, because to get the full list of search results all anyone has to do is perform a search on Google’s other sites, like Google.com.

The new guidelines, issued by a panel composed of the bloc’s national privacy regulators, aim to firm the law up by requiring Google and other search engines to take down links on sites outside the region as well.

“Under E.U. law, everyone has a right to data protection,” the regulatory body said in a statement on Wednesday. “Decisions must be implemented in such a way that they guarantee the effective and complete protection of data subjects’ rights and that E.U. law cannot be circumvented.”

On Wednesday, a Google spokesman said that the company had yet to review Europe’s new privacy guidelines — they will not be officially published until the end of the week — but that the company would study them carefully when they were published.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/te...mid=tw-nytimes

[murg]

Originally Posted by Shane R

Privacy watchdogs in the European Union issued guidelines on Wednesday calling on the company to apply the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling to Google’s entire search empire.

I can't wait until China 'passes' a similar law controlling search content globally.

[DuckieTigger]

I wonder if Google has the right to be forgotten themselves. What if they invoke the right to be forgotten and request all search results that contain "google and the right to be forgotten" removed. Would that not practically get rid of the right to be forgotten? Nobody can find it on google any more, problem solved and horribly backfired.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by murg

I can't wait until China 'passes' a similar law controlling search content globally.

If Europe does it, it is peoples' right to be forgotten. If China does it, it is assault upon the Free Internet.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

If Europe does it, it is peoples' right to be forgotten. If China does it, it is assault upon the Free Internet.

Nope, it's pretty much awful whoever does it.
Perhaps the only difference between China doing it and Europe doing it is the difference between malice and incompetence.