Google Starts Removing European Search Results For "Right to be Forgotten"

[Baresark]

There seems to be a lot of backlash against this decision. I agree with the decision of the European Courts 100%. Everyone is looking at this from the wrong perspective. Everyone seems to be thinking people are going to be using this to cover up information. My idea is: Do I really want any of my information out there? No, I don't. People forget that anonymity protects victims more so than it does criminals. This should be standard everywhere. Or websites like LinkedIn should be searchable, as people who use it would like. But maybe not every single thing about me should searchable. I try to keep my internet footprint as small as possible, but anytime I slip up I would rather Google erred on the side of caution and it just wasn't automatically searchable.

 

[Baresark]

I wonder how people would react if this law had said that a person had the right to walk into a library and start tearing out pages from any book that mentioned them in a negative or embarrassing light.

Admittedly, it's not quite the same thing. There is at least some level of oversight, and it's more like removing cards from the card catalog (not that those exist in most libraries anymore), but the ultimate effect is intended to be the same.

There is no right to be forgotten. There is a right not to do stupid shit.

Start exercising it.

As humans, we have a right to make a mistake that doesn't hurt anyone but us. We are then supposed to learn from those mistakes, which is a whole other conversation. But people have the right to move on from past mistakes (within reason of course).

Your analogy is specious at best. If I like a politician and defend them on the internet, for example, and then down the road that guy turns out to be a pedophile, should I always look like I'm defending a pedophile? No, but people will take that information out of context and show it that way if they have a reason to.

 

[Raziel]

It's the internet. Also there is the whole freedom of speech thing. As long as the in formation is not false or untrue, well then you have a right to say it.

This is TERRIBLE logic. You think I should be able to say anything as long as its true? How about if I wanted to post all your personal information? You name, address, ssn, bank accounts, medical records, all your user names and passwords, your complete schedule, everything of value you own. All that same information for all your family members as well. What if I just wanted to stream 24 video of everything you do? Or just email your boss, parnets, children, and the local pta a link to every porno you have ever viewed.

There are plenty perfectly mundane and totally legal things you just don't want other people to know about you.


Personally I would love to have the same right in the US. I'm sick and tired of every jacka.. I know being able to post any of my personal information and photos. All my relatives know that I don't use social media, that I don't want anything about me posted. And yet they do anyway. Some of them think its some kind of game to just do so because I hate it. I should be able keep morons from posting whatever they please about me.

How many people have found out one of their stupid relatives created pages for them without permission? One of my relatives is a teacher. Her daughter made a page for her without her knowing and started posting photos. She was very mad when she found out, especially since her students had already seen the page before she could get it taken down.

 

[lacktheknack]

I find it weird why Google is targeted by this law. Why not let people have the right to take down the source?

Because that's really hard to enforce?

I have an entry on mobygames.com, for instance. I didn't put it there, an obsessive who combs the credits of indie games put it there.

I don't have an account on mobygames.com, and I don't want one, especially not if I'm trying to disappear from the internet. So, I'd have to ask Mobygames unofficially to remove my page from their site. This is obviously ripe with potential for maliciousness if they automatically accept. So we'd have to have a big back-and-forth with ID scans, pleading, and double-checks.

An acceptable and MUCH easier alternative is for Google to destroy all search links to my name, which covers much more than Mobygames.

 

[Raziel]

It's the internet. Also there is the whole freedom of speech thing. As long as the in formation is not false or untrue, well then you have a right to say it.

This is TERRIBLE logic. You think I should be able to say anything as long as its true? How about if I wanted to post all your personal information? You name, address, ssn, bank accounts, medical records, all your user names and passwords, your complete schedule, everything of value you own. All that same information for all your family members as well. What if I just wanted to stream 24 video of everything you do?

Sigh, you deliberately misunderstand something to make your own point. Of course there are exceptions! It only extends as far as what newspapers are allowed.

What did I miss understand? He was talking about "free speech" and I was not even arguing he was wrong. I was stating there need to be more restrictions on what you can post than just being true. And no one is talking about newspapers.

Personally I would love to have the same right in the US. I'm sick and tired of every jacka.. I know being able to post any of my personal information and photos. All my relatives know that I don't use social media, that I don't want anything about me posted. And yet they do anyway. Some of them think its some kind of game to just do so because I hate it. I should be able keep morons from posting whatever they please about me.

How many people have found out one of their stupid relatives created pages for them without permission? One of my relatives is a teacher. Her daughter made a page for her without her knowing and started posting photos. She was very mad when she found out, especially since her students had already seen the page before she could get it taken down.

Not me. Because most my relatives ain't dicks. But you do realize that all this law says is that Google can't show the results in it's search pertaining to a person's name. It doesn't remove the data so even if the big search engines decided to adopt a small search engine could choose not to, so long as they're based oin some shady country they couldn't really be stopped.

So in the end this doesn't really change much. But yeah, the solution to your problem. quit hanging around and talking to your dick relatives. Then they won't have anything to post. I'm not calling them dicks to be mean, but that's sorta what I call people who do things that they know another party will not like and has asked them not to do,

1 if google doesn't bring up the information, then yeah, for a HUGE number of pc users that info might as well not exist. Sure its not a total solution. But it would be a big help.

2 Just because your relatives aren't dicks doesn't address my issue that other people can post your personal information online willy nilly even if it has no relevance to anything. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to protect your privacy. They can remove the chaff without deleting things like criminal records.

3 I cannot cut off contact with all my relatives because a couple of my cousins posted a picture of my at the christmas party. They would not think thats reasonable anymore than not going because one of the kids pulled your hair or something. And making anymore of an issue of it doesn't solve anything. It just gets a bunch of facebook threads going about how 1 person in their family either would not pose in the whole family photo or wouldn't let them post the photo. And a whole bunch of phone calls arguing with me.

 

[FalloutJack]

Why do I get the feeling that whole European countries are going to have certain historical data removed so they can go "Lah lah lah, it never happened!"? I wouldn't put it past them to try.

 

[Strazdas]

terrible law. censoring internet in a very inefficient way (i looked at the form, looks like something they cant really automize due to requirement of legal documents to be submitted). Internet does not forget. ever. and trying to censor google is not going to solve provacy issues, its going to only increase them. this will allow criminals even more freedom to hide behind the "its privacy hur dur" crap while benefiting no regular people.

ID rather have them hide criminal records, at least that way there would be less discrimination in workplace against reformed criminals.

 

[Kahani]

The lawsuit began in 2010 with Spanish lawyer Mario Costeja González, who made a complaint to the Spanish Data Protection Agency. González wanted an auction notice for his home, which had been published by a Spanish newspaper in 1998 and indexed by Google, removed from both the newspaper's website and the Google search results. González argued that the results from 1998 were no longer relevant, and infringed on his privacy.

I can't help wondering if he's heard of the Streisand effect. His efforts to stop people from finding out about the auction notice have resulted in him becoming know worldwide as that guy who didn't want people to find out about an auction notice. Sure, you no longer find the notice itself when you search for his name. Instead, you find sites like this one [http://www.derechoaleer.org/en/blog/2014/05/the-unforgettable-story-of-the-seizure-to-the-defaulter-mario-costeja-gonzalez-that-happened-in-1998.html] which not only give the story about how he wanted things removed from the internet, but actually include screenshots of that specific thing itself. What's he going to do now, demand that any reports about him wanting to take information off the internet be themselves taken off the internet? And then the reports on that...