Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case • Hacker News Board

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#171

Post by greglindahl » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #60

Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

> They will instead turn to Google Whew, good thing they wouldn't instead turn to newspapers or libraries, we might have to have information removed there too (or the microfiche or card catalogs respectively). It's unfortunate that ease of access is the primary motivator and we can't just stand on principles. I believe society would adapt, but yes factual information at your fingertips has positives and negatives as…

Online newspapers are being directly censored by "right to be forgotten", there are people having their names removed from newspaper site search engines.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#172

Post by IAmEveryone » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

sigzero wrote: post #42

zeveb wrote: post #2

Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results. > ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’ ‘The pub…

> The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person Who the hell makes that call? That in and of itself should tell you this is a bad law.

First, Google. Then, if one side is unhappy, a judge. Example: this article.

What exactly is wrong with judges making decisions? Seems to kinda be their job.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#173

Post by CobrastanJorji » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

> Explaining the decisions made on Friday, the judge said one of the men had continued to "mislead the public" while the other had "shown remorse".

Okay, great, so Google's now required to judge right to be forgotten requests based on whether the criminal has "shown remorse." Yeah, that's not arbitrary or even a little impossible to do at scale.

Let's grant that there are good cases for removing pages from a search index. If this is going to be the rubric, we should let the courts figure it out, and then an order should be issued to search engines to remove the content. This thing where you tell each search engine to remove content, the search engines decide based on, I dunno, court precedent or gut feeling or whatever, then you sue, then you appeal, I just don't see how that can work.

Eventually Google will just start granting every single request regardless of merit because being challenged will get too expensive.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#174

Post by F_r_k » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

enitihas wrote: post #163

I am just curious, what about the edge cases? What if a person commits acts of domestic violence with their romantic partners, and then gets Google to remove that record. Don't their future partners deserve to know? What if someone commits legal but shady acts in dealing with people. Why should they have a right to remove it from the public record?

What if they stole cookies ? Shouldn't store managers deserve to know ?

Where do you put the limit then ?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#175

Post by baxter001 » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

Sounds vaguely like Glenn Mulcaire

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#176

Post by fanzhang » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

One problem is that the EU regulation is a losing fight technologically. Not that they can't affect the outcome, but that the regulations are going to be only effective in a small subset of cases.

It's like copyright. Right now, like the early days, you can search warez on Yahoo and find it. No bittorrent, etc. Once search engines got smart, with copyright, the violations just got pushed to smaller sites and decentralized protocols.

If the big search engines suddenly starts letting everyone edit search results about themselves, I bet in 5 years some IPFS / DHT / blockchain based technology that lets people permanently post and search news/rumours/gossip about other people will pop up.

Should this happen? I'm not sure, but with the nature of the Internet maybe it doesn't matter that much positively.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#177

Post by Consultant32452 » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

I think this type of law is another case of good spirit, bad reality. Companies still don't want to hire criminals, so they try to guess who the criminals are. This results in them avoiding minorities.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/unintended-consequences-ho...

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#178

Post by briandear » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #151

downandout wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think that the EU is right in this regard, and I wish a similar principle existed in the US. But I was surprised that the EU court in this case ruled against one person simply because he served a 4 year sentence. His case was more than a decade old, and it was non-violent and non-sexual. It seems like an inconsistent application of this principle. Sentences are often based on the amount of money involved. So…

If you read the article it was a bit more nuanced than that. The one who had the right to be forgotten denied had a track record of misleading people about his conviction. The court (rightly, in my view) took this behaviour as evidence that his conviction remained relevant in a way that it was not for the other person (described as showing remorse). They didn’t just measure the length of the sentence. IMHO, this is a…

Why not attack the publication rather than the card catalog?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#179

Post by wumpus » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #94

This is kind of a trend I've been noticing, where Europe will try to fix a valid technological problem, but pick the most problematic or poorly implemented solution to do it. It's not clear to me what the difference is between a government censoring someone directly and a government making it impossible for anyone to find a piece of information. Right to Be Forgotten only works if it becomes prohibitively expensive f…

There's one big difference, and it's Orwellian -- courts and politicians are claiming that removing something from a search engine isn't censorship.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#180

Post by greglindahl » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #173

> Explaining the decisions made on Friday, the judge said one of the men had continued to "mislead the public" while the other had "shown remorse". Okay, great, so Google's now required to judge right to be forgotten requests based on whether the criminal has "shown remorse." Yeah, that's not arbitrary or even a little impossible to do at scale. Let's grant that there are good cases for removing pages from a search i…

Yep. And keep in mind that Google can't just sit back and wait for a court to order something removed; Google has to pay Google employees to imitate these court precedents.