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Comment by alain94040 | Hacker News Reader

The article is misleading and incorrect, possibly written to inflame smart geeks into noticing a crazy recursive loop.

Those news articles about the right to be forgotten mention some private people by name, who have exercised their "right to be forgotten." The only request is that Google doesn't find a hit when someone searches for those people's names. If your search terms don't include those names, then it's ok to find those articles. Just not if you are specifically searching for info on those particular people by name.

It's sad that a journalist would forget to mention the key point. Then people get justifiably upset, and no one wins.

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In my mind, this only makes the law itself all the more evidently absurd.

Well, the law has one thing in mind: You should be able to stumble upon knowledge, or if you know where to look, but a future employer, or a neighbor, etc should not be able to find out about crimes you did when you were a teen.

Perhaps the real fix is in not publishing the details of teenagers who commit crimes?

I think that's absolutely the correct solution, but it doesn't help all of the people who already had information about their actions as teenagers published.

If it were illegal, you could then file takedowns from the publishers, and it wouldn't show up in google anymore... Google should not be an enforcement arm for internet censorship... the end.

But the actual newspaper article is not illegal – only the connection from the name to the article is.

That doesn't make the law right or just.

Well, it is forbidden in Germany, but some newspapers will still do it, and then just eat the fine. BILD is very infamous for this.

Maybe the solution is for teenagers to not commit crimes?

Using a popular search engine that abides by EU laws is not the only way to find out about things. Killing the messenger does nothing to the message.

You can tell this to Europeans until you are blue in the face but they will not listen. They think they can impose their censorship on the world.

Yeah, totes weird how Europeans expect companies operating inside Europe to obey European law.

It does no good if you can just use google.com and that will never be censored but pretend is good enough for them.

it's perfectly reasonable for eu companies to say any google service accessed from within eu borders shall be so regulated

If google doesn't like it, they are free to stop doing business inside the eu.

It's not very reasonable to attempt to enforce geo boundaries on the Internet. It's a silly, backwards, approach. It might be something governments are doing, but that's only to be expected of them, always looking to increase influence and control.

If Europe is foolish enough to try then Google will dump them, just like China.

That might be for the best.

> You can tell this to Europeans until you are blue in the face but they will not listen. They think they can impose their censorship on the world.

> Yeah, totes weird how Europeans expect companies operating inside Europe to obey European law

And two good example of people thinking that Europeans/Americans/etc are just one big homogenous organism.

The difference to the US is that the US was actually successful, its called DMCA.

Even Hitler was smart enough to burn books, not just the card catalogue.

The intent is not to make it impossible to find out about things, but to make it sufficiently more effort to find out about things that the harm to the individuals in question is sufficiently reduced.

It is very explicitly a tradeoff where everyone involved understands that the information won't go away, and where the courts have very explicitly said they will not consider trying to make the information go away as that would fly in the face of freedom of speech.

The ease of access to information has a very substantial bearing on how much having the information out there affects peoples lives.

The intent is to deny many someones access to public information for the convenience of one someone. This is censorship by degrees.

You'll have to pardon me. I'll be over here, in the corner, throwing up.

Personally, I find this a dangerous way of thinking. A real "right to be forgotten" law would affect content providers/publishers. Instead this is more "right to de-index". Ease of access is very subjective and the arbiters appear to be the ones holding the gun shooting said messengers. Despite my other concerns with the legislation, the primary reason it works today is because of centralization. The same people fighting for internet privacy and against government censorship will end up making laws like this unenforceable in the future. I wonder what lengths the EU will then go to when the indexing of lawful content is not centralized.

Well, imagine I get suspected of a crime, turns out I actually wasn’t responsible.

Obviously, you can’t remove the newspaper article, even if it is heavily editorialized.

But removing the connection between my name and that article would be possible. If someone searches for the specific article, they’ll find it. If they search for my name, they won’t.

A reasonable compromise (all data is still there and readable, but my name isn’t connected with it anymore).

> Obviously, you can’t remove the newspaper article, even if it is heavily editorialized.

Wouldn't it be easier to have a law requiring that if the newspaper article is online, then they MUST have some sort of Editor's Note or retraction in bold before the actual article.

We do, but (a) international media does not have to adhere to that law (for example, a newspaper in Switzerland could still contain such an article), and (b) tabloids like BILD ignore that regulation anyway and even end up showing themselves as the only newspaper that fights against the evil censorship.

None of those points support censoring media that do follow the European regulations. The current "Right to be forgotten" is just an ambiguous law's backdoor that lets you hide information without having to pass through the courts.

Sure, but the aim of the legislation isn't to render it impossible for a sufficiently interested person to find out that you were arrested for allegedly stealing a garden gnome in 1987. It's to ensure that your 1987 arrest isn't the first (and quite possibly only) thing a person associates with your name.

Imposing restrictions on messengers does a huge amount to the message; that's why states also often take steps to restrict political advertising even whilst allowing candidates to say what they want

I'm sympathetic to the goal and the individuals affected, and while the law provides some small benefit to these individuals, I think that benefit must be weighed against the (to my mind) large cost to society at large.

The law places a very large burden on search engines (and who knows, perhaps other platforms in the future) that now must evaluate and remove/deny all requests or risk expensive litigation. I think most companies will err or the side of safety and remove most requests, making censorship easy.

Especially when one John Smith can speak for the rest.

That is insane... I want to be found online... so if someone else with my name files a request, people will no longer be able to google my name? You do something stupid online, and regret it? Sucks to be you.

I have a common name, and the idea that someone with the same name could wipe me from all of google's results is ridiculous to say the least. It's a stupid law written by people with no understanding of technical limitations or the competence to think these things through, much like the people using this law.

> the idea that someone with the same name could wipe me from all of google's results is ridiculous to say the least

Yup, it is ridiculous. It is also not what happens, not what the law provides for and not what the article is talking about.

I realize that, but it is what the person I was replying to was suggesting should be the case.

Yes, but it is effectively saying that the "right to be forgotten" means that the right extends to the topic/event covered on the pages as it relates to that person not the pages themselves.

Hopefully this will not extend to all new content created about the past events and the person, because there could at times be a reason for new content on an old topic to be relevant to the public and people should be able to find it then. I fear it will however.

Not really, is just sounds like you have a legal interest in what results from searches for your name. Google is running a de-facto background search service and they're being regulated like one.

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