In the battle of free speech now it’s France v Google | Hacker News Reader

In the battle of free speech now it’s France v Google

theguardian.com

8 pointsvuldin18 comments

What is free speech if the state acts to prevent anyone from finding what you published?

Imagine a despotic regime that allowed it's citizens to publish or say whatever they wanted, with the only restriction being it had to be in an empty auditorium.

Is Baidu or Yandex going to comply with RTBF? As soon as people know you can't find something in Google globally, they'll just work around it. Metacrawlers will return which just query every search engine.

I wouldn't call it 'free speech'. That's what Google is marketing it as, but it's really 'privacy law'. Nothing about RTBF is about preventing people from speaking, people are still free to put whatever they want on the Internet, wherever they want to. However, stories which violate an individual's privacy which do not have relevance to the public interest are being restricted from being a permanent stain on their reputation.

(And the only potential First Amendment issue in the US, is because somehow the Citizens United decision gives our companies Constitutional rights, which is silly.)

Arguably, France's problem with Google's refusal to implement this globally is that Google doesn't prevent French users from visiting other countries' Google websites, like say, google.ca. So Google isn't really providing a good faith effort to uphold the French law, even in France.

> I wouldn't call it 'free speech'. That's what Google is marketing it as, but it's really 'privacy law'.

The two are overlapping. Privacy laws in general are restrictions on free speech, and privacy laws restricting the manner in which true, already publicly disseminated, information -- including on some matters of public concern (and criminal acts are by definition matters of public concern) -- can be disseminated are pretty much the pinnacle of free speech concerns.

> (And the only potential First Amendment issue in the US, is because somehow the Citizens United decision gives our companies Constitutional rights, which is silly.)

It would be equally a First Amendment concern in the US if companies did not have Constitutional rights but were merely vehicles through which individuals (who have Constitutional rights of their own) act.

RTBF is primarily meant to redact "untrue" information, so, I find your first response to be... somewhat questionable. In many cases, what RTBF is blocking is libel. I suppose the notion of "information not relevant to the public interest" may fall under the debate, but most of the claims of "censorship!!!!" clearly focus on concerns that are NOT affected by RTBF laws.

Google's search algorithm has no right to free speech, actually, unless we'd like to define it as an artificial person and grant it Constitutional rights too.

> Google's search algorithm has no right to free speech

Google's search algorithm is a tool which the people for whom "Google" is simply a legal construct used as a vehicle use in the course of exercising their right to free speech. Restricting the information that can be presented through this tool is restricting those people's right to free speech.

I don't know if I feel like that would hold up in court. Google's algorithm isn't helping individuals at Google construct speech, it's arguably collecting it's own data and presenting it's own results, merely according to guidelines it was taught or programmed with.

> Google's algorithm isn't helping individuals at Google construct speech, it's arguably collecting it's own data and presenting it's own results

Google's algorithm isn't a independent agency, its a tool created by humans for a human purpose.

That it's meant to redact "untrue" information isn't relevant. It's very often used to redact inconvenient information, such as news stories about your bankruptcy or negative reviews of your business.

RTBF does things well beyond its intention.

If that occurs, that is only through Google's negligent implementation of the law, and not through an issue with the law itself. Bearing in mind that Google itself is in charge of deciding what links meet the criteria to censor.

What, precisely, is negligent about Google's implementation of censorship? From where I'm sitting they're aggressively in compliance with the law. Some people have decided that since the law seems to be doing things it wasn't intended to, it's Google's fault.

I'm saying the law clearly defines was does, and does not qualify. If Google is blocking sites that as you say, are things like negative reviews of your business, then Google is not following the RTBF law.

All the person has to do is deem something irrelevant or inadequate and voila!

Have you ever heard of a thing known as "due process"? Have you considered the possibility that laws may have effects other than those intended?

I mean, if you're willing to agree that Google is not trustworthy enough to make these sorts of determinations themselves, on that we can agree. The only real problem with RTBF law is that Google is allowed to decide, rather than a judge.

I'm saying that private citizens should not have the power RTBF has given them. It's far too easily abused.

Just because a law doesn't work out the way you think it should doesn't mean someone is being negligent. Sometimes laws are badly done.

I think it's absolutely crucial private citizens have this right, to not be permanently judged in a court of public opinion for things outside of their control, dictated by a search engine.

Fortunately, this issue of inconvenient speech can be countered wonderfully with the application of more speech.

> If that occurs, that is only through Google's negligent implementation of the law, and not through an issue with the law itself.

Your claim that deletion of "inconvenient" rather than "untrue" information concerning the subject requesting deletion is a result of "Google's negligent implementation" rather than "the law itself" is inconsistent with, well, the EU's own information on the RTBF, which never once mentions truth among the criteria for application of the RTBF. [0]

[0] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...

From your own source: "applies where information is inaccurate (aka, false), inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.

Source: Your own link.

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