Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr | Hacker News Reader

Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

pcmag.com

64 pointsprateekj30 comments

CAUTION, THIS IS NOT TRUE. Google is appealing the sanction, and in the mean time they asked an emergency injunction ("référé") for not having to do the message part of the sanction waiting for the appeal (on the ground that if they win the appeal, their reputation would already be damaged by the message). The appeal has absolutely not been ruled.

The "emergency" judge simply declared that what they asked for was not following the specific emergency criterion (basically they didn't believe the irremediable damage part), and he simply let go the sanction for now. Another Court will actually judge the appeal itself. If they win the appeal, they get their money back, and some bragging rights.

here is the PR from the actual court: http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de-presse/sanction...

Indeed, the title says "Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr", not "Fined".

technically it's completely wrong, they are fined (that's exactly what they are appealing), and they did not lose the appeal.

Would it be reasonable for, say, a car manufacturer to be forced to include a statement painted on the side of each car they sold for a period of time? Or a consumer electronics manufacture to have an apology statement on, say, a TV that gets displayed whenever you change channels? Something like that would severely damage their product. So why is it reasonable to require a tech company to deface their product? Now it wouldn't be as bad for some companies, where their main domain points to an information page, but the main page for Google is an application page, not a "web" page. This just feels like a bad precedent -- what happens when this is forced on another company, who's application front end isn't conducive to having arbitrary text on it (I'm thinking of like map programs, word processing, presentation apps, etc).

It would be reasonable for a car manufacturer to include a statement on their website, even if it happened to include a search box.

Actually French law has specific provisions for media companies. Like if there is a defamation, generally one of the sanction is a message taking the same size and spot as the defamation. In other cases, the sanction if to buy some ad space in the press to put the specific sanction message (for example, after defrauding the shareholders in a publicly traded company). In local nasty cases of defamation, it can just be a message in a local newspapers (like a shop defaming another through a sign or a nasty political fight).

edit: to really answer, there is what we call "individualization of the sanction", where the court decide what would make sense as a sanction inside a palette (and to answer by advance: if a court decides something, yes it's appealable).

did you ever looked in the passenger sunscreen?

also, how do a web site email their customers and issue a recall on their private information that was already illegally shared away?

your analogy is awful.

furthermore, the precedent is already set. just look at the millions of european sites and their cookie warnings... its the same thing. why google should be exempt in this case which is essentially the same thing?

If a car manufacturer failed on their core responsibility (safely transporting people), they would be happy to get just a notice on the car!

Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain what is the dispute between Google and France. A link to from the article to another one answers it:

At issue is an update to Google's privacy policy that went into effect on March 1, 2012. The revamp consolidated 70 or so privacy policies across Google's products down to one. But with this change, Google also switched to one profile for users across all services rather than separate logins for offerings like YouTube, Search, and Blogger.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424952,00.asp

I feel that once again legislature is several steps behind technology. Who even sees the Google front page these days? Anyone searching from their browsers search bar or address bar, or on their smartphone, won't see this message.

I see it multiple times every day...

Presumably lots on the desktop, which is why they decided to stick the Google search box into Chrome's new tab page.

I know PCMag is pretty hard up for...everything, these days, but a modal "sign up for our newsletter" box that doesn't have a close button is the worst thing I've seen in a while.

(You can get out by hitting Escape, but that doesn't make it okay.)

Perhaps you have an extension that alters it somehow? There's a working close button at the top right.

http://i.imgur.com/ufH3khH.png

The modal box does have a close button.

Perhaps your ad blocker is blocking the close button.

So it is. Which is one of the uglier fuck-you behaviors a company can pull.

(I make any web work I do work with or without an adblocker, because I don't own their browser.)

It's taller than my fucking screen!

http://i.imgur.com/UrS04Xw.png

The DOM chain to that button is `#colorbox #cboxContent #cboxClose`. What part of that looks designed to intentionally trigger an ad blocker so you can't close it? They didn't "pull" anything. It's blocked because the CDN they host their static images on has the word "ad" in the domain (static.adziff.com -- named after their company, Ziff Davis); that's called a false positive.

Just use NoScript, no more newsletter shenanigans.

I usually just do a whois on the domain and put the admin contact email in. If that's already signed up, then retry using their nameservers' domain.

I'm just glad France are actually making the effort. Things like law and tax aren't things that should go away as you become big and wealthy, and ultimately going against the law of the land whilst not showing respect for it is asking for trouble.

I hope Google are additionally penalised for their arrogance...

Funny thing: the French search engine Qwant currently displays a message with the exact same presentation and almost the same text on their front page. They just changed to text so it says that they have never been condemned for anything by the CNIL because they respect privacy.

Yeah.. but they are just using Bing in the background so it's not really a search engine, just another meta ones from the 90s which surviving thanks to gov. subsidies.

'been in France for 35 years, I have never heard of them.

Trust is a thin line. One must not trust anyone blindly, that is true. But watching and surveying every move of your own allies, breaks your own reputation. That is not trusting your allies at all!

But this is a good news, small.. yet a welcome. Though this does not mean that France is not in with the mass surveillance itself(it might just be a diplomatic maneuver). But it does mean that at least a few have realized that privacy of citizens is not something you can mess around with.

I find it interesting that the url: cnil.fr/linstitution/missions/sanctionner/Google/

can almost litteraly be translated by: CNIL, the institution, has for missions to sanction Google

Where will the money go if Google pays the fine? Will I (as Google user) gain some benefits from this case?

The money would most likely go to the French state, hence benefiting indirectly to the whole of French citizens.

I wonder if there is any chance that Vic Gundotra can be fired.

The State is cruel and merciless.

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