Times Articles Removed from Google Results in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Times Articles Removed from Google Results in Europe

nytimes.com

90 pointsmcgwiz34 comments

How long will it be before right-to-be-forgotten infrastructure becomes abused for something like taking down a competitor's visibility?

I wonder.

I think that's already happened. I can't turn up the article right now, but I saw an article talking about exactly that recently.

Maybe the article was also removed from google

I'm a bit baffled at Googles implementation here. They have turned a single decision (though at a high court) into a seemingly automated process where everyone can have stuff removed that just mentions their name by filling out some web form:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=we...

Theres no obligation to go that far. Make people pay a lawyer when they want to get something removed.

Basically, treat it as the DMCA requests: remove the stuff and post the full request on a ChillingEffects-like site, and hint at that when a search included removed results.

An automated process is cheaper than dealing with lawyers. It could also be that Google made it this easy in order to make a point that the law is a bad idea.

Likely parts of both. If they want human involvement (like the government will probably eventually request), the bureaucracy's budget can pay for it.

According to Google, the process isn't automated. The submission process is, but each request is reviewed individually (and according to some reports, that appears to be true).

Google cannot post the takedown requests on a separate site, either. "Stop processing data tied to a person" means "stop processing data tied to that person", not with an invisible "except for keeping it accessible through a backdoor" clause.

Google has two problems. One, the directive (95/46/EC [1]) is almost two decades old. It pretty much predates search engines. Under article 7 (f) of the directive, Google has only limited rights to process personal data, and only where Google's interests (and those of the public) override the individual's right to privacy. That is normally a pretty sensible clause, except where search engines function as primary access pathways to journalistic publications; something that couldn't really be foreseen in 1995.

The other problem is that the ECJ handed down a narrow ruling. It said that in a specific 16-year old civil case (a debt that has long since been paid off) where there was no discernible public interest, the right to privacy outweighed the freedom of expression. The court also didn't give any other guidelines, other than cautioning that sufficient public interest (such as the data subject being a public figure) freedom of expression could outweigh the right of privacy.

The court probably issued a narrow ruling in order to defer having to decide the difficult underlying issue of how privacy and freedom of expression are to be balanced in general, but that doesn't help Google. Google had to weigh its own economic interest in providing meaningful search results against the risk of having to litigate the issue for a large number of cases individually.

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...

How is it any worse than the streamlined removal process on YouTube?

When one of the early apparently outrageous cases of removal came out I was critical of Google removing stuff that seemed completely appropriate but it turned out that the removal wasn't of terms related to the person in the article but was one of the commenters. As such I reversed my position and apologised to Google.

I haven't investi these removals but wanted to share my experience of jumping to conclusions that Google wasn't making appropriate judgements. Without looking closely I would now tend to give Google the benefit of the doubt on these judgement issues (and I really don't trust Google on other things such as privacy).

It's strange to have articles about suicides, prevention, and getting help next to articles that are actively trying put peoples back in a past they would like to have a break with.

To "like to have a break with" is quite different than to force the world to censor, or a claim a right to control recorded history.

it's not censorship, the story is still in the archives, it's still on the web, it's just not broadcast on google.

That was a bit confusing, here The Times is not the NY Times...

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/?CMP=INTstp2

Doesn't the ability to do this sort of thing interfere with the notion of Google being a safe harbor in the US? They are now curating content.

They are not curating it. They are responding to lawful requests from others.

Congratulations to the EU courts. Through great skill and determination they have managed to construct the world's first self-Streisanding privacy law.

Really? I'm pretty sure major media outlets will pretty soon run out of opportunities to name and shame a select few individuals... assuming this article itself will not also be stricken from Google search results of course.

Additionally; it seems EU courts are often making sensible and nuanced decisions which in many cases dramatically improve the quality of life of those unfairly affected.

It does comes at some expense to enormous and massively profitable companies, but that's typically the kind of tradeoff the EU is better at making (depending on your definition of better of course.)

There's no real noticeable expense to this to these companies. The only real expense is to the people who will be unable to find specific information online in a format they expect. Thankfully, lots of other folks are reposting all the removed information to make it even more visible than it was before. Ironically, most of the 'unfairly affected' looking to have their previous misdeeds and criminal behavior forgotten will only be drawing international attention to it.

The problem is that this doesn't scale. Sure, people are sharing the information now, because it's part of a current story, but 2 years from now? And the party affected isn't an organisation with the reach of the Times?

The audience that is looking at these 'deleted Google listings' probably has very little overlap with the influential decision-makers in these peoples lives who Google his/her name before making said decision though.

> Since May, when the European high court made its initial decision on the right to be forgotten, Google has received roughly 140,000 privacy requests connected to more than 500,000 links, according to the company’s top lawyer. So far, the search giant has approved around half of the requests.

One in 70,000 is a rather low Streisand concentration...

Yes. The Streisand effect doesn't really scale.

If you confined the search to newspapers, you could construct a live list of article availability vs territory for all the major search engines. I'm actually quite surprised that there isn't one already.

You could, but the inherent limitation of the Streisand effect is that both media and public attention are finite resources.

You can focus media/public attention on at best a few individuals and have it be effective. Have tens of thousands, and the effect is too diluted to be meaningful.

It's clear that the Time is way louder in bullying individuals in Europe that did something in the past, than bullying the CIA on torture happening right now.

But it's not self-streisanding, the Times actively wants to talk about that, they have an purpose, and it's not certainly not about a greater good, human rights and freedom, otherwise Guantanamo would be on the front page everyday. They are deliberately picking up on individuals.

I think if one can't get relevant serach results through search engines, then the law served its purpose. Other concerned parties can't really do any harm to those who wanted to be forgotten. I mean, do you still remember any of those people's name? Even if you do, what can you do to them?

The thing is, Google removes results only on its European sites, like google.co.uk, people can still get results from google.com. Plus, news sites keep recording those removal requests (informed by Google), which could turn people to use those news sites as alternative search engines. I think these made the law pointless.

Edit: spellings.

That's more down to Google's policy of eagerly contacting media organisations who are affected by this measure. Google know full well that if they contact the BBC or the NYT or Reuters or whoever, and say "oh, we had to censor some search results involving your site", that those companies will immediately write articles howling about the fact, thus negating the intent of the legal precedent, and seeding useful talking points to get people criticising it all.

After all, how dare people have privacy. In at least one case, the article being covered up was not due to a request by the subject of the article but from one of a few hundred commenters beneath the article. (Which could be an interesting attack vector, in the right circumstances.)

I don't think this policy is bad for the EU. Google will remove articles faster than publications can notice and report on their removal. Most EU citizens will not care enough to use non-EU Google sites on a regular basis.

I don't follow, do your arguments make this kind of frivolous censorship any less ridiculous?

The censorship is frivolous but effective. I should have said "I don't think this policy is bad for the EU government."

Unlike in the United States, where freedom of expression is a fundamental right that supersedes other interests, Europe views an individual’s privacy and freedom of expression as almost equal rights.

Except everybody knows that the right privacy is not the reason. EUrocrats needed to use subterfuge as an opening salvo for the beginnings of censorship, so this is what they came up with.

But there's no surprise that NYT would give the EU the benefit of the doubt, since they tend to fawn all over whatever wacky EU policies are implemented anyway.

as you can see, the naivety of the avg hn ready confirms the points you made by down voting. if they'd live in the eu or at least open their swollen-by-intellect minds, they'd see through the charade.

having said that, i also have an issue with your comment: everybody does NOT know.

Another user already replied to your parent so I won't repeat the argument but just a note: I downvoted him and I'm English, not everyone (or even most) in the EU think like you, and it's misleading to imply to Americans/others that we do.

I'd need evidence for that claim.

The data protection directive was passed in 1995, almost two decades ago. Google didn't exist back then. That would have been the EU playing a very long game, not to mention requiring amazing precognitive powers.

On the merits of the case, the ECJ's judgement was about the narrowest judgement that was possible given the text of the directive.

The part of the judgement that created the issue we're looking at now was that the ECJ decided that Google was subject to jurisdiction of other EU member states for purposes of data protection if it did business there (e.g., by selling advertising there). While there are some tricky legal issues involved here, that was hardly an outrageous ruling, given the goals of the common market.

Suddenly Google couldn't hide behind the Irish courts anymore, but people with a complaint were able to bring suit in their own country.

You can make a good argument that the outdated data protection directive is in dire need of revision, but claims of subterfuge by EU bureaucrats are tinfoil hattery in this case.

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