Google rejects French request for broader 'right to be forgotten' rules

[techbeck]

Google is pushing back against a request to expand the scope of Europe's "right to be forgotten" law. Last year, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that citizens of its member states could ask Google to delist search results that were irrelevant, out of date, or fit a mix of similar criteria. Google, which says it's received 290,000 requests since the rule took effect, has responded by removing information from country-specific versions of Google across Europe. But last month, French data privacy agency CNIL requested that the rule apply across all Google search pages.

"This is a troubling development that risks serious chilling effects on the web," writes Google senior policy counsel Peter Fleischer in a statement released today. The big question to Google isn't the right to be forgotten, it's what kind of jurisdiction individual countries should have over web services that spread across the globe. "There are innumerable examples around the world where content that is declared illegal under the laws of one country would be deemed legal in others," Fleischer continued, referencing Thailand's ban on insulting its king and Russia's restriction of "gay propaganda."

More....

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/30/9073631/google-france-cnil-right-to-be-forgotten-search

[Arkos Reed]

The right to be forgotten has nothing to do with chilling effects or whatever.... seriously Google, stop hoarding.

Known case example : Years ago, there was a catastrophic accident near a camping, in Spain I believe, a truck containing flammable stuff exploded and burned half the place. When you search google for that camping's name, you only get pages relevant to this story. (or at least you used to, I believe google caved in this particular case)

If google had its way and removed only content for searches on the Spanish version of the site, everyone else on the planet looking for that camping would see the horror story, thus completely killing the place, a second time, commercially this time.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Sites, such as thing one, should be implementing the right to be forgotten or face ISP block not a search engine FFS

[Ryoken]

I'm against the whole idea of this. Sure it sucks if your name gets smeared, but I don't want stuff being removed unless it's really illegal.. ala Pedo ######.

Beyond that, it's on the internet, and I should be able to seek it out if I so chose. This applied 100x with NEWS. It happened. It's History. Deal with it. Germans don't get to tell Google to remove everything related to Nazi's and the World Wars because it makes them look bad or anything. What about the places that have had shooting, like the theater or schools.. remove all references to it also because it hurts their future business prospects? No. It happened, learn to adapt, or go bankrupt, either way, you have no right to say I can't look up that explosion above simply because it affects that site. Nor should you have any right for me to look up any stories on people. I can look up everything ever printed in my provinces newspaper at the Library, why should this be any different. Or many you want the EU to go into libraries and destroy newspapers and such which also had these stories that fall under Right to be Forgotten?

 

Simple fact is, while there are some cases I agree it would be nice, there are WAY too many ways it can be abused, by people, by gov't, by companies. I don't trust anyone to be making the call as to what is fine to be removed and not relevant, and what is or MAY be relevant again in the future and it should stay.