Google gets take-down requests after European court ruling: source

[Jesus Malverde]

Source: Reuters

Google Inc is already getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine after Europe's top court ruled that subjects have the "right to be forgotten," a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The world's No. 1 Internet search company has yet to figure out how to handle an expected flood of requests after Tuesday's ruling, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the record about the issue.

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects the region's 500 citizens, requires that Internet search services remove information deemed "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant." Failure to do so can result in fines.

Google will need to build up an "army of removal experts" in each of the 28 European Union countries, including those where Google does not have operations, the source said. Whether those staffers merely remove controversial links or actually judge the merits of individual take-down requests are among the many questions Google has yet to figure out, the source said.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/google-gets-down-requests-european-court-ruling-source-183010113--sector.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I didn't understand this case at first.

And I was thinking maybe it was about making every website allow you to remove your own account info and submitted data, which I think might actually be a good idea. If you have to create an account to buy one item on a site, you should be able to opt to have your account deleted if you want to.

Once I saw that it was about removing text or links to ANY info that ANYONE posted about you, I was rather disgusted. Cause you know the people who don't want any documentation online about them are going to be the kind of people you NEED to be able to look up, because they're out there doing sleazy or even criminal things. They very first people to want to remove 'objectionable personal information' are going to be politicians looking to sanitize their web presence to fool voters...

[Jesus Malverde]

2. The monarchies...nt

[djean111]

11. Or someone who is looking for a job and is pretty sure that her age is working against her.

Or someone who has pissed someone off, and has nasty shit written about him, which, again, shows up in a search.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

21. Unless you're telecommuting

They're going to figure out your age the first time you interview, and it's still going to work against you.

But if there was ever a 'slippery slope', this is it. Short of a court case, there's no way to separate the cases of actual libel from the ones in which the 'nasty shit written about him' is true and deserves to be written.

[L0oniX]

3. Soooo can the NSA get it's exposure removed? I hope not.

[billhicks76]

10. Obama Shown Up

Once again we are shown up by the Europeans. And yes Obama is at fault and not powerless. He's the freakin president and can't blame everything in republicans which is very convenient for him normally. Republicans have no control over his Soliciter General that asks for every right wing stasi-like ruling it can get surveilling the people and treating them like a prison camp like he does with his drug war. Fire Bush nut job holdover DEA director ? No. He rehires her. Reagan never whined about the opposition. He took to the bully pulpit. But he wasn't trying to pretend he was something he's not no matter how disgraceful. Anyone who defends Obama turning the military and it's proxies against us the American people is too far gone to reason with at this point.

[GeorgeGist]

4. Delete all.

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects the region's 500 citizens,

Problem solved.

[RKP5637]

6. Yep, just eliminate all search engines, let them look their crap up in the phone book /

yellow pages!

[Xithras]

27. Lol. I remember the Internet Yellow Pages

Hard to believe that the Internet was once so small that you could fit every site into a single book.

[RKP5637]

28. Yep, I had one! n/t

[Thor_MN]

9. 500 million in the article.

that would be a simple answer, block all European IP addresses from searching Google.

[Ash_F]

5. This sounds like a ruling by old people who don't know how to work a computer. /nt

[RKP5637]

7. So, then what about Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and a zillion search engines. It's not like Google

owns the content. This is so stupid in so many directions it's hard to even discuss.

[frazzled]

8. Google has 93% of the search market in Europe

Those others will soon be getting all the hits. But then they'll have to remove links, too.

They're going to have to hire thousands of people and pay them overtime to comply with all the take-down requests. Bad decision. Control your own content. But you shouldn't be allowed to control what government records or journalistic assesments are out there about you.

[RKP5637]

13. Absolutely amazing. Frankly, it's quite ignorant. The search engine is only an indexing engine,

not the source.

[frazzled]

15. The sources get to keep all the info ...

But the links to it have to be taken down, so nobody can find it. It's a wacky law, but that's what they passed.

[RKP5637]

16. Easiest solution would be just to ban their IPs from use of the search engine all together

in those localities.

[Nye Bevan]

12. The case was brought by Mario Costeja Gonzalez

The ruling came after Mario Costeja Gonzalez complained that a search of his name in Google brought up newspaper articles from 16 years ago about a sale of property to recover money he owed.

He said the matter had been resolved and should no longer be linked to him.

Campaign group Index on Censorship condemned the decision, saying it "violates the fundamental principles of freedom of expression".

http://m.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27388289

Seems like Mario Costeja Gonzalez does not want his name on the internet linked to this information.

All I can say is, good luck with that.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mario+costeja+gonzalez&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

[Jesus Malverde]

14. Thats not the same mario costeja gonzalez

who owed someone money....is it?

Why would mario costeja gonzalez want to hide his previous debts, is he up to no good...again???

[adirondacker]

23. Yes. He was foreclosed on by the bank, like thousands of Americans have experienced recently...

"She goes to Google.es, Spain's version of the search engine, and types in the name Mario Costeja Gonzalez. The second result she gets for Gonzalez is a link to a 1998 Spanish newspaper clip. It shows his home was repossessed because of debt.Gonzalez wants the old blemish to go away, and de la Serna thinks he's got a point. Searching people isn't the same as searching for shoes, cars or books. People Google-stalk each other. "In fact I have just Googled you before this interview," de la Serna admits."

I have mixed feelings about this. Color me a skeptic when it comes to personal data mining...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024960430#post20

[sendero]

17. Good to know...

.... that not all of the idiots in robes are in the United States. This ruling is beyond idiotic.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. From a politician wanting his record in office scrubbed, and a convicted paeodphile

Google has received fresh takedown requests after a European court ruled that an individual could force it to remove "irrelevant and outdated" search results, the BBC has learned.

An ex-politician seeking re-election has asked to have links to an article about his behaviour in office removed.

A man convicted of possessing child abuse images has requested links to pages about his conviction to be wiped.

And a doctor wants negative reviews from patients removed from the results.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27423527

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

22. Exactly.

People want the truth hidden so that they can avoid the problems their own behaviour is causing them.

[Leme]

24. i have never had a need, a necessity to google any information about any private person

I have, but really would have been unnecessary, it's just a convenience.
-
I have searched a few old friends I haven't seen in years. Never a neighbor or new acquaintance.
-
Less would be better imo.

[penultimate]

25. delete the internet.....

How hard could it be? Back in the mid nineties, I got a floppy disk from a computer convention thing that said The Internet. I'm sure it takes up five or six floppies now, but that shouldn't be a problem.

[DontTreadOnMe]

26. Well look from the other side...

Imagine a well funded group of people that spread disinformation on you or your company... oh never mind. We have Faux News for that.

[Humanist_Activist]

29. How is this going to work? Google would have to collect as much metadata as possible on the...

people who want to be forgotten in order to scrub their links and prevent future ones linking to that same information to exist in the future. That in itself will be really time consuming and invasive for the people who want to be forgotten. Or hire people who will search for links to be scrubbed continuously. It might be cheaper for Google to just pull out of the European market entirely.

The issue is that when is someone going to further sue because they WANT to be found online, for business or personal reasons, and aren't because they have the same name as someone who was "forgotten" in Google, and it cost them job opportunities, etc?

[dipsydoodle]

30. That's Google's problem

so let them figure out.

[Humanist_Activist]

31. Actually wouldn't it be the people who want to be "forgotten" problem...

they are the ones requiring Google to do the impossible after all.

[dipsydoodle]

32. Nope

because its all down to Google now under our data protection laws. They have been threatened with fines sufficienly large in the past to make operating in Europe almost uneconomic. Eventually they buckle and play ball.

[Humanist_Activist]

33. And when they can't? That's the issue here, this ruling practically outlaws search engines...

any algorithm that indexes information on web pages would be banned, pretty much. That would make much of the web practically inaccessible to people, they will be back in 1995 all over again.

[Lenomsky]

34. Oh ..

Even if Google does not automate the process, the extra cost of hiring staffers is likely to be insignificant to a company that generated roughly $60 billion in revenue last year, Gillis said. If Google were to pay staffers $15 an hour to process take-down requests, for example, the company could get a million hours of work for $15 million, he said. "It's the cost of doing business for them."

[JCMach1]

35. then shouldn't it be illegal for the newspaper which pulbished the notice to publish such info...

Seems a double standard for print and electronic media...

An idiotic court ruling...