The Guardian:
Google has launched a webpage where European citizens can request that links to information about them be taken off search results, the first step to comply with a court ruling affirming the “right to be forgotten”.
The company, which processes more than 90% of all web searches in Europe, has made available a webform through which people can submit their requests but has stopped short of specifying when it will remove links that meet the criteria for being taken down.
Google said it had convened a committee of senior executives and independent experts to try and craft a long-term approach to dealing with what is expected to be a barrage of requests from people in the EU.
From the removal request page:
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”
In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.
If you have a removal request, please fill out the form below. Please note that this form is an initial effort. We look forward to working closely with data protection authorities and others over the coming months as we refine our approach.
I loathe this decision. Maybe for teens, like criminal records, but this is the gateway to revisionist history.
What does it matter. History is always written by the winner anyways.
In some ways, sure but the Internet was a catch-all. Now it is a catch-all, delete some.
No, it is not. Persons of public interest, politicians , historical figures etc. will not benefit from this ruling at all (as their privacy is already restricted by several laws). This verdict does really just set one thing straight: search engines provide content (even if it is not their own) and capitalize on it, that is why they are bound by exactly the same laws as everybody else. Google’s “we do only link” excuse failed for the second time (the first time was when they lost on discriminating search auto-completion) and it is a win for everybody. If you publish something, you are liable. Why should an advertising company, of all “people”, be exempt from that?
They aren’t publishing content. I’ll just leave it at that.
“Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information — the activity of making information available to the general public.”
If Google takes content from a little Spanish newspaper that may have 10k readers and makes it available and accessible to billions of people, it is the very definition of publishing, it is dissemination at the largest scale possible.
There is an “and” after “Publishing is the process of production” so you can’t have “making available” be the sole definition of publishing.
It has to be the production AND dissemination. They’re the latter.
We disagree though so no need to try and convince me or me you.