Google has set up a webform on its European sites which let individuals request the company removes links from searches that refer to that individual.
It follows a ruling by the European Union Court of Justice that people have the right to have certain references removed from Google searches.
The webform can be filled in by either the individual or a representative (think: yet more business for lawyers) who must provide proof of identity and evidence that the website in the search results is "irrelevant, outdated or otherwise inappropriate" (think: even more work for lawyers to argue what is or is not irrelevant, outdated or otherwise inappropriate).
It means a hugely-rich company - Google - will now decide what we can and can't search for on the web. And presumably Microsoft when Bing is forced to make a move. And all the others.
Is the availability of "irrelevant and inappropriate" information better or worse than censorship.
Better.
Here's the link to the Google webform.
And here's the Guardian follow-up story:
At least 12,000 people have signed an online form asking Google to remove links about them from their search results in only 24 hours since it offered the service. Privacy activists have cautiously welcomed Google's decision to provide the form for Europeans to make the request.Chief executive Larry Page said Google was "trying now to be more European, and think about [data collection] maybe more from a European context".The firm says it has received a surge of data removal requests since alandmark ruling earlier in May by the European Court of Justice,Europe's highest court, which said search engines were subject to data protection rules and so should remove "outdated, wrong or irrelevant" information from their indexes unless there was a public interest in keeping it.About 40% of the requests have come from Germany and 13% from the UK, Google told the FT. The biggest proportion of removal requests, about 31%, related to frauds and scams.Google said it had set up a web form on its site where people can request the removal of particular links, though it does not commit to removing them within any time limit. Decisions will be made by people, not algorithms, and information will start to be removed from mid-June. Although links to articles will be removed, the ECJ ruling says the original articles can remain.Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for privacy and free speech, said: "There are clear privacy issues from time to time about material published on the web. To actually have a mechanism to deal with this seems to be the right way to go."The ECJ ruling did not specify how Google and other search engines should weigh up user requests, saying only that they should balance the needs of data privacy and public interest – for example relating to politicians seeking to have information about themselves removed.Page told the FT: "I wish we'd been more involved in a real debate in Europe. That's one of the things we've taken from this, that we're starting the process of really going and talking to people."Google will also set up a 10-strong committee of senior executives and outside experts who will try to develop a long-term approach to requests. Among those already named are Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, UN special rapporteur Frank La Rue, University of Leuven director Peggy Valcke, the former Spanish data protection chief Jose Luis Pinar, and Luciano Floridi, information ethics philospher at the Oxford InternetInstitute.The web form only applies to searches in Europe. In the US, the first amendment means that freedom of speech and publication trump data protection rights, which are minimal.Dina Shiloh, of the law firm Mishcon de Reya, who has advised companies and individuals over online reputation management, called the move "baby steps" and said Facebook and Google's video subsidiary YouTube already had forms to request data removal. "Essentially, this is a clash that was right to happen. You have Europe's privacy rights, which are very different to the understanding in the US. Privacy is not dead in the EU."But she said the ECJ ruling would inevitably lead to court cases if Google turns down requests. "We're entering new territory with the internet."Google already removes about a million links per month from its index, mainly at the request of music and film copyright holders, said Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, who follows internet governance and registration at the Oxford Internet Institute. "In that way, they are already editing the web, and have always – there are links to terrorist stuff, neo-Nazi stuff, to child abuse images. Government agencies contact Google and have them take stuff down."The real question is, is this going to be more repressive than the other things they are doing? Is it going to negatively impact the trajectory of the internet? I don't think it will."
Comments