Google Censors Search Results Per EU Law

[Machaut]

Finally, something not involving cops or ISIS.

Respect for the "right to be forgotten" has been mandated in the EU. In short, it aims at forcing search engines to comply with private requests to prevent certain information from showing up in their searches that the individual or entity making the request would prefer to not be easily obtained. The following excerpts capture the matter rather well for casual observers.

Do you agree that a "right to be forgotten" exists? Should the government be allowed to force private companies, whose major function is providing ease of access to information, to hide certain results? Keep in mind that the EU isn't requiring the information be deleted entirely, merely that search engines stop making it so easily available to the general public.

BBC News - Google removes 12 BBC News links in 'right to be forgotten'

Google has removed a total of 12 BBC News stories from some search results since controversial EU "right to be forgotten" laws came into force in May.

The stories range from coverage of a court case on bomb-making in Northern Ireland 13 years ago to a dispute over a lost dog.

Google notified the BBC of each of the removals, but it did not disclose who had made the removal requests. The stories will no longer appear in the results of certain search terms. Only searches made in Europe are affected under the law.

Previously Google said it had been inundated with requests from individuals to remove web pages since the ruling by the European Court of Justice three months ago.

Last month the search giant told regulators that it had received more than 91,000 requests to remove a total of 328,000 pages from its search results. It said it had approved more than 50% of those processed, but did not say how many had been processed so far.

BBC News - Wikipedia link hidden by 'right to be forgotten'

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has long expressed his concerns about the "right to be forgotten".

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in July, Mr Wales said: "The law as it stands right now is quite confusing.

"We have this one ruling of the ECJ which is very open-ended and very hard to interpret.

"I would say the biggest problem we have is that the law seems to indicate Google needs to censor links to information that is clearly public - links to articles in legally published, truthful news stories.

"That is a very dangerous path to go down, and certainly if we want to go down a path where we are going to be censoring history, there is no way we should leave a private company like Google in charge of making those decisions."

 

[Moonglow]

Google also censored Two Girls and A Cup in the search results...

 

[Toronado3800]

Complicated. I think there need to be other search engines besides google for one.

For two if I am in busines ls in a country I should follow its laws.

Three google is an evil data mining operation

Four the internet should be free

Five the government should keep directions on how to make atomic bombs out of the hands of terrorists and offline.

So yeah, tough one and good topic

 

[Machaut]

Complicated. I think there need to be other search engines besides google for one.

One of the articles mentions that other search engines, such as Bing, are also offering similar "freedom to be forgotten" forms for users to make search results censorship requests.

For two if I am in busines ls in a country I should follow its laws.

Five the government should keep directions on how to make atomic bombs out of the hands of terrorists and offline.

Isn't there a bit of room between "Man Arrested for Public Urination" and "Building Atomic Bombs for Dummies"? Again, the "right to be forgotten" does not remove the information from the Internet; it merely calls for search engines to stop linking to it when it is determined, on a case-by-case basis, that it should be allowed to be forgotten.

Three google is an evil data mining operation

https://ixquick.com/

Enjoy. But be aware that everything you have ever posted on USMB has been permanently archived by Google, which runs multiple scripts on this site.