Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?

[topspin]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@topspin said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Luckily, you don't have that problem. You're just shitposting on the internet. Do you consider the Kim regime to be "legitimate?"

I'm going to assume his post was taking issue with your definition of "legitimate".
Is the NK government awful? Yes, I'm sure there's no disagreement here.
Does that mean it's not "legitimate"? Whatever that is even supposed to mean, I guess the problem here is "according to whom?" According to their own laws, I assume it is.

As I understand it, you believe that there's such a thing as a universal morality with rules that are constant across time and culture, right?

A government that acts consistently immorally loses the legitimate claim to rule over its people. The people, then, ought to rebel and overthrow the tyrannical government, and non-tyrannical governments should help those people and support them over the despotic government.

There's realpolitik reasons why 160 countries have diplomatic relations with North Korea, but that doesn't mean that the Kim regime legitimately represents his people. Or that NK or the world would be worse off in the long term if the US were to "liberate" North Korea. (The war would be bad in the short term, which is why we don't do it.)

I was just pointing out that you're probably using different definitions of "legitimate", where one involves a government that's good for the people and the other involves a government that represents the country diplomatically.

[dkf]

@topspin said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

they're probably different in different EU countries.

Definitely.

[Gurth]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

You have Freedom of the Press where you live, right?

Since we’re throwing Wikipedia articles around, more than you do, apparently.

Does Reporters Without Borders consider "The Press" to be a discrete group when calculating those rankings? Because if so, I'm suspicions of their calculation methods.

I have no idea. Point is, yes, we have freedom of the press here, which you were inquiring about.

If the government wanted to take away Freedom of the Press, how would they do it? Assume whatever move they're making has popular support.

They would negotiate with representatives of the press and come to a mutual agreement that the press will not publish whatever things the government says it doesn’t want to see. The press would then do it anyway and the politicians would say, “But we had an agreement!”

I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

It’s both. This is pretty much the way the Dutch government (not just the present one, any modern Dutch government) does things: reach a compromise so that all sides feel that at least their major concerns have been addressed. But if someone then doesn’t honour the deal, actual punishment for doing so is rare — instead, there will be more talks to try and find a solution that everyone can get behind.

If it's not, again, what about organizations that publish things that aren't "The Press" and thus wouldn't have representatives at that meeting?

Exactly. The system doesn’t really work when talking with disparate groups that don’t have a central leadership. A recent example of this is the farmers’ protests we had until corona hit: there’s no central organisation behind it all, so the government finds it very hard to come to terms with them.

But if you want actual mechanics, they would have to alter article 7 section 1 of the constitution. Oh, and probably article 16 as well.

If your government were to do that, would you consider them to be legitimate? Or would you try either to leave or to take up arms against them?

That is so hypothetical that I can’t even come up with a realistic answer that I’m confident I would actually go through with. Why? Because it’s simply not an issue, nor one I can imagine ever becoming one.

If the US government were to repeal the First Amendment, and then violate its provisions, it wouldn't be the US Government as currently Constituted. That would be different enough that it would be an illegitimate government. People would either take up arms or flee.

But there’s popular support for it — you introduced that requirement.

IOW, governments shouldn’t give people what they say they want, but what they need?

North Korea does not have a legitimate government.

By whose standards?

Establishing diplomatic relations with a country as a means to hopefully avoid war is a little different than endorsing the country as illegitimate.

Then why doesn’t the USA have diplomatic relations with, say, North Korea or Iran? If avoiding war is an important consideration in establishing diplomatic relations, those should be high on the USA’s list of countries to have them with.

Luckily, you don't have that problem. You're just shitposting on the internet. Do you consider the Kim regime to be "legitimate?”

I don’t have an opinion on whether it is or not. It’s the regime in power, and like I said, it considers itself legitimate, and plenty of other countries do too (not necessarily all those that have diplomatic relations with it, I suppose), and plenty don’t. If you ask me (and you do), I’d say that the only ones who really count for determining this, are North Koreans — and I doubt you’ll find many of them who say it isn’t a legitimate government. Of course, we know the reasons for that, but that doesn’t change their views.

That much was obvious the moment he started about God-given rights, really …

Look, dude. If you want to have this conversation in The Garage, we can. Reflexively trolling someone because they dared to mention a super common philosophy because you have some sort of beef with the country they come from is best done in that part of the forum.

I’ve tried several ways to reply to this, but I can’t find one that wouldn’t turn this into a religious debate, which I can’t be arsed with, so I’m going to leave this at that.

[Luhmann]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

A government that acts consistently immorally loses the legitimate claim to rule over its people.

That's a moral point of view. Yes, such governments shouldn't exist and yet a big part of the world is covered with this: Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Congo, ...
But legitimation is not only based on external moral outrage. What good is it if we, as non-inhabitants, rule those governments actions as immoral?
One of the most objective test to consider a government legitimate is control. Pure and simple power. Is the government in control of armed forces and police in at least an import part of the territory (Congo for example isn't in complete control of its own territory.)? Can it function? Can it raise taxes and uphold laws? Does it control it's currency? Can I get a visa or passport and use that to travel?
This brings us to the third component of legitimation is diplomacy. Because we need other governments to explicitly state: yes these guys represent the state of X and we'll do business with them. If they make a visa, a passport, a document, money, a verdict, a law ... we will accept it as the real thing, as legitimate, even if we don't agree.
Instead of thinking about controversial current affairs let's consider historic examples: at the start of World War II with his country half-over run the Belgian King capitulated, in his own words to spare the people from the horrors they endured during the previous war. He stayed in Brussels. The government (eg Prime Minister and Ministers) had already left the Belgian territory for France (and later moved to London). Parlement couldn't be assembled in full but the Government in exile legally claimed the King incapable of reign on the base that he was kept in captivity and that his decision had no legal standing. They didn't surrender, in retrospect to only real change this brought was that Kongo wasn't brought under German rule (and thus securing uranium).
Germany didn't recognize the government in exile, accepting only Leopold as head of state (as opposed to the mostly ceremonial function it is). In their view the government in exile was illegitimate. As the war dragged on there where even attempts to start a new government but Germany just considered easier to keep the war time military rule in place. This meant that there was no active government, a German officer was acting as boss but most administration was kept and the London government had instructed civil servants to execute their jobs with obedience but restrains.
Coalition forces however accepted the exiled government as legitimate even though it lost it's entire homeland and didn't have a real popular base (no parlement, no elections, ...). Post-war the tables turned and Leopold was exiled and the thought of him returning brought on riots so heavy it was only solved by him abdicating in favor of his son. But even then 30-40% of the population was estimated as supporting Leopold and his choices.
Uh ... that was a long story ... anyway ... moral: legitimation of a government isn't as black & white as we would like it to be. There are many times the situation is 'grey'. We judge the London government as legitimate in view of the law, history, winners bias and a general moral sense (they where against litteral nazi's!) but reality is much, much more grey.

[dkf]

@Luhmann said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

One of the most objective test to consider a government legitimate is control.

The core test is whether the people who live in that area consider that “government” to be the government, whether they (as a group) believe that it is the government. There are many reasons why they might do this, but if that group belief is there then the government is legitimate, and if it is not, then they're a bunch of bandits and/or crazies. Control follows from collective belief, and control reinforces collective belief. Being nice or lawful is not required, but can strengthen the belief.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Let's get this straight: by discussing this French case, and leaving aside the will of any government to apply it outside of their borders (I hope we've wrapped this sub-thread by now...), what is your goal? Is it to convince yourself, or to prove me, that French law doesn't work under the same moral principles (or rather, compromises between rights) as the US one? If so, well, duh, and let's stop here. If you're actually trying to understand the logic of French law, then stop ignoring the relevant bits by saying "it shouldn't."

My goal with respect to you and other non-Americans in the conversation, is to convince you that French law is wrong to make the distinction between "media organizations" and "providers of services" and that you should attempt to convince your elected officials to change it.

Well, it's good that you actually wrote this, because I don't think I would ever be able to figure it out.

Btw, this distinction is quite French-specific and definitely not universal across Europe (although there is usually a category of "telecommunication services" and "broadcast services", but that is something quite different).

Wait, aren't you arguing that the owners that the courts should be able to punish Google['s owners] for things that would not get a newspaper ['s owners] in trouble?

No, absolutely not.

If not "the press is entitled to special treatment here" or "Google is entitled to especially bad treatment here," what is the basis for that argument?

I am specifically not arguing about that. There might be actually something to discuss here, but on a completely different level (what are the rights of non-human automatons). Which might be the reason why your "it's about owners" triggers my sense.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

Especially since the newspaper is actually saying, in its own voice, the derogatory things about a third party. Google is just reporting the fact that the newspaper said something about the guy.

that the people in the group lose some of their natural rights?

Seriously, this is called "begging the question".

With the risk of being insulting, I am going to spell it: I claim that these people do not lose any natural rights. Their rights are separate from the rights of the legal entity they own or in which they participate. Infringing on the rights of the legal person might affect some connected persons, but it depends on the right and on the case and even on the type of entity and type of connection (ie it's not limited to owners).

How does a company act on its own rights without the will of its owners?

Usually via employees.

Do they in your concept also have their Right to Speech represented by Google, or was it removed? If the latter, why was this Right denied to some people, despite being the natural right?

Is it possible for a company to act against its owners' interests?

Of course! It happens all the time.

that is one of the reasons why the company is completely separate legal entity in the first place: owner (typically just a small co-owner) can sue the company a vice versa. This is especially important in jurisdictions which don't allow people to sue themselves. And even when they do, any court decision could be attacked on the ground of infringed Right to Fair Trial (which is, btw, always guaranteed to legal entities; without it, the country cannot be considered civilized and/or non-US-hostile).

Edit: Also, being able to form contract - this is extremely common (and again, it's not always possible to create legally valid contract with yourself).

[remi]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

I have to say I'm rather puzzled by the constant insistence of @GuyWhoKilledBear (and others) to make a distinction between companies and individuals -- especially since they make the distinction only to say that this distinction isn't logical! As far as what I've seen in French law is concerned (and for the topic of this thread), there are just "entities" and whatever restriction is put on one of them doesn't depend in any way on whether it's a "company" or an "individual."

An individual writing stuff on his own blog is held under the same rules as a newspaper. An individual hosting a server with a search results website is held under the same rules as Google.

The answer to @GuyWhoKilledBear question of Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others? is based on the activity that is performed, not on the entity that performs it.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

I have to say I'm rather puzzled by the constant insistence of @GuyWhoKilledBear (and others) to make a distinction between companies and individuals -- especially since they make the distinction only to say that this distinction isn't logical! As far as what I've seen in French law is concerned (and for the topic of this thread), there are just "entities" and whatever restriction is put on one of them doesn't depend in any way on whether it's a "company" or an "individual."

Really? In general it does matter a lot when it comes to general question of "rights". Maybe companies do have the same rights as natural/physical persons in France (cannot find it), but that is definitely not the case in all EU countries (at least based on the stuff I have found online).

I agree, however, that it does not matter in this specific case, because all the relevant rights and responsibilities are explicitly defined by relevant laws (if I understand it correctly) in terms of activity or role.

An individual writing stuff on his own blog is held under the same rules as a newspaper. An individual hosting a server with a search results website is held under the same rules as Google.

The answer to @GuyWhoKilledBear question of Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others? is based on the activity that is performed, not on the entity that performs it.

Yes, completely different plane.

[remi]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Really? In general it does matter a lot when it comes to general question of "rights". Maybe companies do have the same rights as natural/physical persons in France (cannot find it), but that is definitely not the case in all EU countries (at least based on the stuff I have found online).

I think in the general you are probably right. Stuff like RTBF (since it's apparently a right...) definitely wouldn't apply to a company, I think. There are probably rights that wouldn't make sense for anything but an individual, such as the freedom to go somewhere (a company never travels, only its employees/owners/...), or the right to have a country (i.e. no apatride -- I'm not sure what is the "right" here but I guess you get the idea?). A company obviously cannot "marry" etc. And some rights are clearly denied to companies although I guess no-one would really contest it (morally speaking): there is very much a "death penalty" for a company (whereas for individuals it's prohibited by the "right to life" in the EU charter of rights) when it's closed by law (for e.g. illegal activities).

But I believe that for most rights where it makes sense, and definitely when it comes to freedom of speech, companies/individuals are treated in the same way (broadly speaking... there are obviously differences as e.g. a company cannot go to jail!). Though maybe I'm wrong and only freedom of speech is identical for both...

(I can think of one notable difference in French law that is somewhat related to freedom of speech, although only tangentially, and that's financing of political parties: only individuals can give money to a party (or campaign etc.), not companies. It's mostly the consequence of historical reasons (big financing scandals in the 80s/90s), but I would guess the moral justification is that only individuals vote, so only they can participate to political life?)

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

I have to say I'm rather puzzled by the constant insistence of @GuyWhoKilledBear (and others) to make a distinction between companies and individuals -- especially since they make the distinction only to say that this distinction isn't logical! As far as what I've seen in French law is concerned (and for the topic of this thread), there are just "entities" and whatever restriction is put on one of them doesn't depend in any way on whether it's a "company" or an "individual."

An individual writing stuff on his own blog is held under the same rules as a newspaper. An individual hosting a server with a search results website is held under the same rules as Google.

The answer to @GuyWhoKilledBear question of Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others? is based on the activity that is performed, not on the entity that performs it.

I'm not the one making the distinction between companies and individuals. There are s who are, and I was answering their question.

Like I said before, I don't see a big difference between the activities performed by Google and the newspaper. (And I'm including the libel protections stuff you started to explain to me that I never directly responded to.)

If you'd like to continue to try to convince me that there's a difference between Google's and the newspaper's activities, let me know. If not, I'll leave you alone.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

Maybe there's different kinds of companies. But when it comes to Freedom of the Press, there's not different kinds of people. Everyone, including Google's owners, is entitled to the same right to publish things.

I'm confused where you stand on this, though. Do you think the French court should have made Google take the page down in France? Should they have made the newspaper do so?

Especially since the newspaper is actually saying, in its own voice, the derogatory things about a third party. Google is just reporting the fact that the newspaper said something about the guy.

that the people in the group lose some of their natural rights?

Seriously, this is called "begging the question".

With the risk of being insulting, I am going to spell it: I claim that these people do not lose any natural rights. Their rights are separate from the rights of the legal entity they own or in which they participate. Infringing on the rights of the legal person might affect some connected persons, but it depends on the right and on the case and even on the type of entity and type of connection (ie it's not limited to owners).

How does a company act on its own rights without the will of its owners?

Usually via employees.

Do they in your concept also have their Right to Speech represented by Google, or was it removed? If the latter, why was this Right denied to some people, despite being the natural right?

The right to use Google's name is a property right that comes from owning Google. Because Google's owners own the Google name and have the natural law right to speak/publish things, they can use Google's name to publish things.

Google's non-owner employees have the right to speak/publish in their own names, but because they don't own Google's name, they can't publish things in Google's name.

Is it possible for a company to act against its owners' interests?

Of course! It happens all the time.

that is one of the reasons why the company is completely separate legal entity in the first place: owner (typically just a small co-owner) can sue the company a vice versa. This is especially important in jurisdictions which don't allow people to sue themselves. And even when they do, any court decision could be attacked on the ground of infringed Right to Fair Trial (which is, btw, always guaranteed to legal entities; without it, the country cannot be considered civilized and/or non-US-hostile).

Edit: Also, being able to form contract - this is extremely common (and again, it's not always possible to create legally valid contract with yourself).

I said owners' for a reason. The owners of a company have property rights to the company. There's two ways you get property rights to a company. Either you found the company yourself or you enter into a contract with the owner where you pay them in exchange for some of their property.

If there's a dispute between the two parties to a contract over the terms of a contract, courts can settle that dispute. That's one of the things courts are for.

But don't give me owner vs. owner. Can a company act against the collective will of its owners?

[remi]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I'm not the one making the distinction between companies and individuals. There are s who are, and I was answering their question.

Fair point. I still find this whole sub-thread (and the countless other times it popped up in other threads) very weird. I guess it's just one more weird American thing that I'll never understand .

(semi-seriously though, there is a very American (to me) conception of "all or nothing" that just doesn't make sense to me. Guns must be entirely banned or totally unregulated. Abortion must be legal until the day of birth or forbidden even when the mother is dying and the baby has a deadly malformation. Freedom of speech must either allow everyone to say everything under any form, or no-one can ever say anything. Police must either shoot on sight or obey anything a black person tells them. Either Trump is a literal Nazi, or Biden a literal Communist. I know that a lot of what people post here is posturing, and I know we also already had this exact same discussion before, but even outside of this forum I see much less willingness in Americans to... actually try to live together peacefully? It seems like intermediate positions that actually exist in reality are not the result of people finding something they can share, but of what remains after people have killed each other over each issue. A bomb-ploughed field of trenches rather than a border wall. That might be one of the most fundamental differences between our views of society...)

Like I said before, I don't see a big difference between the activities performed by Google and the newspaper. (And I'm including the libel protections stuff you started to explain to me that I never directly responded to.)

If you'd like to continue to try to convince me that there's a difference between Google's and the newspaper's activities, let me know. If not, I'll leave you alone.

I set out in that other post the main argument, as I see it, as to why those are different activities. I'm willing to continue explaining why I believe these activities are indeed different, if that's the part you disagree on. If however your main sticking point is that despite being different you don't think those activities should be treated differently... I won't do more than pointing you to the law that says they are treated differently (which I've already done), and will leave it at that.

(but I said it before, the fact that I'm not trying to convince you doesn't mean I'm not going to say when I think you're wrong )

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

Maybe there's different kinds of companies. But when it comes to Freedom of the Press, there's not different kinds of people. Everyone, including Google's owners, is entitled to the same right to publish things.
I'm confused where you stand on this, though. Do you think the French court should have made Google take the page down in France?

My personal stance is that no, they should not, but for a completely different reasons. First and foremost, I don't think that link inherently contains the same data as the target it points to --> the whole case should be void. There's more, but I would have to actually investigate the details and I don't really want to do that.

Especially since the newspaper is actually saying, in its own voice, the derogatory things about a third party. Google is just reporting the fact that the newspaper said something about the guy.

that the people in the group lose some of their natural rights?

Seriously, this is called "begging the question".

With the risk of being insulting, I am going to spell it: I claim that these people do not lose any natural rights. Their rights are separate from the rights of the legal entity they own or in which they participate. Infringing on the rights of the legal person might affect some connected persons, but it depends on the right and on the case and even on the type of entity and type of connection (ie it's not limited to owners).

How does a company act on its own rights without the will of its owners?

Usually via employees.

Do they in your concept also have their Right to Speech represented by Google, or was it removed? If the latter, why was this Right denied to some people, despite being the natural right?

The right to use Google's name is a property right that comes from owning Google. Because Google's owners own the Google name and have the natural law right to speak/publish things, they can use Google's name to publish things.

Sure, but I don't understand how this proves the claim that all things that Google publishes are automatically published in the name of all individual owners and automatically represents their expressions.

Google's non-owner employees have the right to speak/publish in their own names, but because they don't own Google's name, they can't publish things in Google's name.

They can and they do. Newspapers and other media do that all the time.

Is it possible for a company to act against its owners' interests?

Of course! It happens all the time.

that is one of the reasons why the company is completely separate legal entity in the first place: owner (typically just a small co-owner) can sue the company a vice versa. This is especially important in jurisdictions which don't allow people to sue themselves. And even when they do, any court decision could be attacked on the ground of infringed Right to Fair Trial (which is, btw, always guaranteed to legal entities; without it, the country cannot be considered civilized and/or non-US-hostile).

Edit: Also, being able to form contract - this is extremely common (and again, it's not always possible to create legally valid contract with yourself).

I said owners' for a reason. The owners of a company have property rights to the company. There's two ways you get property rights to a company. Either you found the company yourself or you enter into a contract with the owner where you pay them in exchange for some of their property.

I am not sure how is that relevant....

If there's a dispute between the two parties to a contract over the terms of a contract, courts can settle that dispute. That's one of the things courts are for.
But don't give me owner vs. owner.

That is something different. If the contract is between person A and company X, it's between person A and company X - not between person A and "A, B, C, D, E, F, and other 500 people" (well, maybe it depends, this sounds like something that depends on specific situation).

Actually, even the property rights are not fully transferred without limits! Unless... are you saying that I can just go to Microsoft headwuarters, flash my single share of Microsoft to the security guard and freely walk around my property?

Can a company act against the collective will of its owners?

On a very practical level: managers (sometimes not even C-level executives) makes a decision that the owners don't agree with. They can reprimand and/or fire the responsible persons, but it might be too late. Usually it's some financial decision, but it might also be a public statement in the name of the company - statement that many of the owners would not personally agree with. I am sure you can insert your own garage-worthy examples here.

On a theoretical level:

You say there is some "the collective will of its owners," which is almost certainly a legal fiction (unless the owners are the Borg collective) and in reality it is some kind of consensus and personal will of the owners might be somewhat different (even significantly different, in case of minority owners). Good, that is, presumably, how it works (in principle).

And that is probably the core of the issue: How come that personal Speech of each singular owner is seamlessly transferred as the Speech of the company, while the personal Will of each owner is somewhat minced into "Collective Will"?

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I'm not the one making the distinction between companies and individuals. There are s who are, and I was answering their question.

Fair point. I still find this whole sub-thread (and the semi-seriously though, there is a very American (to me) conception of "all or nothing" that just doesn't make sense to me...

I'm not sure what you're saying is "all or nothing" here, but in a broader sense, in real life, over here, it's less like your examples than you make it out to be. I'm pretty sure that's because of how media works: everything that's covered is "conflict," and you're getting your view from the media.

I'm sure Frenchmen aren't ALL cheese eating surrender monkeys. You guys must have yogurt and whole milk and sour cream, right? And I bet you've got some orangutans and chimpanzees too. But I only know about the cheese eating surrender monkeys because that's who gets covered in the media.

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Like I said before, I don't see a big difference between the activities performed by Google and the newspaper. (And I'm including the libel protections stuff you started to explain to me that I never directly responded to.)

If you'd like to continue to try to convince me that there's a difference between Google's and the newspaper's activities, let me know. If not, I'll leave you alone.

I set out in that other post the main argument, as I see it, as to why those are different activities. I'm willing to continue explaining why I believe these activities are indeed different, if that's the part you disagree on.

The part I disagree with is your assertion that the newspaper's actions are different than Google's actions; I believe they are the same.

We were in the middle of talking about this before, so I'll reply to your post from before a little later.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Also, this is not really relevant for the case of published link.

Of course it is. That's what we're talking about here. Obviously, to the extent that Freedom of the Press is a thing, it has to apply to individuals, right? Clearly it applies to some companies also, because it applies to the newspaper (which is just as much a company as Google is). Why would it apply to some companies/groups of people and not others?

Yes: That is the question. Obviously, it does not depend on the type of legal entity.

I believe the specifics of french law applied here were described by @remi and I don't want to argue here, because... I am not defending them nor the court decision. I am just about the "owner" thing being repeatedly emphasized as relevant.

Maybe there's different kinds of companies. But when it comes to Freedom of the Press, there's not different kinds of people. Everyone, including Google's owners, is entitled to the same right to publish things.
I'm confused where you stand on this, though. Do you think the French court should have made Google take the page down in France?

My personal stance is that no, they should not, but for a completely different reasons. First and foremost, I don't think that link inherently contains the same data as the target it points to --> the whole case should be void. There's more, but I would have to actually investigate the details and I don't really want to do that.

With regard to the RTBF part of this thread, this is my argument too.

Especially since the newspaper is actually saying, in its own voice, the derogatory things about a third party. Google is just reporting the fact that the newspaper said something about the guy.

that the people in the group lose some of their natural rights?

Seriously, this is called "begging the question".

With the risk of being insulting, I am going to spell it: I claim that these people do not lose any natural rights. Their rights are separate from the rights of the legal entity they own or in which they participate. Infringing on the rights of the legal person might affect some connected persons, but it depends on the right and on the case and even on the type of entity and type of connection (ie it's not limited to owners).

How does a company act on its own rights without the will of its owners?

Usually via employees.

Do they in your concept also have their Right to Speech represented by Google, or was it removed? If the latter, why was this Right denied to some people, despite being the natural right?

The right to use Google's name is a property right that comes from owning Google. Because Google's owners own the Google name and have the natural law right to speak/publish things, they can use Google's name to publish things.

Sure, but I don't understand how this proves the claim that all things that Google publishes are automatically published in the name of all individual owners and automatically represents their expressions.

Not all the owners get to use Google's name to do things: which ones do and which ones don't is part of the sales contract. Google specifically has different "classes" of shares, the lowest of which give the owner no input on making decisions on behalf of the company.

The ones that DID BUY decision-making power have a contract among themselves about how decisions are made. In Google's case, there's probably a "Board of Directors" that hires the top executives and mostly lets them make decisions. Again, though, they decided all this in a contract.

Google's non-owner employees have the right to speak/publish in their own names, but because they don't own Google's name, they can't publish things in Google's name.

They can and they do. Newspapers and other media do that all the time.

Someone being credited for their part of a work for hire that's done jointly in their own name and the name of the company they work for is, again, part of a contract.

Is it possible for a company to act against its owners' interests?

Of course! It happens all the time.

that is one of the reasons why the company is completely separate legal entity in the first place: owner (typically just a small co-owner) can sue the company a vice versa. This is especially important in jurisdictions which don't allow people to sue themselves. And even when they do, any court decision could be attacked on the ground of infringed Right to Fair Trial (which is, btw, always guaranteed to legal entities; without it, the country cannot be considered civilized and/or non-US-hostile).

Edit: Also, being able to form contract - this is extremely common (and again, it's not always possible to create legally valid contract with yourself).

I said owners' for a reason. The owners of a company have property rights to the company. There's two ways you get property rights to a company. Either you found the company yourself or you enter into a contract with the owner where you pay them in exchange for some of their property.

I am not sure how is that relevant....

It's because the actual property rights you have depend on the contract you signed when you bought the property.

If there's a dispute between the two parties to a contract over the terms of a contract, courts can settle that dispute. That's one of the things courts are for.
But don't give me owner vs. owner.

That is something different. If the contract is between person A and company X, it's between person A and company X - not between person A and "A, B, C, D, E, F, and other 500 people" (well, maybe it depends, this sounds like something that depends on specific situation).

I don't understand how those two cases are different.

Can a company act against the collective will of its owners?

On a very practical level: managers (sometimes not even C-level executives) makes a decision that the owners don't agree with. They can reprimand and/or fire the responsible persons, but it might be too late. Usually it's some financial decision, but it might also be a public statement in the name of the company - statement that many of the owners would not personally agree with. I am sure you can insert your own garage-worthy examples here.

That sounds like an individual misusing access that they have that gives them the ability to misuse some else's property. That's an action taken by the individual, not by the company.

On a theoretical level:

You say there is some "the collective will of its owners," which is almost certainly a legal fiction (unless the owners are the Borg collective) and in reality it is some kind of consensus and personal will of the owners might be somewhat different (even significantly different, in case of minority owners). Good, that is, presumably, how it works (in principle).

And that is probably the core of the issue: How come that personal Speech of each singular owner is seamlessly transferred as the Speech of the company, while the personal Will of each owner is somewhat minced into "Collective Will"?

Because the owners decided how they'd figure out "their collective will when they bought/sold the company?"

[Kamil Podlesak]

Edit: please do not answer this post, if possible :-) The next one should be preferred.

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

The right to use Google's name is a property right that comes from owning Google. Because Google's owners own the Google name and have the natural law right to speak/publish things, they can use Google's name to publish things.

Sure, but I don't understand how this proves the claim that all things that Google publishes are automatically published in the name of all individual owners and automatically represents their expressions.

Not all the owners get to use Google's name to do things: which ones do and which ones don't is part of the sales contract. Google specifically has different "classes" of shares, the lowest of which give the owner no input on making decisions on behalf of the company.

The ones that DID BUY decision-making power have a contract among themselves about how decisions are made. In Google's case, there's probably a "Board of Directors" that hires the top executives and mostly lets them make decisions. Again, though, they decided all this in a contract.

Does this contract also say that all decisions of company employees and all outputs of company-owned machines represents opinions of those individual persons? Do those owners (usually another companies) also have the same contracts with their owners? And their owners (again, companies for the most part)?

Google's non-owner employees have the right to speak/publish in their own names, but because they don't own Google's name, they can't publish things in Google's name.

They can and they do. Newspapers and other media do that all the time.

Someone being credited for their part of a work for hire that's done jointly in their own name and the name of the company they work for is, again, part of a contract.

So, they can and they do publish things in their employer's name.

Is it possible for a company to act against its owners' interests?
Of course! It happens all the time.
I said owners' for a reason. The owners of a company have property rights to the company. There's two ways you get property rights to a company. Either you found the company yourself or you enter into a contract with the owner where you pay them in exchange for some of their property.

I am not sure how is that relevant....

It's because the actual property rights you have depend on the contract you signed when you bought the property.

Yes, and that means that the company cannot act against my own interests because.... ?
If the contract says that I have little to no control of the company, it can very easily act (and sometimes shoud) against my own interests. The contract probably says that the company cannot act against very specific interest (ie diminishing the value of my share), but that's about it. I can provide some examples, but do I really need to?

That is something different. If the contract is between person A and company X, it's between person A and company X - not between person A and "A, B, C, D, E, F, and other 500 people" (well, maybe it depends, this sounds like something that depends on specific situation).

I don't understand how those two cases are different.

The legal proceedings might be quite different. But that is not really relevant here.

Can a company act against the collective will of its owners?

On a very practical level: managers (sometimes not even C-level executives) makes a decision that the owners don't agree with. They can reprimand and/or fire the responsible persons, but it might be too late. Usually it's some financial decision, but it might also be a public statement in the name of the company - statement that many of the owners would not personally agree with. I am sure you can insert your own garage-worthy examples here.

That sounds like an individual misusing access that they have that gives them the ability to misuse some else's property. That's an action taken by the individual, not by the company.

No. As long as the individual or group is authorized to act on behalf of the company, and they do act on behalf of the company, it's the action of the company. Owners can sue the individuals for a breach of contract or for damages, but for third-person parties, this is irrelevant. Action was taken by company and usually cannot be undone (as long as some third party is concerned, no backsies - unless you can prove that the third party acted in bad faith or something).

Also, a very relevant case today: what if that decision and action is done by a machine? What then? Is it a misuse of property?

On a theoretical level:

You say there is some "the collective will of its owners," which is almost certainly a legal fiction (unless the owners are the Borg collective) and in reality it is some kind of consensus and personal will of the owners might be somewhat different (even significantly different, in case of minority owners). Good, that is, presumably, how it works (in principle).

And that is probably the core of the issue: How come that personal Speech of each singular owner is seamlessly transferred as the Speech of the company, while the personal Will of each owner is somewhat minced into "Collective Will"?

Because the owners decided how they'd figure out "their collective will when they bought/sold the company?"

That that does not answer the question.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Not all the owners get to use Google's name to do things: which ones do and which ones don't is part of the sales contract. Google specifically has different "classes" of shares, the lowest of which give the owner no input on making decisions on behalf of the company.

Maybe I should try to get another look at it, to clear it up a little:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property. Company does have property on its own and it is legally granted full property rights of its own.
It does not really matter how does the company exercise these rights. It does not act on behalf of its owners; it acts as its own entity. It does not have to prove that any action is a will of the owners; this is automatically implied and any discrepancy is just a dispute between the owners and the company (or the persons that act on behalf of that company).
Owners are also free to exercise their own property Rights in other ways, independently. The company can be authorized to handle and maintain this personal property (common, for example, with facility maintenance company), but it's not the same. It's actually the same as handling property of other, non-owner persons.

I claim that the Expression/Speech work in the same way. Company have its own Right and exercise it (this is much less universal; country without Freedom of Speech for all persons might be considered "problematic", but as long as it grants Freedom of Property, it's capitalist nobody really cares).
When company produces an Expression/Speech, it's exercising its own Right.
Owners still have their own freedom and can produce their own Expression/Speech, independently of the company. They can authorize the company to disseminate this Expression, but - just like in the case of property rights - the same can be done by any other unrelated person (probably based on some kind of contract).

You claim that this is not true, company does not have its own Expression/Speech and it's always just personal Expression/Speech of the individual owners.

Maybe the issue is that I always think of Expression/Speech as something that is materialized in singular instances (and the Freedom says, among other things, that it can be materialized) - just like the Property Right materializes in singular instances of... well... property....
while you consider Speech some kind of universal, intangible, all-permeating aetheric substance that permeates Universe?

Or maybe it's just Transubstantiation vs Consubstation?

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

It's been entirely too long that I've been meaning to respond to this, so my apologies in advance.

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I understand why Europeans feel the opposite way.

I think that's the most agreement we can get on this point.

(I'm kind of vaguely following the other sub-thread on natural rights etc. and I don't really agree with you there, but I'm not interested enough in that one to dig into it, so I'll leave it at that)

Now if you're worried that companies will obey EU rules even if they are not forced to, well then I guess this shows you're worried that the US is loosing its international clout

We're not exerting our influence on American companies to follow the American conception of rights in foreign markets. We're not coming to liberate you.

Are you so sure? You're mentioning a bit further Cuties, and it very much seems to me that the American reaction to it is now driving the way the movie is perceived/distributed in Europe. Now you'll argue that your vision of it is Better and the European (French) was Wrong, but it remains that ultimately if Netflix decides to pull out the movie everywhere in the world (not saying they're doing, or going to do it, but it's not hard to imagine they would), it would be under American pressure -- even if it was breaking US law there is nothing in European law that would force them to do so.

As I understand the controversy with Cuties, the worst offense of "actual child pornography" deals with a scene where a 12 year old girl removes her top and it shows her bare chest. The character is 12 years old, but she is portrayed by a 16 year old actress. Apparently, using an actual 12 year old would violate French law, but using a 16 year old does not. In the US, the age of consent to appear in a pornographic movie is 18, so, to the extent that Cuties is a pornographic movie, it does not comply with US law.

It makes sense to me that the parents of a child actress can agree to a contract that the child is going to act in a production in general, but there's different rules where it has to be the woman herself agreeing to the contract if she's going to appear nude. And since in America, the age of consent for entering into a contract is 18, it lines up nicely.

I assume 16 year olds aren't allowed to enter into contracts on their own in France either.

As far as I can tell, Cuties is a bad movie with a bad message. I don't want every bad movie or bad message banned. But we should think about who can't consent to appear in the movie of their own accord can consent to appearing in the movie topless.

In any case, I'm not aware of any movement by Americans to ban Cuties in Europe. All the ire seems to be directed at Netflix, who owns US distribution rights, but didn't actually make the movie.

I remember another case of a small company (or maybe non-profit? doesn't matter) that couldn't do business with Iran because no bank accepted to handle the transaction because they were all afraid they would break US sanctions. Yet the company was operating under EU rules (that allowed those transactions with Iran), the banks were all European ones (and would have had special EU guarantees to back that transaction, it was at the time when the US just reneged on the Iran agreement so it was very politically contentious) and the transaction would have at no point crossed into the US. But the banks still didn't want to do it, because the American influence was strong enough.

1. I'd argue that you guys had reneged on the Iran deal. Weren't the sanctions supposed to snap back?
2. Sanctions against clear bad guys (in this case, the terrorist-ocracy that rules Iran) are different than a purely economic action. In war, the rules are different. I don't go wandering around beaches looking for Germans to shoot even though there was that one time where we did have to liberate you. But because the US and the EU aren't actually at war right now, the rules are different than us putting sanctions on a country.

There are countless other examples, it's a trope to say that US rules and culture and perception of society is influencing the rest of the world, and that European companies will naturally do what the US wants them to do even if that wasn't mandatory. I believe it's so much part of the current balance of power that you are not even aware of it.

Note that I'm not complaining about it (which doesn't mean I'm happy with it either!). I very much understand how the balance of power works, and how there is nothing naturally immoral for one group in a stronger position to push for their view to be accepted by others, and for companies to follow US rules even if not mandatory because it's just easier for them to do so. And I recognise that part of what the EU is doing is trying to shift that balance of power, or taking advantage of a shift that is (or might be) happening, to do to the US exactly what the US has been doing to the EU for years. And I'm not particularly happy that either side is doing it.

Believe me, I'm aware of US cultural hegemony. I'm actually a big fan. I see a big difference between French people changing how their culture works because they see from our culture how great America and the US using soft power to force France to change its internal laws.

It's not fair to attribute Cuties to the entirety of France. But to hear the film's director describe it, it's an argument that girls should be free to choose whether to act slutty or to act more conservatively. The general view in America disagrees, and thinks that at 12 years old, girls should very much be pushed in the conservative direction. Part of the reason Cuties gets such a different reaction in the US is that we're a lot more against that argument.

You say that you personally aren't trying to change anyone's mind. But that isn't everyone. If Europeans wanted to come over here and argue that we should pass laws protecting a right to be forgotten, they could (and in fact, some usually come out of the woodwork any time this conversation comes up on this board.) I'd think they'd be wrong and I'd argue against them. But if they convinced people and actually got support, that's much less bad than a government that I never voted for soft-powering it in through the back door.

We're talking about something that someone printed, so the proper comparison is "a libel." The very act of creating child pornography harms the children involved, which is why that is illegal. The very act of printing the libel is not.

I'm not sure what the "is not" refers to.

It's supposed to be "does not" as in "The very act of printing the libel does not actually harm the person being libeled." If you print a libelous book and then immediately burn it, nobody was harmed. If you film child pornography, then burn the film immediately after, there's still a child that was sexually assaulted.

Consider, for example, a member of your parliament printing campaign material that says, falsely, that:

I know for a fact that $CANDIDATE_FOR_PRIME_MINISTER_FROM_THE_OTHER_PARTY didn't pay any taxes in the past 10 years.

Is that supposed to be libelous? From a moral perspective, at least?

It is definitely libellous in French law, as far as I know (but remember that IANAL, and I know from reading a French lawyer's blog that this branch of the law is full of tiny gotchas).

Note that the key part here is that he printed it in a campaign material (or said it in a public meeting). If he said it in e.g. a private meeting, then it would still be libellous but it wouldn't be an offense (I just checked the law to be sure... I thought in that case it wouldn't be, legally, a libel, but it actually is, but it's not an offense).

Did you check if it was slander? Because under US law, a defamatory statement that's printed is called "libel" and a defamatory statement that's spoken is "slander," which is why I made it a printed campaign ad.

So $CANDIDATE_E_LABEL_TOO_LONG$ can sue the MP for libel. Now MP can use the "exception of truth" (similar to what you mentioned in another post above), by showing (to the tribunal) some proof that it's true (or at least, some proof that MP acted in good faith and really had something to back up his allegation). If he can't produce such proof, then he'll be condemned for libel (and would be forced, for example, to remove an article on his website that says so).

So back to your questions, yes it's libellous, both morally and legally, but it's only an offense if 1) it's public and 2) it's not true.

Under US law, there's no way the guy who committed libel would ever be held liable for it. It's essentially impossible to get a judgement for lying about a politician here. If we were in the Garage, you'd be looking at a list of news organizations that would be out of business tomorrow if that changed.

But morally, yes, this was set up as a clear-cut case of libel.

Now consider a newspaper that, in this scenario, prints the headline

$PM_CANDIDATE PAID NO TAXES IN LAST DECADE SAYS $OPPOSING_MP

Is that libelous? In my view, it shouldn't be. It isn't even false. The one candidate did say the other candidate didn't pay taxes.

I think that headline isn't libellous by itself. However it would very much depend how the article presents the claim. If it's very careful to only say "MP said such and such and we're only quoting MP on that", that would be probably be OK.

Now (skipping your next newspaper quoting the first one, which is just adding one more indirection) you're going to say that Google is doing the same thing, just saying "here is $website$ that says $thing$." And I think it would probably be OK.

You assumed correctly. I see Google's actions very similar to the third example.

But now I need to side-step for one moment before we get back to Google.

Imagine that MP wrote that first statement on a forum (or as a comment on a blog) rather than in a campaign tract. That forum is very much the place that publishes the allegation (the libel). So the forum can't get away by saying "we're just quoting what was said elsewhere." They are the publisher, they are in law responsible for publishing the libel.

Which is where the law I mentioned above stepped in, and said, essentially "SiriOK Googleforum, we're going to protect you from all those lawsuits for posts that you publish, by saying that you're never responsible for what's appearing on your pages, because you're just acting as a dumb repository of data and not a newspaper. But in exchange, since you are a dumb repository of data, you'll have to act like one and delete data when someone [with the proper authority, under proper conditions and so on] tells you to."

The forum is likely pretty happy with that since they can keep operating without having to have a lawyer check every post before publishing it.

I think that, like your interpretation of the second example, where the headline quotes a guy slandering someone, it really depends on how much the speech is presented as "The Community on the Website's speech" versus "The speech of the individual person that happens to be on the website."

Trump ostensibly will still have COVID next week, so the debate that was previously scheduled is going to be rescheduled. But say it wasn't and they did it as an AMA on Reddit instead. And let's further assume that Biden, from the u/vpAMTRAKjoeBIDEN account, libeled somebody. Would Reddit be morally culpable for that? Or would it just be Joe Biden?

So now we get back to Google. I'm not sure exactly what has been the legal path that led to the current situation, but currently Google says that they are operating under that law, and the judges agree with it, and everyone agree with it. So I think that Google might have been OK with the regular rules before, but they thought it was much easier for them to accept this "provider of services" definition, even though, yes, it means they're giving away some of their freedom of speech.

This is more the question, and I think you and I have clarified what I was getting at in the couple of days since you typed this. So I'm going to ask again. What does it mean to be "a provider of services" rather than "a publisher" in terms of the content that you're distributing? Why should these two categories be treated differently?

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Not all the owners get to use Google's name to do things: which ones do and which ones don't is part of the sales contract. Google specifically has different "classes" of shares, the lowest of which give the owner no input on making decisions on behalf of the company.

Maybe I should try to get another look at it, to clear it up a little:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property.

This isn't true, though. If you own "a share" in a company, you do own a very little bit of the company, which is why they would have to give you some of the proceeds if they were to liquidate. To use your example from before, you can't wave a single share around at the security checkpoint to get you through the gate at Microsoft. But Steve Ballmer, who owns a bunch of shares, probably can.

Ultimately, what you personally are allowed to do with company property is decided in the contract you signed with the other owners when you bought the share in the company.

I claim that the Expression/Speech work in the same way. Company have its own Right and exercise it (this is much less universal; country without Freedom of Speech for all persons might be considered "problematic", but as long as it grants Freedom of Property, it's capitalist nobody really cares).
When company produces an Expression/Speech, it's exercising its own Right.
Owners still have their own freedom and can produce their own Expression/Speech, independently of the company. They can authorize the company to disseminate this Expression, but - just like in the case of property rights - the same can be done by any other unrelated person (probably based on some kind of contract).

You claim that this is not true, company does not have its own Expression/Speech and it's always just personal Expression/Speech of the individual owners.

Maybe the issue is that I always think of Expression/Speech as something that is materialized in singular instances (and the Freedom says, among other things, that it can be materialized) - just like the Property Right materializes in singular instances of... well... property....
while you consider Speech some kind of universal, intangible, all-permeating aetheric substance that permeates Universe?

I actually consider them both universal and intangible. Locke's conception of rights was centered around negative rights, which take the form of "Others aren't allowed to stop you from..." Contrast this with positive rights, which take the form "You will be provided with..."

The Right to Property as envisioned by Locke is the natural, negative right that stops others (notably the government) aren't allowed to stop you from acquiring, owning, using, or alienating your property.

Obviously, once you have acquired a specific piece of property, you have Property Rights in the sense that you're thinking of, which are the positive rights to exploit your property. (If you own a field, you have the right to plant apple trees in it. If you own a racetrack, you have the right to let some cars drive on it but not others. Etc.)

The Rights to Freedom of Expression are negative rights that others can't stop you from expressing yourself in certain ways. They don't protect tangible instances of expression after they happen. They protect the person's ability to perform the expression in the first place.

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not. Once you sell me a copy of the newspaper, I have Property Rights to those pieces of paper and I'm allowed to draw all the Hitler moustaches I want.

Or maybe it's just Transubstantiation vs Consubstation?

I'm not sure what this means. I know what Transubstantiation and Consubstation mean, but I don't get how they're comparable or relevant in this instance.

[Kamil Podlesak]

I still find your argument... lacking, at best

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property.

This isn't true, though.

Really? So I do own (part of) company property? So, I have corresponding natural rights?

If you own "a share" in a company, you do own a very little bit of the company, which is why they would have to give you some of the proceeds if they were to liquidate. To use your example from before, you can't wave a single share around at the security checkpoint to get you through the gate at Microsoft.

Wait, so I am not allowed to walk around my property? This sounds like limit on my natural right!

But Steve Ballmer, who owns a bunch of shares, probably can.

Ballmer is former executive and member of the Board, but OK. Let's say Nadella issues strict instructions to not let him anywhere on company property and to call police if he still enters. If you are right and he directly own substantial portion of the property, and the Property Right is natural and unalienable, then he can defend himself in court against trespassing changes with argument that that State is violating his rights!
Well, everyone can use any argument in defense, but I still don't think this would work.

Ultimately, what you personally are allowed to do with company property is decided in the contract you signed with the other owners when you bought the share in the company.

Which does not conflict with my claim and my arguments at all. Quite the contrary.

So, my claim stays. Property belongs to the company and any natural person does not get any rights outside the ones strictly specified by some contract (and allowed by law to be valid in contract).

I claim that the Expression/Speech work in the same way. Company have its own Right and exercise it (this is much less universal; country without Freedom of Speech for all persons might be considered "problematic", but as long as it grants Freedom of Property, it's capitalist nobody really cares).
When company produces an Expression/Speech, it's exercising its own Right.
Owners still have their own freedom and can produce their own Expression/Speech, independently of the company. They can authorize the company to disseminate this Expression, but - just like in the case of property rights - the same can be done by any other unrelated person (probably based on some kind of contract).

You claim that this is not true, company does not have its own Expression/Speech and it's always just personal Expression/Speech of the individual owners.

Maybe the issue is that I always think of Expression/Speech as something that is materialized in singular instances (and the Freedom says, among other things, that it can be materialized) - just like the Property Right materializes in singular instances of... well... property....
while you consider Speech some kind of universal, intangible, all-permeating aetheric substance that permeates Universe?

I actually consider them both universal and intangible. Locke's conception of rights was centered around negative rights, which take the form of "Others aren't allowed to stop you from..." Contrast this with positive rights, which take the form "You will be provided with..."

The Right to Property as envisioned by Locke is the natural, negative right that stops others (notably the government) aren't allowed to stop you from acquiring, owning, using, or alienating your property.

Which would be dully violated if the principle of "company property is owners' property" held (see above).

Obviously, once you have acquired a specific piece of property, you have Property Rights in the sense that you're thinking of, which are the positive rights to exploit your property. (If you own a field, you have the right to plant apple trees in it. If you own a racetrack, you have the right to let some cars drive on it but not others. Etc.)

That sound like the "using" part of the natural right. Also, it's quite important that the "negative right" still remains and nobody limits my freedom to use the property.
My point is that without owning a piece of property, there is no "using" or "alienating" or even "owning". And even the "acquiring" is only valid with connection to some specific piece of property, even if it contains "all" pieces of property. There is no property right for "ideal property" in platonic sense, AFAIK

The Rights to Freedom of Expression are negative rights that others can't stop you from expressing yourself in certain ways.
They don't protect tangible instances of expression after they happen.

What? That would it completely useless. Actually, that did make this completely useless, it was everyday practice in 19th century (and even 20th century, and sometimes even in 21st century) to suppress press by destroying/confiscating/buying out whole amount of newspaper issue.

They protect the person's ability to perform the expression in the first place.

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not.

If you do that with all copies, I might claim that. If you do that as a government agent, I have actually a very good case.

Anyway, that is completely irrelevant. The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary in Elbonia that have printing press in, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression?
That sounds really crazy. When the Elbonia government decides to shut that printing press company down, I might incur some property damages (my worth went down, duh) - but my personal expression is just as free as it always was.

[remi]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

It's been entirely too long that I've been meaning to respond to this, so my apologies in advance.

No worries. I'm faster to answer mostly because if I don't reply just when I read a post, I know I will never come back to it later. Also I'm only reading TD at work (yeah, I know...) and since work is getting less and less fun and I'm in Socialist Paradise, I've decided to fuck off later today (and for the week-end). I don't care, I grew up with Usenet () so I'm very much used to the asynchronicity of it all.

Also I'm actually going to side-step about half of your post, because I don't really want to discuss the meat of the two examples I brought up, just the idea. Feel free to start another (free!!11!) thread about those if you want, or repost elsewhere, but let's try to focus on one idea at a time, shall we?

Also also, this is a wall of text. #sorrynotsorry

The bit I started on was this:

We're not exerting our influence on American companies to follow the American conception of rights in foreign markets. We're not coming to liberate you.

In any case, I'm not aware of any movement by Americans to ban Cuties in Europe. All the ire seems to be directed at Netflix, who owns US distribution rights, but didn't actually make the movie.

It seems so, but if Netflix decides to remove it from their US network, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they also removed it from Europe. Which would be kind of a clear example of what you claim the US isn't doing (you'll argue that it's not done, and I said so from the start, but the fact that even in France we do see a pressure to remove the film, that did not exist before the US thing started, just by itself shows that this pressure exists).

You'll probably also say that "you" (the US) are not exerting a pressure, it's the company deciding to do things, but if you read back a bit, this is exactly what you feared might happen (i.e. companies acting not before they are forced to, but because they decide to).

I remember another case of a small company (or maybe non-profit? doesn't matter) that couldn't do business with Iran because no bank accepted to handle the transaction because they were all afraid they would break US sanctions. Yet the company was operating under EU rules (that allowed those transactions with Iran), the banks were all European ones (and would have had special EU guarantees to back that transaction, it was at the time when the US just reneged on the Iran agreement so it was very politically contentious) and the transaction would have at no point crossed into the US. But the banks still didn't want to do it, because the American influence was strong enough.

1. I'd argue that you guys had reneged on the Iran deal.
2. Sanctions against clear bad guys (in this case, the terrorist-ocracy that rules Iran) are different than a purely economic action.

Again, I'm not discussing the reasons for the situation I shown. That's not the point. The point is that there was (is?) a set of rules that applies to US companies, and a different set that applies to EU companies, and that some EU companies have chosen to follow the US rules despite not being forced to (and despite even being encouraged not to by the EU!). This is a very clear example of exerting your influence beyond the US, which you claimed you didn't do.

Believe me, I'm aware of US cultural hegemony. I'm actually a big fan. I see a big difference between French people changing how their culture works because they see from our culture how great America and the US using soft power to force France to change its internal laws.

Well now you're shifting things again. The original issue you raised was the worry that companies would chose to follow EU (or France) laws even outside of them. There is nothing here about forcing the US to change its internal laws! And arguably, if the companies decide to do so of their own will, someone who likes these rules could say the companies are just "changing how their culture works because they see from our culture how great" the EU is.

So again, yes, clearly, this influencing thing is exactly the same thing as what the US has been doing for decades. I fully understand that you don't like it, but saying the EU is doing something new that the US never did is, to me, just being blind to reality.

(I hate to bring this argument but this is one case where I actually believe you might need to "check your privilege" -- I think that you are so used to this dominant position that you are not even aware of the influence you exert, and see someone else exerting influence as an intolerable attack towards you, rather than just, essentially, tit-for-tat)

But that whole line of discussion is not really the main topic to me either.

Let's move back to newspapers and Google.

We're talking about something that someone printed, so the proper comparison is "a libel." The very act of creating child pornography harms the children involved, which is why that is illegal. The very act of printing the libel is not.

I'm not sure what the "is not" refers to.

It's supposed to be "does not" as in "The very act of printing the libel does not actually harm the person being libeled." If you print a libelous book and then immediately burn it, nobody was harmed. If you film child pornography, then burn the film immediately after, there's still a child that was sexually assaulted.

The bit you cut out (or maybe another bit, I don't remember) tried to preempt this. Yes, sure, in your example, the burnt book isn't causing any harm. But I think that in French law it wouldn't be libel either (or rather, as I said later, it would be libel but not an offense, so let's not play with legalese and just say it isn't), so that's not really a useful example.

If, however, the book is published, then there is harm done to the person you're libelling (obviously not the same kind of harm than in sexually assaulting a children, but that's not the point -- the sentencing (fine, prison...) would also be different, so the fact that in both cases the sentencing might include one identical bit (removal of incriminating text) does in no way mean the offenses are the same).

The degree of harm depends on a lot of things (how many people can access it and so on, and this would be up to a judge to rule in each specific case), but the core principle is that by publishing the libellous material, you are participating in the harm it causes. I think it's fairly obvious in a case of a newspaper printing a story "MP said [libel]" -- if the newspaper can say that without bearing any responsibility for it then can they say "Joe Random said [libel]", or "unnamed person said [libel]" or "we've heard that [libel]" and ultimately they could just say "[libel]" provided they just wrap it in a weasel word and that's obviously not good.

There is one big exception though (before you raise it yourself...) which is when the publisher isn't aware of the content. This covers, for example, a news kiosk. They sell a newspaper, but are not aware, nor have any say, in what those newspapers publish, so they are not responsible for the harm that a libel in the newspaper may cause.

Now that's an interesting exception because it's actually close to what Google does! However in this example, if a judge rules that a newspaper should be removed from sale because it contains a libel, then all kiosks must obey this (as soon as they're aware of it etc.). So, does that restricts the kiosk freedom of speech? And is it morally wrong? You tell me, but I don't think it is wrong, quite the opposite -- if not, then an injunction to stop selling a libellous newspaper would be useless.

(arguably the injunction is partly useless anyway since a number of copies have likely already been sold, but it depends on circumstances. A monthly periodic or a book might be stopped just at the start of its print, making the injunction somewhat useful -- even a story printed on a website can be removed before it had too many views.)

Across the years there has been a large body of jurisprudence built that helps tribunals decide, and the most obvious ones are thrown out immediately (e.g. a complaint against a kiosk would be rejected), but sometimes it still needs to go to a judge (e.g. if the kiosk usually didn't stock that newspaper but decided exceptionally to stock it that specific day because they knew of that specific article being printed in it, maybe they would be deemed as having some responsibility).

[about "I know for a fact that $CANDIDATE_FOR_PRIME_MINISTER_FROM_THE_OTHER_PARTY didn't pay any taxes in the past 10 years."]

Did you check if it was slander? Because under US law, a defamatory statement that's printed is called "libel" and a defamatory statement that's spoken is "slander," which is why I made it a printed campaign ad.

I... did... or rather... OK, I had started some lengthy explanation here, but the gist is that legal words have precise legal meanings, and that I'm not sure how those map between the US and France (and actually even in the English-speaking world it's likely there are tiny variations). I don't think that the medium matters in French law, what matters is whether it's baseless (insult) or not (libel/slander). Saying "X is a racist" is an insult, saying "X said something racist" is libel (or maybe slander, whatever). But even that distinction is somewhat meaningless for our discussion since both are treated almost identically.

For the topic of our discussion, I think that all that matters is that we agree they are morally bad things to say/write.

Under US law, there's no way the guy who committed libel would ever be held liable for it. It's essentially impossible to get a judgement for lying about a politician here. If we were in the Garage, you'd be looking at a list of news organizations that would be out of business tomorrow if that changed.

Absolutely. That is one fundamental distinction and I have suspected for a while that you would end up mentioning that, because I think that's really why you think French laws are outrageous -- not because they act differently to what you're used to, but because at their core they punish something which isn't punished in the US.

But at that point we're shifting very quickly towards morals, which I said isn't my forte. Yes, the US believes in a freedom of speech with much less restrictions than Europe (generally speaking). I do believe both sides have advantages and drawbacks, but ultimately even listing and discussing them would be pointless, because those beliefs are also largely the product of different histories and it's not a matter of convincing people otherwise -- they underpin so much of our respective societies/law systems that even a military invasion and enforcement of a different law system wouldn't change that.

I'll leave it at that, but if you think that everything else is just a consequence of that fundamental difference (and largely, I think it is), there is little left to discuss.

But morally, yes, this was set up as a clear-cut case of libel.

Quite obviously, yes.

Now for the rest you need to accept that the guy who wrote it can be sued and condemned for it. If you disagree with that point, then nothing else later will make sense.

The forum is likely pretty happy with that since they can keep operating without having to have a lawyer check every post before publishing it.

I think that, like your interpretation of the second example, where the headline quotes a guy slandering someone, it really depends on how much the speech is presented as "The Community on the Website's speech" versus "The speech of the individual person that happens to be on the website."

I agree with you. But as you are saying yourself, "it depends" -- and in law, "it depends" means that a judge has to rule on it. And since different websites might present things in slightly different ways, each and every case has to be judged on its own merits.

Which was the situation before that law (i.e. until 2004 IIRC). You saw a libellous post on a forum, you would sue the forum (and the author), and a judge would rule whether the forum was actually responsible or not. And they would, indeed, consider everything around the offending post to know if it was "the Community", if the forum had active administrators etc. Forums might not get condemned in the end, but that was untenable -- both for forums operators who had to handle all those complaints, and for the justice that had to rule on every case.

So the law was intended (and I very much remember the political debates about it at the time saying so!) to make life easier for everyone by "plugging the legal gap" (that's the usual French expression, which makes most lawyers cringe because there is no such thing on the basis that is something isn't forbidden then it's allowed and that the lack of a specific law for activity X doesn't mean other more generic laws don't apply to it).

Now it's entirely possible that, had this law not existed, we would have had something like the kiosk situation above. Jurisprudence would have been built and maybe the likes of Google would have been protected in the same way a kiosk is. But we don't know that, and also because technology and websites evolves, the jurisprudence for Google in 2005 might not necessarily apply in 2020 (remember how Yahoo! used to be a curated list of sites? that's very different from the fully-automatic search Google does). So the law is a way to prevent all future headaches by creating this special category of "sites that show content of which they are not the authors nor have any control over."

Trump ostensibly will still have COVID next week, so the debate that was previously scheduled is going to be rescheduled. But say it wasn't and they did it as an AMA on Reddit instead. And let's further assume that Biden, from the u/vpAMTRAKjoeBIDEN account, libeled somebody. Would Reddit be morally culpable for that? Or would it just be Joe Biden?

Before that law, it would have been for a judge to rule. Was Reddit aware of that libel and vetted it before publication? Did they do anything to make it more visible than other things? If they could show a judge that they didn't have anything to do with that libel, that they were just a blind platform, then no, I don't think the judge would rule them as culpable for it. But the point is, it would have to go to a judge, which means a necessarily somewhat lengthy process.

The law says instead that they can get some sort of automatic immunity, in exchange for various restrictions that ensure they really act as blind platforms (so that e.g. a newspaper can't claim this immunity while still acting as a newspaper!). Some of those restrictions have to do with removing content when people (with the right authority) tells them to. It's not seen as a restriction on their free speech, since they have themselves admitted they are not the authors of that speech. A newspaper editor who decides to pull out a print from all kiosks isn't restricting the kiosks' free speech.

This is more the question, and I think you and I have clarified what I was getting at in the couple of days since you typed this. So I'm going to ask again. What does it mean to be "a provider of services" rather than "a publisher" in terms of the content that you're distributing? Why should these two categories be treated differently?

Essentially, a publisher is deemed to have some control (typically journalistic editorial control) over what they show, whereas a provider of service just blindly shows what users send them. I think that's the core difference.

Morally, since they can exert some choice, a publisher is held responsible (in part) for what they show, because they could have chosen to not show it. A provider of content isn't responsible, because they couldn't make any choice about it.

In terms of free speech, a publisher is exercising its free speech rights in showing whatever they want to say. A provider of content isn't showing their own speech but the speech of others, so restrictions on what they show isn't a restriction on their own free speech (it is very much a restriction on whoever wrote the stuff free speech, and the provider of content has its right to free speech for e.g. its own blog or other parts of the site, of course).

[remi]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary that have printing press, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression? That sounds really crazy.

It seems to me that the core disagreement here is that @GuyWhoKilledBear defends a position where companies do not have any existence except as emanations of actual human beings. So a company hasn't got any own property, its property is actually transferred down to all humans who own the company, and similarly a company's free speech is nothing else than the owners' free speech.

That vision sounds very much at odds with the legal fiction of what a company is, but arguably that legal fiction is just, well, a fiction to make companies actually usable (you can't possibly asks every owner for every decision).

Still, while his argument might have worked a few centuries ago when companies were a new thing, I think it has become much more than a fiction now. I think everyone now considers a company as an entity, different from its owners (who themselves may be other companies!), with its own rights and rules. Some of those rights and rules are the same as for the other type of entities (humans!), but not necessarily all.

[dkf]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

That vision sounds very much at odds with the legal fiction of what a company is, but arguably that legal fiction is just, well, a fiction to make companies actually usable (you can't possibly asks every owner for every decision).

There are company types that work that way, single proprietorships and (standard) partnerships, but they are less common now as having some separation between the company itself and the owners is useful. With that separation — very much a human creation — you get the ability for the company itself to own things and some limitation of liability. But don't tell me that companies have natural rights; they cannot possibly do, as they are not natural things. Whatever rights companies have, they have only because humans say that companies have them, and that's part of the basic concept that companies only exist at all because humans say they do.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary that have printing press, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression? That sounds really crazy.

It seems to me that the core disagreement here is that @GuyWhoKilledBear defends a position where companies do not have any existence except as emanations of actual human beings. So a company hasn't got any own property, its property is actually transferred down to all humans who own the company, and similarly a company's free speech is nothing else than the owners' free speech.

Yes, exactly, that is my take too.

That vision sounds very much at odds with the legal fiction of what a company is, but arguably that legal fiction is just, well, a fiction to make companies actually usable (you can't possibly asks every owner for every decision).

Still, while his argument might have worked a few centuries ago when companies were a new thing, I think it has become much more than a fiction now.
I think everyone now considers a company as an entity, different from its owners (who themselves may be other companies!), with its own rights and rules. Some of those rights and rules are the same as for the other type of entities (humans!), but not necessarily all.

Yes, again, that is th point. Treating companies (or other legal persons) just as a bunch of specific persons was very impractical and it would completely break with the modern ownership structures where owners are mostly companies with their own owners, creating huge complex graphs that are not even known at all.

I mean - it's definitely possible for a company to be its own owner. It's not always legal (many jurisdictions explicitly disallow that), but that's what chain of shell companies going through Seychelles and Cayman Islands is for.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@dkf said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

That vision sounds very much at odds with the legal fiction of what a company is, but arguably that legal fiction is just, well, a fiction to make companies actually usable (you can't possibly asks every owner for every decision).

There are company types that work that way, single proprietorships and (standard) partnerships, but they are less common now as having some separation between the company itself and the owners is useful. With that separation — very much a human creation — you get the ability for the company itself to own things and some limitation of liability.

One important note: company is always created by an official, legal act (involving some government or judicial office) and the possible forms are strictly defined by a law. "Five buddies that met in a bar" does not make a company (in legal sense).

So yes, there are companies that are actually just real, natural persons. I am not sure, though, if there are any jurisdictions that consider such companies a "legal person"... That is actually an interesting question. I, personally, am officially registered as a "company" in my home country, but that company is not a "legal person", it's just me with "craftsman" status ("Self-Profit-Making Person" is the legal term, loosely translated).

But don't tell me that companies have natural rights; they cannot possibly do, as they are not natural things. Whatever rights companies have, they have only because humans say that companies have them, and that's part of the basic concept that companies only exist at all because humans say they do.

That definitely looks like a prevailing notion, but as I've already posted here, there are some court decisions that effectively granted human rights to company. Also, it is definitely possible for legal person to appeal to ECHR.

[dkf]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

That definitely looks like a prevailing notion, but as I've already posted here, there are some court decisions that effectively granted human rights to company. Also, it is definitely possible for legal person to appeal to ECHR.

None of that has anything to do with whether those rights are natural.

Note that there's a right that is considered a natural right for humans that does not apply at all to companies: the right to not be enslaved. All companies have owners…

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I still find your argument... lacking, at best

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property.

This isn't true, though.

Really? So I do own (part of) company property? So, I have corresponding natural rights?

If you own "a share" in a company, you do own a very little bit of the company, which is why they would have to give you some of the proceeds if they were to liquidate. To use your example from before, you can't wave a single share around at the security checkpoint to get you through the gate at Microsoft.

Wait, so I am not allowed to walk around my property? This sounds like limit on my natural right!

But Steve Ballmer, who owns a bunch of shares, probably can.

Ballmer is former executive and member of the Board, but OK. Let's say Nadella issues strict instructions to not let him anywhere on company property and to call police if he still enters. If you are right and he directly own substantial portion of the property, and the Property Right is natural and unalienable, then he can defend himself in court against trespassing changes with argument that that State is violating his rights!
Well, everyone can use any argument in defense, but I still don't think this would work.

The natural right to property is to acquire, own, use, and alienate your property. How does property become your property? When you enter into a contract with the previous owners where they sell you the property rights.

Your single share in Microsoft doesn't convey the property right to wander around the Microsoft campus.

But your natural law rights to own property generally and your contract law rights to exploit a specific piece of property are different.

Let me give you another example. Remi and I are arguing about the film Cuties. As I understand it, the French firm that made the film sold the French distribution rights to a French company and the US distribution rights to Netflix.

Part of the natural law right to alienate your property is the right to sell some parts of it and not others, which is why the French firm was able to split up the distribution rights and sell them to two different buyers.

Ultimately, what you personally are allowed to do with company property is decided in the contract you signed with the other owners when you bought the share in the company.

Which does not conflict with my claim and my arguments at all. Quite the contrary.

So, my claim stays. Property belongs to the company and any natural person does not get any rights outside the ones strictly specified by some contract (and allowed by law to be valid in contract).

I don't see the connection between "the owners of a piece of property have the ability to sell limited parts of it, but not the whole thing" and "companies have the ability to own property independent of their owners."

Obviously, once you have acquired a specific piece of property, you have Property Rights in the sense that you're thinking of, which are the positive rights to exploit your property. (If you own a field, you have the right to plant apple trees in it. If you own a racetrack, you have the right to let some cars drive on it but not others. Etc.)

That sound like the "using" part of the natural right. Also, it's quite important that the "negative right" still remains and nobody limits my freedom to use the property.
My point is that without owning a piece of property, there is no "using" or "alienating" or even "owning". And even the "acquiring" is only valid with connection to some specific piece of property, even if it contains "all" pieces of property. There is no property right for "ideal property" in platonic sense, AFAIK

If I understand what you mean by "Platonic" correctly (an analogy to Plato's "ideal forms" and the like) then I disagree. All of the natural law rights are unbound from specific instances. Or do you think that there's some list somewhere of all the things Freedom of Speech gives you the ability to say?

The natural law "right to property" is different than the "property rights" conveyed in a sales contract.

The Rights to Freedom of Expression are negative rights that others can't stop you from expressing yourself in certain ways.
They don't protect tangible instances of expression after they happen.

What? That would it completely useless. Actually, that did make this completely useless, it was everyday practice in 19th century (and even 20th century, and sometimes even in 21st century) to suppress press by destroying/confiscating/buying out whole amount of newspaper issue.

They protect the person's ability to perform the expression in the first place.

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Speech is weird because by definition it doesn't have a tangible form. But we're talking about newspapers, so let's stick to newspapers.

Once a newspaper is printed, the owners of the company own that newspaper until it is sold to someone else. Their natural law right to property is what protects them from someone coming in and destroying the newspapers before they're distributed. The right to Freedom of the Press doesn't protect actual, physical printing presses from being destroyed by a mob or something. But since every printing press is owned by somebody with a natural law right to property, it doesn't really matter.

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not.

If you do that with all copies, I might claim that. If you do that as a government agent, I have actually a very good case.

Leave out the government part, because that's different. As a private citizen, if I were to buy all the copies and draw all the Hitler moustaches, I'm not impacting your rights.

Of course, if you think it's important for people to actually read your newspaper, there's no reason why you can't limit the number of copies you sell to me.

Anyway, that is completely irrelevant. The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary in Elbonia that have printing press in, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression?
That sounds really crazy. When the Elbonia government decides to shut that printing press company down, I might incur some property damages (my worth went down, duh) - but my personal expression is just as free as it always was.

Well, there is activist investing, where people only buy shares in companies that agree with them morally. You can find mutual funds that are "large cap except no oil companies" or "companies that don't sell drugs, alcohol, or pornography" if you look hard enough.

If your deal with the Elbonian newspaper has you as a completely hands off investor, would you feel morally culpable if the newspaper was publishing something that met your criteria for "hate speech"?

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I still find your argument... lacking, at best

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property.

This isn't true, though.

Really? So I do own (part of) company property? So, I have corresponding natural rights?

If you own "a share" in a company, you do own a very little bit of the company, which is why they would have to give you some of the proceeds if they were to liquidate. To use your example from before, you can't wave a single share around at the security checkpoint to get you through the gate at Microsoft.

Wait, so I am not allowed to walk around my property? This sounds like limit on my natural right!

But Steve Ballmer, who owns a bunch of shares, probably can.

Ballmer is former executive and member of the Board, but OK. Let's say Nadella issues strict instructions to not let him anywhere on company property and to call police if he still enters. If you are right and he directly own substantial portion of the property, and the Property Right is natural and unalienable, then he can defend himself in court against trespassing changes with argument that that State is violating his rights!
Well, everyone can use any argument in defense, but I still don't think this would work.

The natural right to property is to acquire, own, use, and alienate your property. How does property become your property? When you enter into a contract with the previous owners where they sell you the property rights.
Which did happen, obviously.
Your single share in Microsoft doesn't convey the property right to wander around the Microsoft campus.

Why?

• Microsoft campus is property of Microsoft's owners. You have made your position pretty clear.
• I am one of the owners of the Microsoft. Are you challenging that?
• Therefore, the campus is our property and I am one of the owners. Basic logic conclusion, I hope.
• The property is shared, but that does not matter. You have made your position pretty clear, I think.
• My right to use my property is universal and inalienable. You have made yourself clear.
• our property means for all of us owners, it's my property. This might be somewhat contentious...
• Therefore, I have natural right to use the property.

Maybe you claim that our property is not my property, so:

• I cannot use this right, because it's not my property.
• My right to use our property is not natural, universal and inalienable.
• But Steve Ballmer is allowed to us our property, because it's his property and therefore it's the natural right.
• How? Is there a contract that says that some part of the property is personal property of Steve Ballmer, while some other part of the property is for sale to random schmucks with no natural rights?

Or maybe you actually challenge the claim that any owner of Microsoft shares is owner? Who exactly are "the Owners", then?

But your natural law rights to own property generally and your contract law rights to exploit a specific piece of property are different.

So, some part of the property can be declared "not a subject of natural rights"?
Is that possible with Speech, too?

Let me give you another example. Remi and I are arguing about the film Cuties. As I understand it, the French firm that made the film sold the French distribution rights to a French company and the US distribution rights to Netflix.
Part of the natural law right to alienate your property is the right to sell some parts of it and not others, which is why the French firm was able to split up the distribution rights and sell them to two different buyers.

Interesting. Distributors are actually owners of the films? I thought that they just own the rights to distribute.

So, my claim stays. Property belongs to the company and any natural person does not get any rights outside the ones strictly specified by some contract (and allowed by law to be valid in contract).
I don't see the connection between "the owners of a piece of property have the ability to sell limited parts of it, but not the whole thing" and "companies have the ability to own property independent of their owners."
Of course. Why would that be? I am not saying anything even remotely like that.

Obviously, once you have acquired a specific piece of property, you have Property Rights in the sense that you're thinking of, which are the positive rights to exploit your property. (If you own a field, you have the right to plant apple trees in it. If you own a racetrack, you have the right to let some cars drive on it but not others. Etc.)

That sound like the "using" part of the natural right. Also, it's quite important that the "negative right" still remains and nobody limits my freedom to use the property.
My point is that without owning a piece of property, there is no "using" or "alienating" or even "owning". And even the "acquiring" is only valid with connection to some specific piece of property, even if it contains "all" pieces of property. There is no property right for "ideal property" in platonic sense, AFAIK

If I understand what you mean by "Platonic" correctly (an analogy to Plato's "ideal forms" and the like) then I disagree. All of the natural law rights are unbound from specific instances.

I definitely disagree here.

Or do you think that there's some list somewhere of all the things Freedom of Speech gives you the ability to say?

There is no need for positive list. Generalized set definition is enough (and that includes "Everything that is Speech" set).

The natural law "right to property" is different than the "property rights" conveyed in a sales contract.

So owning "property rights" is different to owning "property"? Ok, that might be, depends on exact legal definition of "property rights". How is that actually relevant here?

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Speech is weird because by definition it doesn't have a tangible form.

What kind of definition is that? Speech and Expression is something that is definitely instantiated (expressed) in tangible form. Without this specific instance, there is no point of the right at all.

But we're talking about newspapers, so let's stick to newspapers.

Once a newspaper is printed, the owners of the company own that newspaper until it is sold to someone else. Their natural law right to property is what protects them from someone coming in and destroying the newspapers before they're distributed. The right to Freedom of the Press doesn't protect actual, physical printing presses from being destroyed by a mob or something.

Actually, it does. Again, this is actually quite a common way to suppress Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech.

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not.

If you do that with all copies, I might claim that. If you do that as a government agent, I have actually a very good case.

Leave out the government part, because that's different.

Why?

• Why is that different?
• Why should we leave that, when it's actually on-topic?
  • If you consider that too garage-worthy, just imagine that it's 1890 and the government is Cisleithania. Nobody likes Cisleithania, everybody agrees that Cisleithania sucked!

As a private citizen, if I were to buy all the copies and draw all the Hitler moustaches, I'm not impacting your rights.

If you distribute them further, you are. Although different ones, probably...

Anyway, that is completely irrelevant. The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary in Elbonia that have printing press in, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression?
That sounds really crazy. When the Elbonia government decides to shut that printing press company down, I might incur some property damages (my worth went down, duh) - but my personal expression is just as free as it always was.

Well, there is activist investing, where people only buy shares in companies that agree with them morally. You can find mutual funds that are "large cap except no oil companies" or "companies that don't sell drugs, alcohol, or pornography" if you look hard enough.

That is something completely different. I don't mind putting money to (and getting money from) print company. I just don't expect that it would enlarge or diminish my personal Freedom of Speech.

If your deal with the Elbonian newspaper has you as a completely hands off investor, would you feel morally culpable if the newspaper was publishing something that met your criteria for "hate speech"?

garage-bait aside...
You are the one telling me that I should, because its my speech! And you still haven't sufficiently explained me how!

[boomzilla]

This topic is the walliest of text topic ever. I'm kind of impressed, actually. Not reading much of it, but still.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@boomzilla said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

This topic is the walliest of text topic ever. I'm kind of impressed, actually. Not reading much of it, but still.

?

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

We're not exerting our influence on American companies to follow the American conception of rights in foreign markets. We're not coming to liberate you.

In any case, I'm not aware of any movement by Americans to ban Cuties in Europe. All the ire seems to be directed at Netflix, who owns US distribution rights, but didn't actually make the movie.

It seems so, but if Netflix decides to remove it from their US network, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they also removed it from Europe. Which would be kind of a clear example of what you claim the US isn't doing (you'll argue that it's not done, and I said so from the start, but the fact that even in France we do see a pressure to remove the film, that did not exist before the US thing started, just by itself shows that this pressure exists).

You'll probably also say that "you" (the US) are not exerting a pressure, it's the company deciding to do things, but if you read back a bit, this is exactly what you feared might happen (i.e. companies acting not before they are forced to, but because they decide to).

For one thing, does Netflix even own the French distribution rights? I thought they only had the US rights.

For another thing, if French people are upset with the French distributor and think the film should be pulled in France, that's the same thing that's going on in America. It's internal pressure of what the culture actually allows. It's not being forced from the outside.

If individual Americans were hassling the French distributor, that would be a little different. (And if the US government did it, that would be a lot different.)

But this is just a hypothetical, right? The French distributor is reacting to French social pressures and not American ones, right?

I remember another case of a small company (or maybe non-profit? doesn't matter) that couldn't do business with Iran because no bank accepted to handle the transaction because they were all afraid they would break US sanctions. Yet the company was operating under EU rules (that allowed those transactions with Iran), the banks were all European ones (and would have had special EU guarantees to back that transaction, it was at the time when the US just reneged on the Iran agreement so it was very politically contentious) and the transaction would have at no point crossed into the US. But the banks still didn't want to do it, because the American influence was strong enough.

1. I'd argue that you guys had reneged on the Iran deal.
2. Sanctions against clear bad guys (in this case, the terrorist-ocracy that rules Iran) are different than a purely economic action.

Again, I'm not discussing the reasons for the situation I shown. That's not the point. The point is that there was (is?) a set of rules that applies to US companies, and a different set that applies to EU companies, and that some EU companies have chosen to follow the US rules despite not being forced to (and despite even being encouraged not to by the EU!). This is a very clear example of exerting your influence beyond the US, which you claimed you didn't do.

1. I never claimed that the US doesn't try to exert influence beyond our boundaries. I even half-jokingly said that I'm OK with us exerting our influence on Europe because our influence is better than European instinct. (Remember "I understand why Europeans feel the opposite way.")

In friend-to-friend transactions, we shouldn't be soft powering you into stuff either.

2. Your example with Iran isn't an example of that. Make no mistake, those sanctions are an act of war that the US is committing against a real enemy. They're an example of medium power rather than soft power. The rules are different for "our friends" and "people who are helping our enemies." I'm fine with using medium power in the latter case.

Believe me, I'm aware of US cultural hegemony. I'm actually a big fan. I see a big difference between French people changing how their culture works because they see from our culture how great America and the US using soft power to force France to change its internal laws.

Well now you're shifting things again. The original issue you raised was the worry that companies would chose to follow EU (or France) laws even outside of them. There is nothing here about forcing the US to change its internal laws! And arguably, if the companies decide to do so of their own will, someone who likes these rules could say the companies are just "changing how their culture works because they see from our culture how great" the EU is.

Companies don't have their own will.

If the US companies changed its US policies because they thought it would help them gain American customers (perhaps because a bunch of Europeans convinced a bunch of Americans that the European way was better) that would be one thing.

But if the US company changed their US policies because of soft power from the EU, that would be different.

This is internal versus external pressure.

But that whole line of discussion is not really the main topic to me either.

Let's move back to newspapers and Google.

The degree of harm [from libel] depends on a lot of things (how many people can access it and so on, and this would be up to a judge to rule in each specific case), but the core principle is that by publishing the libellous material, you are participating in the harm it causes. I think it's fairly obvious in a case of a newspaper printing a story "MP said [libel]" -- if the newspaper can say that without bearing any responsibility for it then can they say "Joe Random said [libel]", or "unnamed person said [libel]" or "we've heard that [libel]" and ultimately they could just say "[libel]" provided they just wrap it in a weasel word and that's obviously not good.

There is one big exception though (before you raise it yourself...) which is when the publisher isn't aware of the content. This covers, for example, a news kiosk. They sell a newspaper, but are not aware, nor have any say, in what those newspapers publish, so they are not responsible for the harm that a libel in the newspaper may cause.

Now that's an interesting exception because it's actually close to what Google does! However in this example, if a judge rules that a newspaper should be removed from sale because it contains a libel, then all kiosks must obey this (as soon as they're aware of it etc.). So, does that restricts the kiosk freedom of speech? And is it morally wrong? You tell me, but I don't think it is wrong, quite the opposite -- if not, then an injunction to stop selling a libellous newspaper would be useless.

(arguably the injunction is partly useless anyway since a number of copies have likely already been sold, but it depends on circumstances. A monthly periodic or a book might be stopped just at the start of its print, making the injunction somewhat useful -- even a story printed on a website can be removed before it had too many views.)

Yeah, in the age of the internet for the common man and randos with blogs and whatnot, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. I don't think I've ever heard of an American publication being ordered to be taken off newsstands for being libelous. Normally it's a monetary judgement after the fact. Sometimes the newspaper has to print a retraction.

But in any case, the important part isn't that Google is blindly printing someone else's words. It's that Google is attributing the words to a real source that people can judge their trustworthiness.

If you Google "CNN $ANY_TOPIC" you'll get a Google webpage with a bunch of CNN stories about the topic. And then you can print out that list and show it to me, and I'll respond with, "Yeah, but CNN is probably lying."

Google's speech is

Here's a bunch of webpages that use the words "CNN" and $ANY_TOPIC.

Regardless of whether CNN is lying or not, Google isn't lying. And if the content isn't a lie, it can't be libel.

[about "I know for a fact that $CANDIDATE_FOR_PRIME_MINISTER_FROM_THE_OTHER_PARTY didn't pay any taxes in the past 10 years."]

Did you check if it was slander? Because under US law, a defamatory statement that's printed is called "libel" and a defamatory statement that's spoken is "slander," which is why I made it a printed campaign ad.

I... did... or rather... OK, I had started some lengthy explanation here, but the gist is that legal words have precise legal meanings, and that I'm not sure how those map between the US and France (and actually even in the English-speaking world it's likely there are tiny variations). I don't think that the medium matters in French law, what matters is whether it's baseless (insult) or not (libel/slander). Saying "X is a racist" is an insult, saying "X said something racist" is libel (or maybe slander, whatever). But even that distinction is somewhat meaningless for our discussion since both are treated almost identically.

That was idle curiosity. Libel and slander are two different torts in the US, but they're enforced the same way.

For the topic of our discussion, I think that all that matters is that we agree they are morally bad things to say/write.

Under US law, there's no way the guy who committed libel would ever be held liable for it. It's essentially impossible to get a judgement for lying about a politician here. If we were in the Garage, you'd be looking at a list of news organizations that would be out of business tomorrow if that changed.

Absolutely. That is one fundamental distinction and I have suspected for a while that you would end up mentioning that, because I think that's really why you think French laws are outrageous -- not because they act differently to what you're used to, but because at their core they punish something which isn't punished in the US.

This might surprise you, but I think the US law is wrong here. US jurisprudence (note: there's no textual basis in the law for this) treats "private figures" and "public figures" differently in terms of their ability to be libeled. I'm a big "equality before the law" guy and the same protections against libel should apply to everyone.

(Also, US jurisprudence encourages shitty outcomes like newspapers that libel people arguing that the people they libeled are public figures "because they were written about in the newspaper.")

But morally, yes, this was set up as a clear-cut case of libel.

Quite obviously, yes.

Now for the rest you need to accept that the guy who wrote it can be sued and condemned for it. If you disagree with that point, then nothing else later will make sense.

Let's say for the sake of argument that's true. My original example asked if he's "morally culpable" for libel, i.e. that he'd go to Hell for bearing false witness against his neighbor. But fine, let's assume some same set of civil law consequences as well.

The forum is likely pretty happy with that since they can keep operating without having to have a lawyer check every post before publishing it.

I think that, like your interpretation of the second example, where the headline quotes a guy slandering someone, it really depends on how much the speech is presented as "The Community on the Website's speech" versus "The speech of the individual person that happens to be on the website."

I agree with you. But as you are saying yourself, "it depends" -- and in law, "it depends" means that a judge has to rule on it. And since different websites might present things in slightly different ways, each and every case has to be judged on its own merits.

Which was the situation before that law (i.e. until 2004 IIRC). You saw a libellous post on a forum, you would sue the forum (and the author), and a judge would rule whether the forum was actually responsible or not. And they would, indeed, consider everything around the offending post to know if it was "the Community", if the forum had active administrators etc. Forums might not get condemned in the end, but that was untenable -- both for forums operators who had to handle all those complaints, and for the justice that had to rule on every case.

So the law was intended (and I very much remember the political debates about it at the time saying so!) to make life easier for everyone by "plugging the legal gap" (that's the usual French expression, which makes most lawyers cringe because there is no such thing on the basis that is something isn't forbidden then it's allowed and that the lack of a specific law for activity X doesn't mean other more generic laws don't apply to it).

Now it's entirely possible that, had this law not existed, we would have had something like the kiosk situation above. Jurisprudence would have been built and maybe the likes of Google would have been protected in the same way a kiosk is. But we don't know that, and also because technology and websites evolves, the jurisprudence for Google in 2005 might not necessarily apply in 2020 (remember how Yahoo! used to be a curated list of sites? that's very different from the fully-automatic search Google does). So the law is a way to prevent all future headaches by creating this special category of "sites that show content of which they are not the authors nor have any control over."

I see a big difference between the actions of a forum, which lets Internet randos asset things, and the actions of Google's search engine. Google DOES control the output of their search engine. They pagerank, and blacklist, and they do all the other things they do.

Google isn't asserting that any individual page you find in their search engine is correct. But they are asserting that the page exists. Google is asserting less than Curated Yahoo was. But it's still asserting something, and that something is usually true.

This is more the question, and I think you and I have clarified what I was getting at in the couple of days since you typed this. So I'm going to ask again. What does it mean to be "a provider of services" rather than "a publisher" in terms of the content that you're distributing? Why should these two categories be treated differently?

Essentially, a publisher is deemed to have some control (typically journalistic editorial control) over what they show, whereas a provider of service just blindly shows what users send them. I think that's the core difference.

I'd argue that "journalists editorial control" isn't the typical case. Writing a spy novel is covered by Freedom of the Press, right? There's editing and there's the moral obligation not to libel people and all the rest. But it's not "journalistic editorial control."

Morally, since they can exert some choice, a publisher is held responsible (in part) for what they show, because they could have chosen to not show it. A provider of content isn't responsible, because they couldn't make any choice about it.

In terms of free speech, a publisher is exercising its free speech rights in showing whatever they want to say. A provider of content isn't showing their own speech but the speech of others, so restrictions on what they show isn't a restriction on their own free speech (it is very much a restriction on whoever wrote the stuff free speech, and the provider of content has its right to free speech for e.g. its own blog or other parts of the site, of course).

Believe it or not, I can kinda buy that difference when we're talking about a web forum versus a normal website.

I think I've explained why I think Google's search product is more similar to a newspaper than to Reddit or this forum or whatever.

Why do you feel the opposite?

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

I still find your argument... lacking, at best

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

When I own a share in a company, I don't own the company property.

This isn't true, though.

Really? So I do own (part of) company property? So, I have corresponding natural rights?

If you own "a share" in a company, you do own a very little bit of the company, which is why they would have to give you some of the proceeds if they were to liquidate. To use your example from before, you can't wave a single share around at the security checkpoint to get you through the gate at Microsoft.

Wait, so I am not allowed to walk around my property? This sounds like limit on my natural right!

But Steve Ballmer, who owns a bunch of shares, probably can.

Ballmer is former executive and member of the Board, but OK. Let's say Nadella issues strict instructions to not let him anywhere on company property and to call police if he still enters. If you are right and he directly own substantial portion of the property, and the Property Right is natural and unalienable, then he can defend himself in court against trespassing changes with argument that that State is violating his rights!
Well, everyone can use any argument in defense, but I still don't think this would work.

The natural right to property is to acquire, own, use, and alienate your property. How does property become your property? When you enter into a contract with the previous owners where they sell you the property rights.
Which did happen, obviously.
Your single share in Microsoft doesn't convey the property right to wander around the Microsoft campus.

Why?

• Microsoft campus is property of Microsoft's owners. You have made your position pretty clear.
• I am one of the owners of the Microsoft. Are you challenging that?
• Therefore, the campus is our property and I am one of the owners. Basic logic conclusion, I hope.
• The property is shared, but that does not matter. You have made your position pretty clear, I think.
• My right to use my property is universal and inalienable. You have made yourself clear.
• our property means for all of us owners, it's my property. This might be somewhat contentious...
• Therefore, I have natural right to use the property.

Maybe you claim that our property is not my property, so:

• I cannot use this right, because it's not my property.
• My right to use our property is not natural, universal and inalienable.
• But Steve Ballmer is allowed to us our property, because it's his property and therefore it's the natural right.
• How? Is there a contract that says that some part of the property is personal property of Steve Ballmer, while some other part of the property is for sale to random schmucks with no natural rights?

Or maybe you actually challenge the claim that any owner of Microsoft shares is owner? Who exactly are "the Owners", then?

The thing you bought that makes you an owner of Microsoft is a right to a portion of the proceeds when they liquidate the company. In theory, when they sell ever building, every server, and every one and zero of IP, you're entitled to a cut. Since money is fungible, you do own a tiny share of every server, building, etc. But from a share, you don't get enough control to do anything useful except maybe vote for the Board of Directors that hires the CEO.

But your natural law rights to own property generally and your contract law rights to exploit a specific piece of property are different.

So, some part of the property can be declared "not a subject of natural rights"?
Is that possible with Speech, too?

Let me give you another example. Remi and I are arguing about the film Cuties. As I understand it, the French firm that made the film sold the French distribution rights to a French company and the US distribution rights to Netflix.
Part of the natural law right to alienate your property is the right to sell some parts of it and not others, which is why the French firm was able to split up the distribution rights and sell them to two different buyers.

Interesting. Distributors are actually owners of the films? I thought that they just own the rights to distribute.

They did. The fact that the distributor is allowed to sell some of their rights, but not others, is a fundamental difference between how natural law rights work and how contractual rights work.

Obviously, once you have acquired a specific piece of property, you have Property Rights in the sense that you're thinking of, which are the positive rights to exploit your property. (If you own a field, you have the right to plant apple trees in it. If you own a racetrack, you have the right to let some cars drive on it but not others. Etc.)

That sound like the "using" part of the natural right. Also, it's quite important that the "negative right" still remains and nobody limits my freedom to use the property.
My point is that without owning a piece of property, there is no "using" or "alienating" or even "owning". And even the "acquiring" is only valid with connection to some specific piece of property, even if it contains "all" pieces of property. There is no property right for "ideal property" in platonic sense, AFAIK

If I understand what you mean by "Platonic" correctly (an analogy to Plato's "ideal forms" and the like) then I disagree. All of the natural law rights are unbound from specific instances.

I definitely disagree here.

Or do you think that there's some list somewhere of all the things Freedom of Speech gives you the ability to say?

There is no need for positive list. Generalized set definition is enough (and that includes "Everything that is Speech" set).

Yeah, exactly. But you can make a definitive list of property you own, right? That's why it's different.

The natural law "right to property" is different than the "property rights" conveyed in a sales contract.

So owning "property rights" is different to owning "property"? Ok, that might be, depends on exact legal definition of "property rights". How is that actually relevant here?

No, "the right to own property" is different than actually owning property. Just like the right to vote. You don't HAVE TO vote, and probably shouldn't if both candidates such. You still have the right to vote even if you choose not to vote in an election.

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Speech is weird because by definition it doesn't have a tangible form.

What kind of definition is that? Speech and Expression is something that is definitely instantiated (expressed) in tangible form. Without this specific instance, there is no point of the right at all.

The other forms of Expression have tangible forms. You can't literally reach out and touch speech in the way you can literally touch a newspaper or a sculpture or a reel of film or any of the other ways someone can record their expression.

But we're talking about newspapers, so let's stick to newspapers.

Once a newspaper is printed, the owners of the company own that newspaper until it is sold to someone else. Their natural law right to property is what protects them from someone coming in and destroying the newspapers before they're distributed. The right to Freedom of the Press doesn't protect actual, physical printing presses from being destroyed by a mob or something.

Actually, it does. Again, this is actually quite a common way to suppress Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech.

In my country we protect both Freedom of the Press and property rights. Say I own a printing press and someone who disagrees with me breaks into my plant in the middle of the night and destroys it.

What crime have they committed?

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not.

If you do that with all copies, I might claim that. If you do that as a government agent, I have actually a very good case.

Leave out the government part, because that's different.

Why?

• Why is that different?
• Why should we leave that, when it's actually on-topic?
  • If you consider that too garage-worthy, just imagine that it's 1890 and the government is Cisleithania. Nobody likes Cisleithania, everybody agrees that Cisleithania sucked!

I don't know what Cisleithania is.

The reason I want to exclude the government is that the guy in my example is drawing Hitler moustaches on the photos for shits and giggles. I can imagine one person doing that.

If the government were to tell me they bought all the newspapers so that they could draw moustaches, I wouldn't believe them. That probably would be a conspiracy to interfere with your newspaper in some way.

Anyway, that is completely irrelevant. The real case is that I have a share in a fund that has a share in bank that have a share in company with subsidiary in Elbonia that have printing press in, thus making me one of the owners. I don't even know what that printing machine prints, I don't even know it exists, yet somehow all the printed books and newspapers and flyers are my personal Expression?
That sounds really crazy. When the Elbonia government decides to shut that printing press company down, I might incur some property damages (my worth went down, duh) - but my personal expression is just as free as it always was.

Well, there is activist investing, where people only buy shares in companies that agree with them morally. You can find mutual funds that are "large cap except no oil companies" or "companies that don't sell drugs, alcohol, or pornography" if you look hard enough.

That is something completely different. I don't mind putting money to (and getting money from) print company. I just don't expect that it would enlarge or diminish my personal Freedom of Speech.

If your deal with the Elbonian newspaper has you as a completely hands off investor, would you feel morally culpable if the newspaper was publishing something that met your criteria for "hate speech"?

garage-bait aside...
You are the one telling me that I should, because its my speech! And you still haven't sufficiently explained me how!

Because you're funding the Elbonian newspaper? And if you disagree with what you're doing, you should stop?

[Kamil Podlesak]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Or maybe you actually challenge the claim that any owner of Microsoft shares is owner? Who exactly are "the Owners", then?

The thing you bought that makes you an owner of Microsoft is a right to a portion of the proceeds when they liquidate the company. In theory, when they sell ever building, every server, and every one and zero of IP, you're entitled to a cut.

You know, that would make sense, and I have even realized this possibility. Maybe there are different types of shares, for owners and for investors. For all I know, it might be a real thing in USA.
Problem is that you directly contradict that in the very next sentence!

Since money is fungible, you do own a tiny share of every server, building, etc.

So, I do own some property. If only a tiny share.

But from a share, you don't get enough control to do anything useful except maybe vote for the Board of Directors that hires the CEO.

So, the natural right to use owned property is significantly and duly limited by... basically anyone, unless I invest more to it. Sounds more like a privilege to me.

Or, maybe, the contractual right, as you said lower... but before, you've explicitly said this is natural law

Interesting. Distributors are actually owners of the films? I thought that they just own the rights to distribute.

They did. The fact that the distributor is allowed to sell some of their rights, but not others, is a fundamental difference between how natural law rights work and how contractual rights work.

How do you decide what is natural and what is contractual?

Or do you think that there's some list somewhere of all the things Freedom of Speech gives you the ability to say?

There is no need for positive list. Generalized set definition is enough (and that includes "Everything that is Speech" set).

Yeah, exactly. But you can make a definitive list of property you own, right? That's why it's different.

I don't see the difference.
I can also make a definitive list of all expressions I've made. It's harder, but possible. Actually, it's getting easier and easier - between Facebook, Twitter, Google and NSA
On the other hand, I cannot really make list of all property I can, would or will own.

The natural law "right to property" is different than the "property rights" conveyed in a sales contract.

So owning "property rights" is different to owning "property"? Ok, that might be, depends on exact legal definition of "property rights". How is that actually relevant here?

No, "the right to own property" is different than actually owning property. Just like the right to vote. You don't HAVE TO vote, and probably shouldn't if both candidates such. You still have the right to vote even if you choose not to vote in an election.

I don't have just "Right to Own", I have also extensive rights to Use and Manipulate with that property. Obviously - Right to Own is, by itself, completely useless.

The voting analogy is flawed a lot, but I could actually make it walk (or limp). I don't have just right to vote, I have right to vote by my own decision and I have right to vote secretly and without personal consequences (not counting the election result, of course). I also have right to not vote (explicitly, I believe), but that one is not present everywhere (there are countries/places where voting is mandatory).
These are all important and necessary rights, although seldom appreciated by many people

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Speech is weird because by definition it doesn't have a tangible form.

What kind of definition is that? Speech and Expression is something that is definitely instantiated (expressed) in tangible form. Without this specific instance, there is no point of the right at all.

The other forms of Expression have tangible forms. You can't literally reach out and touch speech in the way you can literally touch a newspaper or a sculpture or a reel of film or any of the other ways someone can record their expression.

Maybe "tangible" is not the best word, but all dictionaries I've checked agree with my interpretation that it also contains non-physical, but somehow "real" things.

But we're talking about newspapers, so let's stick to newspapers.
Once a newspaper is printed, the owners of the company own that newspaper until it is sold to someone else. Their natural law right to property is what protects them from someone coming in and destroying the newspapers before they're distributed. The right to Freedom of the Press doesn't protect actual, physical printing presses from being destroyed by a mob or something.

Actually, it does. Again, this is actually quite a common way to suppress Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech.

In my country we protect both Freedom of the Press and property rights. Say I own a printing press and someone who disagrees with me breaks into my plant in the middle of the night and destroys it.

What crime have they committed?

Obviously, burglary and/or other property crimes.
It is, however, possible that the motive is to suppress or even destroy your newspapers - if the press is the only way you can distribute. Of course, it would have to be proved... but if all the press machines you control are destroyed by random burglars overnight and other printers will refuse to print your stuff (even the previously friendly one who, sadly, just fell in shower and broke his hand), you can connect the dots. Obviously, that worked in 19th century, not in 21st.

Say you own a printing press and you print a newspaper and sell a copy of it to me. I then take the copy of the newspaper and draw Hitler moustaches on the photographs of all the politicians I disagree with. I have altered your Expression. Have I impacted your right to Freedom of Expression? Of course not.

If you do that with all copies, I might claim that. If you do that as a government agent, I have actually a very good case.
Leave out the government part, because that's different.

Why?

• Why is that different?
• Why should we leave that, when it's actually on-topic?
  • If you consider that too garage-worthy, just imagine that it's 1890 and the government is Cisleithania. Nobody likes Cisleithania, everybody agrees that Cisleithania sucked!

I don't know what Cisleithania is.

That's what wikipedia is for.

The reason I want to exclude the government is that the guy in my example is drawing Hitler moustaches on the photos for shits and giggles. I can imagine one person doing that.

Ok, that is kinda strange, but... doing stupid shit for giggles is usually considered Expression covered by Freedom of Speech. So in this case, it the same Right on both sides.

If the government were to tell me they bought all the newspapers so that they could draw moustaches, I wouldn't believe them. That probably would be a conspiracy to interfere with your newspaper in some way.

Duh... Do we have non-joke emoji?

If your deal with the Elbonian newspaper has you as a completely hands off investor, would you feel morally culpable if the newspaper was publishing something that met your criteria for "hate speech"?

garage-bait aside...
You are the one telling me that I should, because its my speech! And you still haven't sufficiently explained me how!

Because you're funding the Elbonian newspaper? And if you disagree with what you're doing, you should stop?

I can stop, but that does not change the fact that I have, apparently, said some stupid shit.

No, sorry, I refuse to be morally culpable. I might be content with my money financing various profit-making media, but I absolutely refuse the idea that the latest gossip about Cardassians is my expressed Speech!

[remi]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

But this is just a hypothetical, right? The French distributor is reacting to French social pressures and not American ones, right?

As far as I know the French distributor isn't doing anything, really, since the movie was in theatres months ago so there isn't really any "distribution" going on right now. But I can definitely read some unease coming from various people, specifically because there is American social pressure -- some of it is mocking the Americans for, essentially, being Americans, but not only. It's likely the French distributor is following that closely to see how they will roll out the next step of distribution (DVDs etc.). Anyway, that's indeed a bit academic as nothing is really happening right now.

2. Your example with Iran isn't an example of that. Make no mistake, those sanctions are an act of war that the US is committing against a real enemy. They're an example of medium power rather than soft power. The rules are different for "our friends" and "people who are helping our enemies." I'm fine with using medium power in the latter case.

Whether you see it as an act of war or anything doesn't change the fact that it's a rather clear example of the US exerting their influence outside of any relationship that involves them. Sure, you set yourself on some moral high-ground to justify it, but ultimately, to come back to the origin of this sub-thread, you won't get any sympathy from me if the EU starts doing to you what you've been doing to us for years. I understand that you feel uneasy about it, but you still won't get any sympathy from me about it.

Companies don't have their own will.

I disagree with that line of arguing, but there are other posts about it. It's irrelevant in our discussion anyway, whether it's "a company" or "the CEO [owners] of that company" who act on their will, the end result is the same, a company acting without being forced by law.

But if the US company changed their US policies because of soft power from the EU, that would be different.

Yes, and I'm saying that EU companies have for years changed their EU policies due to soft power from the US, hence if the opposite (i.e. what you said) happens, well, tough luck.

Yeah, in the age of the internet for the common man and randos with blogs and whatnot, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. I don't think I've ever heard of an American publication being ordered to be taken off newsstands for being libelous. Normally it's a monetary judgement after the fact. Sometimes the newspaper has to print a retraction.

Retracting the publication is a common sentence here. Not automatic, and again it depends on the cases. For a daily newspaper, it's pointless and would likely not be attempted (I cannot remember a case where it happened... probably also because newspapers that are large enough to have a daily print are smart enough to not do the kind of blatantly obvious libel that could get them pulled off!). Even weekly celebrity magazines (who frequently get sued for breach of privacy) rarely get pulled off kiosks, though it does happen. There is a moral reason (people have already seen the stuff, so there is no point in removing it) but also a practical one as in the age of the printed press actually calling back stuff from kiosks was hard and costly. For something on the web, there is an argument that once it's seen, it's seen immediately, and that it can also be copied. But on the other hand for e.g. a major newspaper, there is a large difference in audience between an article on the front page and an archive of it on some unknown website, plus the technical part of pulling out is trivial, so both sides of the argument shift and sometimes judges will still require stuff to be pulled out, sometimes not.

The Google dereferencing case that I have actually read about hinges on that, actually: the person being libelled tried to get the stuff removed from where it originally was, and couldn't (because no-one answered, apparently), which is why they asked Google to remove it. It's likely that if the original site had reacted as they should have, the Google dereferencing wouldn't have been a thing.

The Google vs. newspaper case is a different one and about RTBF, not libel, as far as I remember, so I'm not putting it in the same basket -- even if the outcome was the same as far as Google is concerned. It was not a libel case, so all we're talking about here doesn't necessarily apply.

Regardless of whether CNN is lying or not, Google isn't lying. And if the content isn't a lie, it can't be libel.

But that's just the same argument as for the newspaper. A newspaper that publishes "MP said [libel]" is saying the truth, but we still consider that it has some responsibility as it is diffusing that libel, making it accessible to a wide(r) audience. As I said before, the reasoning is that if you accept that a newspaper (or Google) can publish "MP said [libel]", then you have to accept they can also say "Joe Random said [libel]" and then "someone I met in a pub said [libel]" and ultimately that's just saying "[libel]" with a few weasel words.

Again, that has to be the core difference here. A newspaper is responsible for publishing a libel, even if it's wrapped in "X said [libel]", because without that newspaper publication the libel would never have reached an audience and there would have been no damage done to the target of the libel.

Let's say for the sake of argument that's true. My original example asked if he's "morally culpable" for libel, i.e. that he'd go to Hell for bearing false witness against his neighbor. But fine, let's assume some same set of civil law consequences as well.

I'm rather uninterested in whether someone goes to Hell, since there is no way for anyone to know about it (and let's not troll about religion either). The only thing we can see is whether there are actual consequences in our world. I consider that, in a first approach, the law of a country can be deemed as reflective of its morals -- if something is punished by law then it's against the moral values of that country, if not then it's maybe not a good thing but at least not automatically a bad thing either. Anything more abstract than that is far too prone to interpretation bias.

I see a big difference between the actions of a forum, which lets Internet randos asset things, and the actions of Google's search engine. Google DOES control the output of their search engine. They pagerank, and blacklist, and they do all the other things they do.

OK, then on that measure you are setting Google firmly in the same camp as a newspaper. Which means it would be subject to the same rules as a newspaper, i.e. it would bear responsibility for diffusing stuff that's libellous, even if the way they say it (i.e. "CNN said...") is true. So in a sense they need the "provider of content" protection even more in that case.

Remember the key point (that I'm stating again), someone who helps the diffusion of a libel bears the responsibility of diffusing this libel, even if they state it in a factually true manner.

Believe it or not, I can kinda buy that difference when we're talking about a web forum versus a normal website.

I guess this means I haven't made too bad a job of explaining it, then .

I think I've explained why I think Google's search product is more similar to a newspaper than to Reddit or this forum or whatever.

Why do you feel the opposite?

I'd say there are two reasons. One is related to this "publisher's responsibility" principle. That's a principle that I agree with, and under this principle Google would be responsible for every libel that appears on their site. That's untenable, and I think that's wrong. A newspaper on the other hand should vet every content that appears under their banner, so if they let some libel through, well, it's their fault and they have to pay the price.

The other part is that I kind of disagree on how much control Google has on their output. Sure, they control Pagerank and the rest, but (at least in principle) they don't control how an individual page appears. They set rules, that lead to some pages shown and not other, and they control those rules, but they don't control each result individually. It's like if a newspaper was opening their print room to the public and saying "if you come along at the right time, and use a pen of the right colour, and write something where the orthographic corrector doesn't show any error, and is about that length, we will publish it, regardless of the content." At that point, you can't really argue that the newspaper has "control" on the content, even though they set the rules. I see Google in the same way -- they don't rank individual pages differently, they apply the same algorithm to all pages and end up with a ranking.

(the fact that there is a whole industry about "gaming" Google's ranking proves that it's really just a set of rules that apply to everyone -- very complicated and badly understood and weird rules, sure, but still rules that are applied blindly, so I don't see Google as really having much "control" about where an individual page shows)

[Gurth]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

In my country we protect both Freedom of the Press and property rights. Say I own a printing press and someone who disagrees with me breaks into my plant in the middle of the night and destroys it.

What crime have they committed?

Obviously, burglary and/or other property crimes.

In the USA, IIRC it’s generally only burglary if you steal something from someone else’s (immovable?) property, and that doesn’t require the area to be secured somehow as I recall. They’d more likely be committing breaking and entering to get into the building and some kind of destruction of property crime for wrecking the press.

It is, however, possible that the motive is to suppress or even destroy your newspapers - if the press is the only way you can distribute. Of course, it would have to be proved... but if all the press machines you control are destroyed by random burglars overnight and other printers will refuse to print your stuff (even the previously friendly one who, sadly, just fell in shower and broke his hand), you can connect the dots. Obviously, that worked in 19th century, not in 21st.

Depends, I suppose: if somebody attacks the specific server provider that hosts your site, and for some unexplained reason nobody else is willing to host it instead, I think you’ve got the modern-day equivalent.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Or maybe you actually challenge the claim that any owner of Microsoft shares is owner? Who exactly are "the Owners", then?

The thing you bought that makes you an owner of Microsoft is a right to a portion of the proceeds when they liquidate the company. In theory, when they sell ever building, every server, and every one and zero of IP, you're entitled to a cut.

You know, that would make sense, and I have even realized this possibility. Maybe there are different types of shares, for owners and for investors. For all I know, it might be a real thing in USA.
Problem is that you directly contradict that in the very next sentence!

Since money is fungible, you do own a tiny share of every server, building, etc.

So, I do own some property. If only a tiny share.

But from a share, you don't get enough control to do anything useful except maybe vote for the Board of Directors that hires the CEO.

So, the natural right to use owned property is significantly and duly limited by... basically anyone, unless I invest more to it. Sounds more like a privilege to me.

Or, maybe, the contractual right, as you said lower... but before, you've explicitly said this is natural law

The thing that you have a natural law right to is "a share of the proceeds when the company eventually liquidates." That's what you bought from the other shareholders/owners. Potentially and depending on how much you paid, you can buy the ability to vote for the Board of Directors. In some companies (but not Microsoft), it's possible to buy rights to the profits from the company as an ongoing concern.

You can do whatever you want with that right. Notably, you can sell it to somebody else.

But if you didn't buy decision-making ability for the company, you don't get decision-making ability for the company.

Interesting. Distributors are actually owners of the films? I thought that they just own the rights to distribute.

They did. The fact that the distributor is allowed to sell some of their rights, but not others, is a fundamental difference between how natural law rights work and how contractual rights work.

How do you decide what is natural and what is contractual?

Your natural law right to own property means that a just and fair government will enforce whatever is in the sales contract.

Or do you think that there's some list somewhere of all the things Freedom of Speech gives you the ability to say?

There is no need for positive list. Generalized set definition is enough (and that includes "Everything that is Speech" set).

Yeah, exactly. But you can make a definitive list of property you own, right? That's why it's different.

I don't see the difference.
I can also make a definitive list of all expressions I've made. It's harder, but possible. Actually, it's getting easier and easier - between Facebook, Twitter, Google and NSA
On the other hand, I cannot really make list of all property I can, would or will own.

You can make a list of all the things you have said. And you can make a list of all the property you currently own. Because the property rights you have is the sum total of all the sales contracts you've agreed to.

It's impossible to make a list of things you could potentially buy. Just like it's impossible to make a list of all the things you could potentially say. That's because the natural law right to own property is similar to the natural law right to free speech than the contractual right to a specific piece of property.

Again, this is not sufficient at all. You know the old joke... there was Freedom of Speech in USSR. There just wasn't any Freedom After Speech.

Speech is weird because by definition it doesn't have a tangible form.

What kind of definition is that? Speech and Expression is something that is definitely instantiated (expressed) in tangible form. Without this specific instance, there is no point of the right at all.

The other forms of Expression have tangible forms. You can't literally reach out and touch speech in the way you can literally touch a newspaper or a sculpture or a reel of film or any of the other ways someone can record their expression.

Maybe "tangible" is not the best word, but all dictionaries I've checked agree with my interpretation that it also contains non-physical, but somehow "real" things.

What matches your interpretation? Freedom of Speech? Or Freedom of Expression?

Freedom of Expression is a term used to group a few related natural law rights that are treated similarly under the law.

One of these rights is Freedom of Speech, which is literally about speaking. Freedom of the Press, on the other hand, covers expression in tangible forms. (You can physically touch anything that was created by someone exercising their right to Freedom of the Press.)

Freedom of Peaceable Assembly is another example of Freedom of Expression that doesn't produce something tangible. Freedom to Petition the Government for Redress of Grievances is another example that does produce something tangible.

Mostly, the Freedoms covered by Freedom of Expression are the same. But since we were talking about destroying something that exists in a tangible form, Freedom of Speech isn't really the issue. We're talking about a different part of Freedom of Expression.

But we're talking about newspapers, so let's stick to newspapers.
Once a newspaper is printed, the owners of the company own that newspaper until it is sold to someone else. Their natural law right to property is what protects them from someone coming in and destroying the newspapers before they're distributed. The right to Freedom of the Press doesn't protect actual, physical printing presses from being destroyed by a mob or something.

Actually, it does. Again, this is actually quite a common way to suppress Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech.

In my country we protect both Freedom of the Press and property rights. Say I own a printing press and someone who disagrees with me breaks into my plant in the middle of the night and destroys it.

What crime have they committed?

Obviously, burglary and/or other property crimes.
It is, however, possible that the motive is to suppress or even destroy your newspapers - if the press is the only way you can distribute.

Yeah, I guess it's possible. But laws shouldn't be tailored around reading the mind of the criminal. They should be based on the effects. We have laws against committing property crimes, and we should enforce those.

Let's say it's going to cost your newspaper $10,000 to replace the printing press and you'll lose $20,000 in sales while you're having the new one installed.

Let's further say that a second group of burglars broke into a china shop and destroyed all the merchandise. It will cost $10,000 to replace the merchandise and the store will lose $20,000 in profits from sales.

Should the vandals who destroyed the printing press be punished less harshly than the vandals that destroyed the China shop?

If your deal with the Elbonian newspaper has you as a completely hands off investor, would you feel morally culpable if the newspaper was publishing something that met your criteria for "hate speech"?

garage-bait aside...
You are the one telling me that I should, because its my speech! And you still haven't sufficiently explained me how!

Because you're funding the Elbonian newspaper? And if you disagree with what you're doing, you should stop?

I can stop, but that does not change the fact that I have, apparently, said some stupid shit.

No, sorry, I refuse to be morally culpable. I might be content with my money financing various profit-making media, but I absolutely refuse the idea that the latest gossip about Cardassians is my expressed Speech!

The Elbonian newspaper is printing gossip about the bad guys from Star Trek that aren't the Klingons, Romulans, or Borg?

I don't know what "I refuse to be morally culpable for my actions" means. It's possible to make a mistake, and do your best to make up for it, but fall short because you can't change the past. But if you're funding someone who's doing something you disagree with, you have a moral obligation to try to get them to stop.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

But this is just a hypothetical, right? The French distributor is reacting to French social pressures and not American ones, right?

As far as I know the French distributor isn't doing anything, really, since the movie was in theatres months ago so there isn't really any "distribution" going on right now. But I can definitely read some unease coming from various people, specifically because there is American social pressure -- some of it is mocking the Americans for, essentially, being Americans, but not only. It's likely the French distributor is following that closely to see how they will roll out the next step of distribution (DVDs etc.). Anyway, that's indeed a bit academic as nothing is really happening right now.

Fine.

2. Your example with Iran isn't an example of that. Make no mistake, those sanctions are an act of war that the US is committing against a real enemy. They're an example of medium power rather than soft power. The rules are different for "our friends" and "people who are helping our enemies." I'm fine with using medium power in the latter case.

Whether you see it as an act of war or anything doesn't change the fact that it's a rather clear example of the US exerting their influence outside of any relationship that involves them. Sure, you set yourself on some moral high-ground to justify it, but ultimately, to come back to the origin of this sub-thread, you won't get any sympathy from me if the EU starts doing to you what you've been doing to us for years. I understand that you feel uneasy about it, but you still won't get any sympathy from me about it.

The medium power stuff is different than what I have been talking about. Friends shouldn't be soft-powering each other into stuff, and that goes in either direction. But given that we're friends, you can't be making common cause with people who are trying to kill us. That's part of what "friends" means.

Regardless of whether CNN is lying or not, Google isn't lying. And if the content isn't a lie, it can't be libel.

But that's just the same argument as for the newspaper. A newspaper that publishes "MP said [libel]" is saying the truth, but we still consider that it has some responsibility as it is diffusing that libel, making it accessible to a wide(r) audience. As I said before, the reasoning is that if you accept that a newspaper (or Google) can publish "MP said [libel]", then you have to accept they can also say "Joe Random said [libel]" and then "someone I met in a pub said [libel]" and ultimately that's just saying "[libel]" with a few weasel words.

Again, that has to be the core difference here. A newspaper is responsible for publishing a libel, even if it's wrapped in "X said [libel]", because without that newspaper publication the libel would never have reached an audience and there would have been no damage done to the target of the libel.

I disagree. An MP automatically has their own reputation for credibility, for good or for ill. (If you're MPs are anything like our Congressmen, it's likely the latter.) The newspaper accurately relaying the MP's words isn't libelous because it isn't false and because the newspaper is implicitly asking the audience to evaluate the story based on the MP's credibility.

It's also important, next time you vote for MP, to know that the guy libels people. If he has a habit of this, you probably shouldn't believe him in the future and should probably vote for the other guy next time you vote for MP. And so the story "MP So-and-so Libeled His Opponent" is something the media needs to be allowed to cover.

This is less important than Joe Random libeling someone, or some anonymous source libeling someone, because the newspaper is inherently asking you to take those people's thoughts as newsworthy by virtue of the fact that they're being quoted in the newspaper. But things said by candidates for office or top officials are inherently newsworthy.

I see a big difference between the actions of a forum, which lets Internet randos asset things, and the actions of Google's search engine. Google DOES control the output of their search engine. They pagerank, and blacklist, and they do all the other things they do.

OK, then on that measure you are setting Google firmly in the same camp as a newspaper. Which means it would be subject to the same rules as a newspaper, i.e. it would bear responsibility for diffusing stuff that's libellous, even if the way they say it (i.e. "CNN said...") is true. So in a sense they need the "provider of content" protection even more in that case.

Remember the key point (that I'm stating again), someone who helps the diffusion of a libel bears the responsibility of diffusing this libel, even if they state it in a factually true manner.

OK, this is the point to drill in on. I disagree with you about the newspaper's culpability.

It has to be allowed for a newspaper to report that an MP libeled someone. Being credible and not being a liar are important criteria for MPs, right? It would be a crazy result if the newspaper wasn't allowed to print inaccurate things that government officials said, if only because the people need to be able to evaluate the credibility of the government at election time.

I also disagree with you that it's possible to "libel someone in a factually true manner." The newspaper saying "Mr. X said Mr. Y did something bad" is very different than the newspaper themself saying "Mr. Y did something bad." That goes double if X has his own record of newsworthy statements that can be evaluated as true or false.

I think I've explained why I think Google's search product is more similar to a newspaper than to Reddit or this forum or whatever.

Why do you feel the opposite?

I'd say there are two reasons. One is related to this "publisher's responsibility" principle. That's a principle that I agree with, and under this principle Google would be responsible for every libel that appears on their site. That's untenable, and I think that's wrong. A newspaper on the other hand should vet every content that appears under their banner, so if they let some libel through, well, it's their fault and they have to pay the price.

As above, I'd argue that "The newspaper uses the word X" is not a statement that can be libelous." One, because it's too anodyne, but also because of how likely it is to be true.

The other part is that I kind of disagree on how much control Google has on their output. Sure, they control Pagerank and the rest, but (at least in principle) they don't control how an individual page appears. They set rules, that lead to some pages shown and not other, and they control those rules, but they don't control each result individually. It's like if a newspaper was opening their print room to the public and saying "if you come along at the right time, and use a pen of the right colour, and write something where the orthographic corrector doesn't show any error, and is about that length, we will publish it, regardless of the content." At that point, you can't really argue that the newspaper has "control" on the content, even though they set the rules. I see Google in the same way -- they don't rank individual pages differently, they apply the same algorithm to all pages and end up with a ranking.

(the fact that there is a whole industry about "gaming" Google's ranking proves that it's really just a set of rules that apply to everyone -- very complicated and badly understood and weird rules, sure, but still rules that are applied blindly, so I don't see Google as really having much "control" about where an individual page shows)

Google has been known to manually blacklist sites, so I don't necessarily agree with that. But ultimately my argument doesn't hinge on that.

Google Search is actually a couple of related products. For example, Google News is Google search applied against a whitelist of "these are actual news sites and not blogs or spam or candidates' websites or whatever."

Google also personalizes your results. For example, if you search for "France News" you're probably going to get results about the country. I'm going to get results about the family that owns NASCAR.

They decided that based on my history of searching for stuff about stock car racing and my history of never going to non-English websites. But that's still an editorial decision. And if they wanted to, they could make a different editorial decision.

Google has the theoretical capability to start a Google News-type service that only includes things they consider important and try to get me to read those things. But they don't, because they allegedly made the editorial decision that they would lose customers if they were seen as taking sides, so they try to have a really high bar for "too spammy to be included in search results."

[remi]

@GuyWhoKilledBear I had a lengthy answer typed and then I lost my connection and NodeBB lost my draft... I'm not going to retype everything (), sorry.

There were three ideas I wanted to stress though and I'll try to summarise.

First, I think I was wrong on "newspaper can't print 'MP said [libel]'" thing. I tried to search a bit more and the core issue is that the relevant laws are complicated, and can only be truly interpreted through the jurisprudence (which is an issue as far as readability of the law is concerned, but unfortunately that's not really specific to the topic we're discussing here...). I read several law blogs and articles, including some from the highest relevant court (the Cour de Cassation) and it turns out that there are many exceptions and conditions and legal tests to decide if something truly is libellous or not. From what I get, the newspaper would be perfectly allowed to print "MP said [libel]." But more generally, many libellous things are allowed with a variety of reasons such as public interest, good faith or even being part of "normal political/union speech" which really is a wide-catching thing.

Overall, reading all those decisions let me with a definitive feeling that the courts (through the jurisprudence, which since the relevant law is 150 years old we can assume reflects the spirit of the law, if not a different law would have been passed in the meantime!) were very consciously trying to balance freedom of speech with other interests (e.g. not libelling), and only ruled against free speech when a set of specific conditions was met. Essentially, there is this grey scale between one side being "no libel laws" and the other being "no free speech", and the jurisprudence sets the limit somewhere. I'm using this image on purpose, because very clearly the US sets the limit at another point, but I don't think that fundamentally the principles at work are different, it's only a matter of interpreting where the grey becomes black or white.

So I think the newspaper in your example would be OK, and by extension I think that if there wasn't a more specific law Google would also be OK (but if there wasn't this law Google would have to defend themselves again and again against multiple claims --especially if they do edit content, as you claim they do--, which would cost them a lot).

The second point is that we have to be careful what we are talking about. It's not about "Google vs. newspaper" in the abstract, it's about specific cases with all their specific details. The law only gives wide principles, and we have to look at the jurisprudence to see how it's really applied, which means looking at specific cases (for example the law just defines defamation as alleging a fact that's attacking someone's "honour or consideration," which obviously is a very fuzzy definition!). So this white/black boundary we're talking about isn't something that is set in law, it's only set through jurisprudence (which again is debatable as to how good it is for the readability of the law, but again isn't something specific to this issue), and if we stay in the abstract (as opposed to specific cases) all we can refer to is the law in all its fuzziness.

So we talked until now about libel, and the legal case we have as basis of our discussion here is the case where the CNIL (wrongly) tried to get Google to derefence world-wide. In that case, the source of the libel couldn't apparently be removed, so Google got the hit because it was the only way for the court to make the "trouble to public order" caused by the libel to cease. It's a very different situation from the other case you mentioned, about a newspaper being allowed to keep an article but not Google -- that second case was about RTBF, not about libel. What I said in the first point applies very much: in each specific case the courts try to balance competing interests, and the balance that was reached in a case of freedom of speech vs. libel isn't necessarily representative in any way of the balance that was reached in a case of freedom of speech vs. RTBF.

The third point is that the current day situation has to be considered in light of history. This applies to the libel laws itself (and all its jurisprudence), but it also applies to the "provider of services" law. That law is 15 years old and is now part of the legal, and I would say by extension at this point moral, framework. The society, judges, government and Google all agree that what Google shows isn't relevant to freedom of speech, but rather to data management (as, again and for example, is the output of an accountant).

So possibly Google could claim that they are editors of their content, and therefore ask for freedom of speech to apply to it, but they don't do it. And also they are probably somewhat careful to not behave as full editors, to ensure they stay within the scope of a "provider of services" because since 15 years they have structured their services this way.

None of that is likely to convince you, but I'm not sure that an even longer answer to each and every of your point would be much different, but I'll try if you want me to.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear I had a lengthy answer typed and then I lost my connection and NodeBB lost my draft... I'm not going to retype everything (), sorry.

There were three ideas I wanted to stress though and I'll try to summarise.

This is a much better idea than what either of us have been doing over the past week and a half. I'll try to do the same.

First, I think I was wrong on "newspaper can't print 'MP said [libel]'" thing... From what I get, the newspaper would be perfectly allowed to print "MP said [libel]." But more generally, many libellous things are allowed with a variety of reasons such as public interest..

This is sort of where I suspected French law actually came down. It's important, when deciding which MP to vote for, whether the guy is a liar, right? How would you know that that unless the media was allowed to print that he lied?

There's also the issue of "To be a libel, it must necessarily be false," which is a test that "MP said [libel]" fails to meet. But if your laws are set up to check for "Is it in the public interest?" before checking for "Is it true?" I don't think that's going to come up with too many bad results.

The second point is that we have to be careful what we are talking about. It's not about "Google vs. newspaper" in the abstract, it's about specific cases with all their specific details. The law only gives wide principles, and we have to look at the jurisprudence to see how it's really applied, which means looking at specific cases (for example the law just defines defamation as alleging a fact that's attacking someone's "honour or consideration," which obviously is a very fuzzy definition!). So this white/black boundary we're talking about isn't something that is set in law, it's only set through jurisprudence (which again is debatable as to how good it is for the readability of the law, but again isn't something specific to this issue), and if we stay in the abstract (as opposed to specific cases) all we can refer to is the law in all its fuzziness.

This is a scary way to view the world.

For one thing, jurisprudence and the law are different. The law is supposed to be a complete set of black and white rules that was created by the legislature. Jurisprudence is the body of legal traditions built up around stare decisis, the tradition that in the general, cases involving similar sets of facts should be judged in a similar way. There are times when jurisprudence contradicts the black letter law, which is a sign that you have the wrong people as judges.

But more to the point, the law is supposed to be a complete set of things that are illegal. It's not supposed to be "Try it and find out." In America, we have a prohibition on ex post facto laws. (Laws that criminalize behavior that happened before the law took effect.)

You're supposed to be able to tell, from looking at the law but not the jurisprudence, whether something is illegal or not.

So we talked until now about libel, and the legal case we have as basis of our discussion here is the case where the CNIL (wrongly) tried to get Google to derefence world-wide. In that case, the source of the libel couldn't apparently be removed, so Google got the hit because it was the only way for the court to make the "trouble to public order" caused by the libel to cease. It's a very different situation from the other case you mentioned, about a newspaper being allowed to keep an article but not Google -- that second case was about RTBF, not about libel.

1. Delisting a page with libelous material from Google doesn't cause the libel to cease. Google isn't committing the libel (because their speech is "Here's a page that uses this keyword"). And the webpage whose owners are committing the libel is still up.

2. I think you're looking at the wrong case. The 2019 case that the ECJ ruled against France and for Google dealt with

a satirical photomontage of a female politician, an article referring to someone as a public relations officer of the Church of Scientology, the placing under investigation of a male politician and the conviction of someone for sexual assaults against minors.

Google wins 'right-to-be forgotten' fight with France | CBC News

Google won its fight against tougher "right to be forgotten" rules after Europe's top court said on Tuesday it does not have to remove links to sensitive personal data worldwide, rejecting a French demand.

3. I'm pretty sure the only reason we're talking about libel is to illustrate the difference between "an MP writing something libelous" and "a newspaper reporting that the MP wrote something libelous." The thing the MP wrote is false. The thing the newspaper wrote is not false, and thus can't be libelous.

The third point is that the current day situation has to be considered in light of history. This applies to the libel laws itself (and all its jurisprudence), but it also applies to the "provider of services" law. That law is 15 years old and is now part of the legal, and I would say by extension at this point moral, framework.

"This is part of morality now because it's been in the law for 15 years" is frankly scarier than the last thing you said.

The society, judges, government and Google all agree that what Google shows isn't relevant to freedom of speech, but rather to data management (as, again and for example, is the output of an accountant).

I don't understand why you typed this.

I'm trying to convince you that your country enacted a bad law that produces dumb results. Appeals to "It must be good because it's the law" don't make sense in that context.

None of that is likely to convince you, but I'm not sure that an even longer answer to each and every of your point would be much different, but I'll try if you want me to.

Please don't.

Your most recent post, and this response, were both much shorter and faster to write than the mean post in this conversation. I'd prefer posts like these than us typing walls of text at each other.

[ObjectMike]

An interesting thing I learned in this thread was that France does have case law. My understanding was, since they're a civil law system, case law didn't exist and each case was decided on its own without considering precedent.

[dkf]

@mikehurley I believe that in their system, case law isn't absolutely binding, but lower courts are extremely strongly advised to follow the jurisprudential directives of higher courts (and appeals can be made when things go weird). Senior judges there are no happier hearing the same old shit again than anywhere else.

[remi]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Your most recent post, and this response, were both much shorter and faster to write than the mean post in this conversation. I'd prefer posts like these than us typing walls of text at each other.

I agree, so let's try to keep the same. Though I'll have to refer to some of your points as anchors, but I'll refrain from point-by-point discussion as much as possible.

if your laws are set up to check for "Is it in the public interest?" before checking for "Is it true?" I don't think that's going to come up with too many bad results.

Practically speaking, looking at jurisprudence, that seems to be the case. Although I'm not sure whether it really happens "before", legal process being what it is, but ultimately that doesn't really matter if we get to this result. And definitely, yes, I think it's a good thing we can know that a MP said that. While thinking about this whole thing I was reminded of some of the most controversial things that the father of the current far right party leader said (some were ruled as being antisemitic insults and similar -- there is relatively little doubt that Le Pen father in the 80s' and before was racist, antisemitic and sometimes also nazi revisionist... a large part of the growing appeal of his party under his daughter leadership is that she worked hard to shed all those labels), and definitely at that time it was a good thing that everyone could know about it. So we're in agreement here.

Also and on the point you're making, I don't think that overall there are "too many bad results." Of course, you're going to point out the cases that led to this discussion, but actually leaving aside RTBF (which is a fairly new thing, and somewhat controversial, and that I don't fully agree with), when it comes to libel (and insult), I think courts manage to get a reasonable balance. Except when it comes to Google, I guess, which is what we're discussing here, but it's good to remember that it doesn't represent all of public speech, far from it!

You're supposed to be able to tell, from looking at the law but not the jurisprudence, whether something is illegal or not.

That's a principle that I agree with. However I think (emphasis on think because I'm not certain) that it's inevitable in law, because a law can never go into all details. As I said before, libel (diffamation) in France is defined as something that "damages the honour or consideration [some more qualifiers omitted]." That's both very simple, but very vague. Trying to find a US definition (I know US law doesn't work exactly like ours, so I'm sticking to generality), I get for example this legal dictionary definition that says something very similar (libel is stuff "that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession" which is very vague). And the same definition mentions several courts (and SC) rulings that framed what that actually means.

You can take most actual examples of libel (or maybe not libel?) and ask several persons about it. Some will tell you that yes, it is injurious to their reputation, some will tell you it's not. For an example straight out of the garage, saying that Trump cheated on his taxes (i.e. something that is likely factually false, he probably was paying his accountants a lot of money to use every rule in the book to pay as little as possible while not breaking the law) might be seen as damaging his reputation ("he's just an honest businessman using the rules as written, saying otherwise is insulting his reputation!")... or not ("phaw, everyone knows he cheats on everything and has no morals"), depending on your view of the man. So simply reading the legal definition isn't telling you whether it's libel or not. Yet I'm fairly certain that with the addition of jurisprudence, and even if you can't cite the exact ruling that would justify it, you can tell me straight away whether it is libel or not (I think it probably isn't under French law, FWIW).

Ultimately, any sufficiently complex legal system is indistinguishable from magicbound to require jurisprudence to interpret it. That's the same everywhere in the world. It is unfortunate, for sure, but there is little we can do about it. It's also worth noting that the existence of jurisprudence doesn't mean you can't predict the outcome of something -- it only means that a layman can't just read the law in isolation and claim to know everything (isn't that the kind of bullshit that Sovereign Citizen do?). In practice, if you are regularly involved in a particular field (and regularly flirting with the limits of the law), it's likely you'll be familiar with the limits. I'm ready to wager that a newspaper editor would know pretty well where the limit is.

I can do nothing more than be sadden by this state of things, but I also feel it's somewhat irrelevant to our specific argument here, since each and every field of law is plagued by it. There wouldn't be so many lawyers, each specialised in very narrow topics, if that wasn't the case.

Back to Google now.

I think I'm starting to confuse all the cases, because there have been several, so indeed it seems I've mixed up the reasons. But in all cases I've read about, the part about Google always hinged ultimately on the fact that they were not considered as expressing their free speech (by putting links to pages), but acting as data management services.

I think that our core disagreement here. You contend that Google showing search results is Google free speech, I contend that it's just data management and no more worthy of free speech protection than when Excel prints 43.999... in response to =2+2.

Quoting one of the ECJ ruling that I still have open in a tab:

In today’s judgment, the Court begins by recalling that it has already held that the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove [...] links [...] even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.

The Court points out, next, that Google [...] carries on activities [...] which are inextricably linked to the processing of personal data [...]. Such a situation therefore falls within the scope of the EU legislation on the protection of personal data.

[...] The Court adds that the right to the protection of personal data is not an absolute right, but must be considered in relation to its function in society and be balanced against other fundamental rights, in accordance with the principle of proportionality.

(the rest is specific to the EU vs. worldwide part which isn't our point here)

I can't offer you any more moral justification for it, but I can state again that what Google does is seen, in Europe (and in the words of its highest jurisdiction, the ECJ), as "processing of [personal] data" and not "free speech."

If you accept that, I think most other rulings make sense (more or less). If you don't (and you certainly don't, given everything we've said until now)... well that's it.

I guess the only way I can try and present it is by looking at the other side of the coin. Do you think that when Excel prints 2+2=4, it's exercising its free speech rights? Do you think that when an SQL database returns a record when asked SELECT ... the company operating it (or its owners) are exercising their free speech rights? Do you think that when an online shop shows the results for widget in their own catalogue, they're... (you get it)? What about Amazon aggregating results from several catalogues, including their own? What about when Amazon puts some "best offers" at the top of the list? Google search results for a generic search term? Google news search results? A Pinterest board of news clipping? A "here's stuff I read recently" blog post?

My view is that at one end of the scale (Excel), it's definitely not free speech but just the automatic execution of code. Moreover, there is an expectation of the result you'll get that would make printing a wrong result and saying "well I'm just entitled to say it if I wish so" just wrong (morally! I'm not talking about fining Microsoft for bugs in Excel, although that would solve some of the issues with software development... the Bad Ideas thread is ).

At the other end of the scale, the blog post is free speech, it's a curated and edited list manually put together by a human. At some point in the middle, automatic data processing becomes free speech. You say that e.g. Google's blacklisting and filtering and tailoring of news makes it an editor. I say that while it's indeed not "one rule for everyone", it's still not link-by-link editing and thus still automated data processing. The ECJ agrees with me. The US SC probably (if they ever had to rule on it?) would agree with you.

"This is part of morality now because it's been in the law for 15 years" is frankly scarier than the last thing you said.

I probably wasn't very clear on that. I tried to find an example to clarify what I have in mind, but I'm still failing... What I'm trying to say is that, essentially, a moral framework is also the result of history. I know you're a big fan of God-given rights that are (should?) be universal and timeless, but it's fairly clear that there is (also?) a... "cultural"? "local"? component (see e.g. slavery), especially in how fundamental rights are declined in practical examples. So to me, you can't look at a society at a given point in time in isolation, and compare its laws to some other society at another time (or the same time). Or rather, the very low level underlying principles should be the same (e.g. "freedom of speech") but the way the actual boundaries in any balance between those principles is set will depend on everything that made this society. One society might value a bit more freedom of speech than protection against libel, another might do the opposite. That doesn't make either society ignorant of free speech, or of libel.

It's not that one morning the ECJ woke up and said "hey Google, from now on you're no longer entitled to free speech, what you're doing is data processing!" It's the result of a lengthy and slow (or sometimes not so slow) evolutionary process in how the boundary between those things was set. The history doesn't decide what's right or wrong, but it does shed some light on why we reached a state that we deem to be right (hopefully?).

[remi]

@mikehurley said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

An interesting thing I learned in this thread was that France does have case law. My understanding was, since they're a civil law system, case law didn't exist and each case was decided on its own without considering precedent.

See this (French, sorry...) Wikipedia page, we (well, lawyers...) use the concept of "hierarchy of norms".

The picture is a bit wonky and I don't think it really works this way (it's more a conceptual than an actual legal schematic), so don't take it literally (not sure what "government" is doing above law???). But it lists the levels, as far as I know it:

Universal rights declaration > Constitution > International treaties (European law, mostly) > law > jurisprudence > administrative decrees > entity (i.e. person or company)

(The highest jurisdiction in France is the Conseil Constitutionnel and will rule at the level of the Constitution, however they're supposed to use the Declaration of Human Rights as part of their rulings, but there are complex procedural for why it almost never get to them. Note also that the ECJ is below the Constitution, but the number of cases going up to the Constitution for ruling are extremely rare, so in practice the ECJ is the highest jurisdiction in most cases.)

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

if your laws are set up to check for "Is it in the public interest?" before checking for "Is it true?" I don't think that's going to come up with too many bad results.

Practically speaking, looking at jurisprudence, that seems to be the case. Although I'm not sure whether it really happens "before", legal process being what it is, but ultimately that doesn't really matter if we get to this result.

In America, when you're accused of committing libel, the first argument you'll usually make (if your statement is true) is that your statement is true and thus can't be libelous.

If your statement is true, the judge will stop the case and throw it out right there, resulting in a comparatively small legal bill (that you can usually get the other guy to pay for.)

If in France, the first thing you argue is that the material is "in the public interest" and there's that same summary judgment mechanic, I guess you get the same results.

leaving aside RTBF (which is a fairly new thing, and somewhat controversial, and that I don't fully agree with), when it comes to libel (and insult), I think courts manage to get a reasonable balance.

The RTBF is the law that produces bad results. The way you describe regular French defamation law sounds fairly reasonable.

You're supposed to be able to tell, from looking at the law but not the jurisprudence, whether something is illegal or not.

That's a principle that I agree with. However I think (emphasis on think because I'm not certain) that it's inevitable in law, because a law can never go into all details. As I said before, libel (diffamation) in France is defined as something that "damages the honour or consideration [some more qualifiers omitted]." That's both very simple, but very vague. Trying to find a US definition (I know US law doesn't work exactly like ours, so I'm sticking to generality), I get for example this legal dictionary definition that says something very similar (libel is stuff "that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession" which is very vague). And the same definition mentions several courts (and SC) rulings that framed what that actually means.

You can take most actual examples of libel (or maybe not libel?) and ask several persons about it. Some will tell you that yes, it is injurious to their reputation, some will tell you it's not. For an example straight out of the garage, saying that Trump cheated on his taxes (i.e. something that is likely factually false, he probably was paying his accountants a lot of money to use every rule in the book to pay as little as possible while not breaking the law) might be seen as damaging his reputation ("he's just an honest businessman using the rules as written, saying otherwise is insulting his reputation!")... or not ("phaw, everyone knows he cheats on everything and has no morals"), depending on your view of the man. So simply reading the legal definition isn't telling you whether it's libel or not. Yet I'm fairly certain that with the addition of jurisprudence, and even if you can't cite the exact ruling that would justify it, you can tell me straight away whether it is libel or not (I think it probably isn't under French law, FWIW).

I actually know the jurisprudence in the US because I have training in journalism. The case you're looking for is New York Times vs. Sullivan, and under that standard, there's no way anyone could be found liable for libeling the President of the United States, regardless of the speech at issue

Like I've said several times before, the actual US law produces bad moral results and should be changed.

I only brought up libel as an example of the difference between "someone saying something they shouldn't have" and "a newspaper reporting that someone said something they shouldn't have. (Or Google reporting that a newspaper reported that someone said something they shouldn't have.)

Back to Google now.

I think I'm starting to confuse all the cases, because there have been several, so indeed it seems I've mixed up the reasons. But in all cases I've read about, the part about Google always hinged ultimately on the fact that they were not considered as expressing their free speech (by putting links to pages), but acting as data management services.

I think that our core disagreement here. You contend that Google showing search results is Google free speech, I contend that it's just data management and no more worthy of free speech protection than when Excel prints 43.999... in response to =2+2.

Quoting one of the ECJ ruling that I still have open in a tab:

In today’s judgment, the Court begins by recalling that it has already held that the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove [...] links [...] even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.

The Court points out, next, that Google [...] carries on activities [...] which are inextricably linked to the processing of personal data [...]. Such a situation therefore falls within the scope of the EU legislation on the protection of personal data.

This is the thing I'm suspicions of. Looking at the 2019 ruling you linked, and especially the case with the Spanish court from footnote 2 of your document, it looks very much like Google did try to argue that their search results deserve the same Free Press protections that the newspaper gets.

It further looks like the Data Processing company thing was created by the GDPR, not libel laws or whatever, and that it doesn't give data processing companies special protections.

It looks like the GDPR was designed to target "data processing companies" while leaving a carve out for "the media" because "the media" and not data processing companies are entitled to Freedom of the Press.

Which is one of those European-isms that I was concerned about initially. There's a movement in my country that is arguing to treat media organizations with special privileges that generic people who exercise their Freedom of the Press aren't necessarily entitled to. These people are wrongheaded and dangerous and it's my obligation as a good citizen to point that out every time this idea rears its ugly head.

Later on in your post, you go on to claim that

It's not that one morning the ECJ woke up and said "hey Google, from now on you're no longer entitled to free speech, what you're doing is data processing!"

It sort of looks like, by passing the GDPR, that's what the EU did.

Also, a newspaper article written about you isn't "your personal data" so much as it is "the newspaper's data."

I guess the only way I can try and present it is by looking at the other side of the coin. Do you think that when Excel prints 2+2=4, it's exercising its free speech rights?

No, I don't. However, 2+2=4 for the same reason that 0.20 * 0.43 = 0.086, right? Because I got into an argument on this very board over the weekend that hinged on that fact, which I used Excel to calculate.

Does that make my posts to WTDWTF not free expression?

Do you think that when an SQL database returns a record when asked SELECT ... the company operating it (or its owners) are exercising their free speech rights?

No, but if they're using it to find data that they're publishing, the publication is free expression.

The rest of the examples are all clearly supposed to be covered by Free Expression.

My view is that at one end of the scale (Excel), it's definitely not free speech but just the automatic execution of code. Moreover, there is an expectation of the result you'll get that would make printing a wrong result and saying "well I'm just entitled to say it if I wish so" just wrong

If you're using Excel, or a SQL script or whatever, to help you formulate the thing you're presenting, that doesn't make it not free expression.

Let me try an example for you. The newspaper's website has a search function, right? Where you can look up articles the newspaper has published on its website, presumably by using a SQL SELECT statement internally? Is that data processing?

[dkf]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Let me try an example for you. The newspaper's website has a search function, right? Where you can look up articles the newspaper has published on its website, presumably by using a SQL SELECT statement internally? Is that data processing?

Non-useful analogy. The newspaper is clearly the publisher of their own articles, and that takes precedent.

The French data processing stuff sounds similar to the US common carrier stuff, in that all that the party is doing is applying an essentially mechanical process to stuff provided by someone else, where that someone else is the publisher and/or author. In those cases, there are protections against some types of claims that are available that would otherwise not be, but there are also obligations that go with that position. The only way to have no obligations at all is to neither publish nor carry the data around or mechanically transform it.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@dkf said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Let me try an example for you. The newspaper's website has a search function, right? Where you can look up articles the newspaper has published on its website, presumably by using a SQL SELECT statement internally? Is that data processing?

Non-useful analogy. The newspaper is clearly the publisher of their own articles, and that takes precedent.

Who's the publisher of Google's search results?

[dkf]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Who's the publisher of Google's search results?

Of the aggregation (Google) or the individual result (someone else)? And yes, this is a tricky area of law.

[GuyWhoKilledBear]

@dkf said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Who's the publisher of Google's search results?

Of the aggregation (Google) or the individual result (someone else)? And yes, this is a tricky area of law.

Google didn't publish the individual result. They published the aggregation.

And this isn't a tricky area of law. It's real simple. If it's legal for one third party (the newspaper) to publish something, it should be legal for all third parties to publish that thing.

And Google's not even doing that. Their speech is limited to "Here's a page that uses that keyword."

[ObjectMike]

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@dkf said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:

Who's the publisher of Google's search results?

Of the aggregation (Google) or the individual result (someone else)? And yes, this is a tricky area of law.

Google didn't publish the individual result. They published the aggregation.

And this isn't a tricky area of law. It's real simple. If it's legal for one third party (the newspaper) to publish something, it should be legal for all third parties to publish that thing.

And Google's not even doing that. Their speech is limited to "Here's a page that uses that keyword."

I think Google enters a gray area since they also tend to show some amount of preview with the results.