Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?
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@mikehurley said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
@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.
A preview is just "Here's some stuff we're quoting from the other website in addition to the headline."
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@mikehurley said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
I think Google enters a gray area since they also tend to show some amount of preview with the results.
Not all that much, since there most certainly aren't humans sitting there determining what to preview. There's no true editorial control. The actual grey area comes with the way that Google tries to down-rate content farms that are attempting to game the basic bibliometric system, as that is definitely a kind of editorial control that is disadvantaging some people (i.e., the scum, for trying to drown out the results that people want). On the other hand, that's very much about how people are saying things and not the words that they are saying.
And then there's the state-mandated censorship in some countries. “Grey” area…
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@dkf said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
And then there's the state-mandated censorship in some countries. “Grey” area…
Like complying with RTBF?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear There are a few points I can make, but on several points I'm reaching the "well, that's my opinion, not yours
" stage.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.
I can't say for sure. This gets into judicial procedure, which I know is a tricky thing with special rules as to when some arguments should be raised, or considered by the judge (which is why getting a lawyer is usually a good idea... again, not ideal that you have to go through this barrier but this is the same everywhere). There are procedural arguments that are normally dealt with before the main topic, except when the judge decide that they shouldn't. There are "exceptions" (such as "exception of truth") that are special circumstances that are dealt with before the main ruling, except when they are not. Etc.
All in all though, I don't think the stage at which a claim is thrown out will hugely impact your legal bill (assuming it stays in one court, obviously going to e.g. an appeal court would rack up costs!), so it probably doesn't really matter whether the argument is considered at time X or 10 min later. All I can tell for sure is that this "public interest" argument is indeed a strong protection that newspapers use all the time.
The RTBF is the law that produces bad results. The way you describe regular French defamation law sounds fairly reasonable.
I've said it before, I'm dubious about the RTBF. I understand where it comes from on a very abstracted level (i.e. morally speaking, a minor stupid thing you did 20 or 30 years ago shouldn't be a burden on you -- IIRC even the Bible had provisions for prescription, so it's hardly a new idea!), but I don't think the way it's implemented is adequate. Nor whether it really can be implemented adequately. I'm not the only one thinking so, and it's still relatively new, so I'm hoping that in the next few years a variety of cases will cause lawmakers and courts to bound and define it more properly. But... yeah, I'm not a fan.
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.
Two things here. First, on the last part I quoted, I want to reiterate that, as far as I know, there isn't any "the media" in French (or European) law. Any random individual that publishes content on their own website (or hand prints leaflets to give out in the street) is held under the same rules of freedom of speech than a big national newspaper. Obviously the audience will not be the same, and several other things, so rulings may end up being different, but in the same way as a small business owner cooking their account won't get the same punishment as Enron did. The rules are the same.
It's maybe a bit of a detail, but I feel it's important, because law does not define a special protected "media" category that would be above normal individuals, and above Google ("data processing companies"). It only defines a special category for that last group, ostensibly based on some factual definition of their business practice, not on their size, nor recognition by some "media board" nor anything else. Practically for what we're discussing, it's the same, but I still feel it's important to clarify, especially since you also say that there is a movement in the US "arguing to treat media organizations with special privileges that generic people who exercise their Freedom of the Press aren't necessarily entitled to."
On your main idea, that all this came from the GDPR, I disagree. I think what you're seeing here is European law construction at work. Often individual countries will start legislating as they wish, and only later will the EU come in and homogenise all laws into a European one (and actually it may even homogenise several EU laws into a single, more comprehensive one). Remember what I said about the French law on "provider of services?" It dates from 2005 (2004?), whereas the GDPR is from 2016 (2018? adopted 2016, applicable 2018), so much later. And while I'm not expert, I'm ready to wager that a lot of the GDPR was influenced by the French, and other similar member states' laws. Take the ECJ ruling I quoted, the CNIL case dates back from 2015/2016, it quotes a Spanish decision from 2012 (or 2014? I have no idea what the different dates in the link mean...), and even quotes a EU regulation from 1995 in the first footnote! It also quotes the GDPR, yes. But not only. And arguably the notion of "data processing companies" in France dates back as long as the CNIL itself, which is IIRC around the end of the 70's (78? 79?).
Looking back at the public debate when the GDPR came about, I very much think that it was just a formalisation/clarification/extension/... [a lot of qualifiers may apply...] of a lot of previous disparate things, and not at all a new thing. Which is why I mentioned looking at history in a previous post. If you just look at the GDPR in isolation and as if it popped up from nothing one day, you won't get the same picture that if you see it as the materialisation of a deep trend that ran for at least 20-30 years before. Arguably it might make it worse to you, but it will change the picture.
That doesn't make it intrinsically right (or wrong), but it definitely wasn't out of the blue.
No, I don't [think Excel is exercising Free Speech by saying that 2+2=4]. However,
2+2=4for the same reason that0.20 * 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.I... have no idea what that other argument was about? Is there a typo/mistake in that equation? As I see it, it's a mathematical fact, not an opinion, so it's either right or wrong (or maybe undecidable, or maybe not enough information...), but there is no Freedom of Speech anywhere in that.
The rest of the examples are all clearly supposed to be covered by Free Expression.
And I guess this is where we'll disagree forever. It's back to the black/white scale. My view, and that of the EU, is that even when rules of processing are decided by humans, there is a degree of automatic processing that still makes it... automatic processing (and thus data management), not free speech. You state the opposite ("using Excel [or whatever] doesn't make it not free expression") but it's... your opinion (and the US view), that's all.
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?
I would personally argue that yes, it is data processing, because they've just written a generic query (personalised with your search terms), not a specific hand-crafted query for that specific search term to ensure it always return that specific article and not another. To me the criterion would be whether there is a human choice for each and every result shown (or rather, for the specific result that you get for one query). Google doing funny stuff when you type "do a barrel roll" is Free Speech. Google showing several pages describing the trick when you type "how does Google do a barrel roll" is not.
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@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
All in all though, I don't think the stage at which a claim is thrown out will hugely impact your legal bill (assuming it stays in one court, obviously going to e.g. an appeal court would rack up costs!), so it probably doesn't really matter whether the argument is considered at time X or 10 min later.
This was more of an aside, but in the US we have a mechanic called "summary judgment" where someone being sued can have their lawyer claim, pre-trial, "Your honor, this is bullshit" and have the case thrown out before the trial, which saves money for the person being sued.
This is a protection against bullshit lawsuits and is available to libel cases where the claimant doesn't allege that the speech at issue is false.
The RTBF is the law that produces bad results. The way you describe regular French defamation law sounds fairly reasonable.
I've said it before, I'm dubious about the RTBF. I understand where it comes from on a very abstracted level (i.e. morally speaking, a minor stupid thing you did 20 or 30 years ago shouldn't be a burden on you -- IIRC even the Bible had provisions for prescription, so it's hardly a new idea!), but I don't think the way it's implemented is adequate. Nor whether it really can be implemented adequately. I'm not the only one thinking so, and it's still relatively new, so I'm hoping that in the next few years a variety of cases will cause lawmakers and courts to bound and define it more properly. But... yeah, I'm not a fan.
It seems to me that RTBF is normally pitched as "You can make Facebook et al delete your data that you gave to them," which I kind of get, I guess.
I don't get how "a newspaper article written about you" is "your data" that you can petition to have removed.
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.
Two things here. First, on the last part I quoted, I want to reiterate that, as far as I know, there isn't any "the media" in French (or European) law. Any random individual that publishes content on their own website (or hand prints leaflets to give out in the street) is held under the same rules of freedom of speech than a big national newspaper. Obviously the audience will not be the same, and several other things, so rulings may end up being different, but in the same way as a small business owner cooking their account won't get the same punishment as Enron did. The rules are the same.
It's maybe a bit of a detail, but I feel it's important, because law does not define a special protected "media" category that would be above normal individuals, and above Google ("data processing companies"). It only defines a special category for that last group, ostensibly based on some factual definition of their business practice, not on their size, nor recognition by some "media board" nor anything else. Practically for what we're discussing, it's the same, but I still feel it's important to clarify, especially since you also say that there is a movement in the US "arguing to treat media organizations with special privileges that generic people who exercise their Freedom of the Press aren't necessarily entitled to."
From the way the GDPR court cases read, it looks like they cleaved the world into "the media" and "not the media" and treat the two groups disparately.
The fact that the wording of the law phrases it as "special disadvantages for not-the-media" instead of "special advantages for the media" isn't an important difference to me, because they mean the same thing in the end.
On your main idea, that all this came from the GDPR, I disagree. I think what you're seeing here is European law construction at work. Often individual countries will start legislating as they wish, and only later will the EU come in and homogenise all laws into a European one (and actually it may even homogenise several EU laws into a single, more comprehensive one). Remember what I said about the French law on "provider of services?" It dates from 2005 (2004?), whereas the GDPR is from 2016 (2018? adopted 2016, applicable 2018), so much later. And while I'm not expert, I'm ready to wager that a lot of the GDPR was influenced by the French, and other similar member states' laws. Take the ECJ ruling I quoted, the CNIL case dates back from 2015/2016, it quotes a Spanish decision from 2012 (or 2014? I have no idea what the different dates in the link mean...), and even quotes a EU regulation from 1995 in the first footnote! It also quotes the GDPR, yes. But not only. And arguably the notion of "data processing companies" in France dates back as long as the CNIL itself, which is IIRC around the end of the 70's (78? 79?).
Looking back at the public debate when the GDPR came about, I very much think that it was just a formalisation/clarification/extension/... [a lot of qualifiers may apply...] of a lot of previous disparate things, and not at all a new thing. Which is why I mentioned looking at history in a previous post. If you just look at the GDPR in isolation and as if it popped up from nothing one day, you won't get the same picture that if you see it as the materialisation of a deep trend that ran for at least 20-30 years before. Arguably it might make it worse to you, but it will change the picture.
That doesn't make it intrinsically right (or wrong), but it definitely wasn't out of the blue.
I'm not sure what this argument is supposed to mean. At one point, you were claiming that being a "data processing company" under the GDPR gave Google certain advantages (which came with certain disadvantages), and specifically that Google chose to be a "data processing company," rather than a "not data processing company."
That appears to be false.
No, I don't [think Excel is exercising Free Speech by saying that 2+2=4]. However,
2+2=4for the same reason that0.20 * 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.I... have no idea what that other argument was about? Is there a typo/mistake in that equation? As I see it, it's a mathematical fact, not an opinion, so it's either right or wrong (or maybe undecidable, or maybe not enough information...), but there is no Freedom of Speech anywhere in that.
If you look at the post on WTDWTF (not linking because it's in the garage) what you'll see show up on the screen is in response to an argument that one group makes up 20% of the whole and another 25%.
My argument is that 57% of the 20% group is mislabeled and really belongs to the 25% group.
Along with some other mislabeling, the 25% group actually comprised 61% of the whole, and the 20% group made up 9%.
I looked up what percentage of the 20% group was mislabeled, then I came up with 61% and 9% using Excel.
Does that make my post not free expression?
The rest of the examples are all clearly supposed to be covered by Free Expression.
And I guess this is where we'll disagree forever. It's back to the black/white scale. My view, and that of the EU, is that even when rules of processing are decided by humans, there is a degree of automatic processing that still makes it... automatic processing (and thus data management), not free speech. You state the opposite ("using Excel [or whatever] doesn't make it not free expression") but it's... your opinion (and the US view), that's all.
There's that appeal to the law again. You're begging the question that there's supposed to be a category called "data processing" at all.
IF THERE IS, then it makes sense to consider how algorithmically versus how manually the expression is generated.
But if there's not, then it doesn't matter.
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?
I would personally argue that yes, it is data processing, because they've just written a generic query (personalised with your search terms), not a specific hand-crafted query for that specific search term to ensure it always return that specific article and not another.
Do newspapers have to delink articles from their own search results when they get a GDPR request? Why not?
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It seems to me that RTBF is normally pitched as "You can make Facebook et al delete your data that you gave to them," which I kind of get, I guess.
I don't get how "a newspaper article written about you" is "your data" that you can petition to have removed.
I kind of agree with you, when staying at that level of principles. Though note that the first point about Facebook is probably more "right to control your data" than RTBF (i.e. the moral justification is that you produced (possibly involuntarily e.g. you advertising profile) the data that Facebook stores and therefore you should have a right to have it deleted, which is different from RTBF where you might be the subject of a content but it wasn't generated by you). But as always, I guess you could find some sort of continuum between both extremes and where "control on your data" becomes RTBF (which, IMO, is how RTBF came to be recognised as a thing).
From the way the GDPR court cases read, it looks like they cleaved the world into "the media" and "not the media" and treat the two groups disparately.
I'm not sure where you got that. The ruling that I still have open doesn't mention "the media" (that I saw, not even implied?), nor does the article you linked recently, nor does a couple of other pages that I have around. It very much seems to me that the ECJ (and other courts) separate between "data processors" and "the rest of population, including media and not-media", which is not the same at all.
Besides, when I read several law blogs about libel etc. in French law, the rulings in the jurisprudence are all over the place in terms of media or not. A teacher putting up a notice in a teachers' room, students pinning an "open lettre" on an opinion board in university, a union distributing leaflets in the street, or a newspaper publishing an interview with someone who tarred their employer, were all treated using the same rules. So at least in French law, I really can't see any place where freedom of speech is treated differently for "media" or "not-media." There is very much a distinction with "data processors" (Google), but that's not the same -- it's not "everyone who is not recognised as a media is a data processor", it's "everyone who treats data in a special way is a data processor" and "everyone else is as free, media or not."
I understand you disagree with this "data processor" category, but it's definitely not "not-media."
I'm not sure what this argument is supposed to mean.
I said, basically, "GDPR didn't come out of the blue" to which you said it did look that way to you. My point here was just to back-track a bit to show you that it did not come out of the blue, that's all.
At one point, you were claiming that being a "data processing company" under the GDPR gave Google certain advantages (which came with certain disadvantages), and specifically that Google chose to be a "data processing company," rather than a "not data processing company."
That appears to be false.
In hindsight, yes, I was probably wrong on that. It seems indeed that whether they like it or not, their activities put Google in the "data processing" category. Though I still suspect that if they wanted to, they could change their activity to no longer be in that category -- or rather, to be kind of half-and-half, like e.g. most newspaper websites are (they are owners of the content they produce but also "data processors" for comments). I'm not sure what the exact legal tests are to be decided as being a "data processor" (I only highlighted what I, personally, think might be a distinction), but I suspect Google could probably manage to fail them if they wanted to. That would likely create a political shit storm, things being what they currently are, but they could try it.
Then again, doing so wouldn't necessarily please them, because it would then open them to a whole category of lawsuits for libel that they currently are protected from (in the same way as a newspaper website would be open to libel claims if it didn't act as a "data processor" for the users' comments). So it's unlikely they'll really try very hard.
Incidentally, the 2014 Spanish ECJ ruling is interesting on several points. For one thing, it doesn't mention freedom of speech anywhere in relation with Google (
it doesn't mention freedom of speech at all, but with respect to the newspaper there is a quick reminder that the information was lawful) so it's not obvious that Google did try to argue that their results should get the same protection under free speech (go and look at the full court proceedings to find out, but 
for me). Another thing is that there is a kind of definition of a "data processor" (not a full definition, again it's probably in the full ruling) that starts with "by searching automatically, constantly and systematically for information published on the internet, the operator of a search engine ‘collects’ data" i.e. at the core a "data processor" is a company that doesn't create its own content. Also, there is a mention of RTBF despite the ruling being well before the GRPD, showing that all this stuff didn't come about just with the GPRD. Finally, the core argument of the ECJ to rule against Google is for privacy reasons, which is indeed one of the high principles of European (and French) law. There is clearly a point at which freedom of speech and right to privacy conflict, and again it's a matter of where the white stops and the black begins (you said yourself that in the US a very public figure (President) isn't treated the same as an individual, and while I understand you disagree with it, it shows that this right to privacy isn't totally inexistant either, even if not framed in these exact words, so it shouldn't be a totally alien concept to you).Does that make my post not free expression?
I'll pass on that. I don't want to read or try and discuss garage stuff here (I have an inkling of what it might be about...), and if I've learnt something about free speech laws, it's that you can't judge on a couple of statements taken out of their context. Feel free to infer what you like about my opinion of that case based on what I said before, I won't say more.
There's that appeal to the law again. You're begging the question that there's supposed to be a category called "data processing" at all.
It's true that I'm skipping the step where I believe that the law is right in defining such a category. So let me say it, I think the law is right to do so.
Do newspapers have to delink articles from their own search results when they get a GDPR request? Why not?
I don't know. Maybe they do. Find me a case where that question was asked and what were the arguments for and against. I think it's kind of a moot questions because I doubt that search on websites is much used (in part because it's at least as bad as
's search, and that's saying something -- on the BBC I regularly fail to find articles even if I type most of the keywords of the title!), so no-one will really bother about it. I suspect that in as much as the search is just organising the content that the newspaper has published itself, it's probably OK to keep it. I suspect the main justification is because they are processing data that they generated themselves (i.e. a search result isn't different from a category page). But really, I don't know.
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*skips past several vast walls of text*
Huh, maybe I don't want to read civilized debates after all. TIL
Filed under: All this bitching and I never actually tried it.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
someone being sued can have their lawyer claim, pre-trial, "Your honor, this is bullshit"
I wish this was literally true. I would watch so much more court TV.
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@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.
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@error said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
@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.
That wound up being more aspirational than predictive.
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@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
It seems to me that RTBF is normally pitched as "You can make Facebook et al delete your data that you gave to them," which I kind of get, I guess.
I don't get how "a newspaper article written about you" is "your data" that you can petition to have removed.
I kind of agree with you, when staying at that level of principles. Though note that the first point about Facebook is probably more "right to control your data" than RTBF (i.e. the moral justification is that you produced (possibly involuntarily e.g. you advertising profile) the data that Facebook stores and therefore you should have a right to have it deleted, which is different from RTBF where you might be the subject of a content but it wasn't generated by you).
Even if the rest of the GDPR, excluding the RTBF, is about "your data" but RTBF is about data that isn't yours, the "subject" of a Google search is the website it points to.
From the way the GDPR court cases read, it looks like they cleaved the world into "the media" and "not the media" and treat the two groups disparately.
I'm not sure where you got that. The ruling that I still have open doesn't mention "the media" (that I saw, not even implied?), nor does the article you linked recently, nor does a couple of other pages that I have around. It very much seems to me that the ECJ (and other courts) separate between "data processors" and "the rest of population, including media and not-media", which is not the same at all.
The ECJ ruling in the Spanish case makes the distinction that there are things that are legally allowed to be printed in the media that are not legally allowed to be printed by data processors.
Those operations, which are referred to
expressly and unconditionally in the directive, must be classified as ‘processing’, regardless of the
fact that the operator of the search engine carries them out without distinction in respect of
information other than the personal data. The Court also points out that the operations referred to
by the directive must be classified as processing even where they exclusively concern material that
has already been published as it stands in the media. A general derogation from the application of
the directive in such a case would have the consequence of largely depriving the directive of its
effect....
So far as concerns, next, the extent of the responsibility of the operator of the search engine, the
Court holds that the operator is, in certain circumstances, obliged to remove links to web pages
that are published by third parties and contain information relating to a person from the list of
results displayed following a search made on the basis of that person’s name. The Court makes it
clear that such an obligation may also exist in a case where that name or information is not erased
beforehand or simultaneously from those web pages, and even, as the case may be, when its
publication in itself on those pages is lawful.It seems indeed that whether they like it or not, their activities put Google in the "data processing" category. Though I still suspect that if they wanted to, they could change their activity to no longer be in that category -- or rather, to be kind of half-and-half, like e.g. most newspaper websites are (they are owners of the content they produce but also "data processors" for comments). I'm not sure what the exact legal tests are to be decided as being a "data processor".
The way I read the ECJ ruling I just quoted, search engines by definition are data processors. It looks like "are you a search engine?" is one of the tests.
Then again, doing so wouldn't necessarily please them, because it would then open them to a whole category of lawsuits for libel that they currently are protected from (in the same way as a newspaper website would be open to libel claims if it didn't act as a "data processor" for the users' comments). So it's unlikely they'll really try very hard.
Is the test for "data processors" the same under libel law as it is under the GDPR? I have no reason to assume that's true. The law uses the same words with different meanings all the time. That's fine, so long as each law includes its own definition of the word.
Incidentally, the 2014 Spanish ECJ ruling is interesting on several points. For one thing, it doesn't mention freedom of speech anywhere in relation with Google (
it doesn't mention freedom of speech at all, but with respect to the newspaper there is a quick reminder that the information was lawful) so it's not obvious that Google did try to argue that their results should get the same protection under free speechWhy would it? The case is about Freedom of the Press.
If European Court decisions work the way American decisions work, the court decision only includes answers to the questions that the litigants actually asked. The fact that the Court says that Google has to take down the result even though the Spanish newspaper does not implies that Google argued the opposite.
There's that appeal to the law again. You're begging the question that there's supposed to be a category called "data processing" at all.
It's true that I'm skipping the step where I believe that the law is right in defining such a category. So let me say it, I think the law is right to do so.
That's the important question I'm asking. Why is it that you feel that there should be rules for "data processing" and different rules for "not data processing."
Do newspapers have to delink articles from their own search results when they get a GDPR request? Why not?
I don't know. Maybe they do. Find me a case where that question was asked and what were the arguments for and against... I suspect that in as much as the search is just organising the content that the newspaper has published itself, it's probably OK to keep it. I suspect the main justification is because they are processing data that they generated themselves (i.e. a search result isn't different from a category page). But really, I don't know.
I did find you a case that says that newspapers are legally allowed to publish things that Google is not. It follows logically that if you're allowed to publish something, you're allowed to offer a search tool that finds it.
If you'd like to find a court case that says the opposite, go ahead.
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Even if the rest of the GDPR, excluding the RTBF, is about "your data" but RTBF is about data that isn't yours, the "subject" of a Google search is the website it points to.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
The ECJ ruling in the Spanish case makes the distinction that there are things that are legally allowed to be printed in the media that are not legally allowed to be printed by data processors.
Yes, but I think everything in the ruling makes it clear that the distinction is whether Google is a data processor (and thus subject to data processor rules), and not whether Google is a media (and thus subject to hypothetical rules that would only apply to "media" as opposed to "not-media"). It's not moral principles we're discussing here, it's the law, and I think it's very clear that there is not a "media"/"not-media" distinction, there is only a "data processor"/"other" distinction.
(if you think I'm wrong, find me some EU or French law that defines what "media" is, as opposed to "not-media" -- or find a case where something was deemed as "not-media" without being "data processor")
If European Court decisions work the way American decisions work, the court decision only includes answers to the questions that the litigants actually asked. The fact that the Court says that Google has to take down the result even though the Spanish newspaper does not implies that Google argued the opposite.
Yes, that's also how I understand courts decision here, in particular higher or appeal courts (lower ones sometimes can raise arguments that neither side did, I think, in particular for e.g. small claims court where litigants might not be familiar with all intricacies of the law).
It's indeed almost certain that Google did claim they didn't have to take down content, and the insistence of the court on the "even if the newspaper can keep it" part implies that Google probably brought that up, but we can't be sure without reading the full court proceedings. However what we can't know is whether Google argued they could keep it "because freedom of speech [or press, but see above how it's not a relevant distinction in law AFAIK]." For all we know, maybe Google only brought up procedural arguments on this point, or maybe they argued that as "data processors" they couldn't interfere with the "data processing" and thus if the content is there they can't not reference it. Or maybe something else.
Again, the full ruling of the ECJ is available on the ECJ website. Click through the links at the end of the PDF and gorge yourself. But it's pointless to argue what arguments Google might have raised without being sure. I'm not going to do your homework.
Why is it that you feel that there should be rules for "data processing" and different rules for "not data processing."
Basically, for the same reason that you felt somewhere up-thread that "[t]he rest of the examples are all clearly supposed to be covered by Free Expression," asserting it as something obvious (to you) and that didn't require any justification. Because I think it's right to do so, and wrong not to. Because to me it's obviously wrong to claim that an automatic process such as a search engine is the same thing as a newspaper vetting its content article-by-article.
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@error said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
Huh, maybe I don't want to read civilized debates after all. TIL
And it's also why I find the Salon (and this thread to an extent, TBH) somewhat pointless. With the best goodwill in the world, almost any topic between opposing viewpoints will descend into walls of texts and tiny details that are pointless unless you're deep into the topic, usually citing technical reference (laws, religious texts,
all of the aboveC++ standard...), so it will likely become what you see here, i.e. boring to everyone except the two persons posting (and even to them...).Arguably that might still be worth for the two persons involved, but in most cases the same thing as what you can see here (if you bother to read...) will happen, i.e. that we may manage to clear-up some side questions, but ultimately we get to a point where both sides can't really do much more than saying that something is Right, or Wrong. Maybe wrapped in some appeal to an external authority such as "God says so" but they you've just moved the conflict a bit further (basically, it's very unlikely that "God says so" can sway you unless you share the exact same conception of God than the other side, and if you don't...). Usually what you end up doing is simply confirming everyone's position ("I knew the other side was Wrong, now I know a bit better why").
So maybe we've had an interesting discussion in between, but honestly, whether it's really worth trying to make a whole category about it? Meh...
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@remi said in Another GDPR? Electric googleoo?:
It's indeed almost certain that Google did claim they didn't have to take down content, and the insistence of the court on the "even if the newspaper can keep it" part implies that Google probably brought that up, but we can't be sure without reading the full court proceedings... But it's pointless to argue what arguments Google might have raised without being sure. I'm not going to do your homework.
I'm beginning to think that this conversation is being held in bad faith.
We've both been fine with the press release explaining the court decision for this entire conversation, but suddenly when I post in bold text the part where it says that European law treats the media different than Google, suddenly you need an actual transcript? That's awful convenient.
Leave opinions aside. I've been doing your homework while you've spent the past 20 days being wrong about actual facts, including:
- France actually did try to have Right to Be Forgotten regulations applied in US-to-US transactions.
- There actually was a court case that rejected applying GDPR to actual newspapers.
- The French case was actually about libel.
And in between, it's been nothing but misleading analogies, an insane argument that France should try to apply French law outside the EU after the ECJ told them not to and appeals to "It's the law, so it must be correct."
I'm done with this conversation. You've successfully explained to me how things are, which I seem to have been right about. Your continent sucks, and you don't believe in an absolute morality. When someone comes and liberates you, you're not going to have the tools to know whether the new regime is better or worse than the old one.
I hope you're as good at building Maginot Lines as you are at building walls of text.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear Just for the record, I am also starting to think you argue in bad faith, in particular because I can't remember a single post where you actually went and found a ruling or a law (without me posting it first) rather than a generic newspaper article, despite most our discussions relying on ECJ cases that are entirely available and in English. I find it, as you say, "awful[ly] convenient" to only look at short articles not written by lawyers and ignore what lawyers and courts have actually said.
I'm just slightly surprised that we actually managed to hold for that long before saying, essentially, "fuck you," but I can't say that this ending is really a surprise.
EOT.
